Global Issues
PHILIPPINES: Citizens’ Raids Hauling in Smugglers, Illegal Fishers
Robert Chan shuffles a pile of legal briefs in his temporary office — a wooden cargo vessel that he and a team of volunteer paralegals had apprehended during an operation against smugglers of logs and other forest products from the central Philippine province of Palawan to Malaysia.
'They (court officials) probably think this is already where I hold office permanently,' he said, examining summons that had just been delivered by a court clerk on a Monday morning.
Chan, a lawyer who heads the Palawan NGO Network — Global Legal Action for Climate Change (PNNI-GLACC), explained that he and his group of civilian volunteers were taking turns guarding the vessel, which was anchored off the city pier.
Owned by a trader based in the southern Palawan town of Rizal, the vessel was part of a fleet that had been smuggling logs and mangrove tanbark to Malaysia, which shares a maritime border with the Philippines in the Sulu Sulawesi seas, Chan said. These, among the valuable timber in Palawan’s forests, are prohibited from being cut under a ban on commercial logging in the province.
The apprehension of the vessel yielded a cargo of Palawan ipil hardwood valued in the black market at 65,000 U.S. dollars. Chan said the bust was important because it broke up an entrenched smuggling syndicate that had been operating out of Rizal and Balabac towns for at least 10 years.
But instead of filing the usual forestry violation and criminal cases, Chan chose not to sue the boat owner or its crew but filed an administrative case seeking forfeiture of the vessel in favour of the government.
'It is a legal strategy that is a trademark of our approach to enforcement. We’d rather not get stuck in prosecuting criminal cases that will drag on for no less than five years, if we’re lucky,' Chan explained. Here, we can forfeit the vessel used in the crime in less than a year’s time. What is important is not that you incarcerate people, but teach them a lesson and make it extremely difficult for them to continue.'
The focus on confiscation of vessels and equipment such as chainsaws from violators of environmental laws — as a way of upsetting operations that would otherwise be difficult to prosecute in court — is something that Chan and his colleagues have developed from a decade of enforcement initiatives.
What allows a civilian group like PNNI to go after suspected violators of environmental laws is a doctrine in Philippine criminal law providing for 'citizens’ arrest', which overrides the normal requirement of serving a warrant issued by a judge.
In its operations, Chan’s team is accompanied by up to two uniformed police officers from the Philippine National Police Maritime Police. They are the only armed members of the posse. 'It is a very good partnership because we are able to accomplish a lot even with limited resources available,' PNP Maritime chief for Palawan Col Agustin Molina said.
Chan says the impact of citizens’ operations — against those who use the seas for activities like logging or illegal fishing — has been strongly felt throughout Palawan, considered the Philippines’ last ecological frontier.
Since the start of its campaign a decade ago, PNNI has accumulated more than 300 unlicensed chainsaws, which had been used in illegal logging, without having to criminally prosecute a hired hand or its owner. The volume of this haul is more than double what the law enforcement agencies have been able to confiscate.
In May this year, the same team busted a group that supplies sodium cyanide to fishermen for use in catching live groupers. A banned chemical substance in fishing, cyanide — even in its diluted form used to stun fish — is highly potent to corals and kills any reef it comes into contact with.
In that bust, PNNI stalked a large boat for three days near Double Island in Rizal town, and some of its members posed as fishermen buying cyanide. The operation netted seven kilogrammes of the banned substance and the confiscation of the fishing boat itself.
Efren Balladares, that group’s team leader, attributes its success to the support of communities that give them information about the illegal loggers and fishers’ activities. 'We have a network of trained paralegals who are members of the communities and they act as our assets,' Balladares.
At the same, its successes have come with a heavy — and lethal — price. Over the last decade, three persons associated with Chan’s group have been murdered in connection with their participation in community-driven enforcement operations. A team leader of an operation to demolish an illegal fish trap was mugged and left for dead, but luckily survived.
The group’s eight paralegal volunteers get a meager food allowance of 10 dollars during each operation, and sometimes a bonus for a major bust. 'It is the passion for the environment that keeps us together,' Balladares said.
In truth, it has not been easy to convince funding agencies to support this kind of environmental work. 'We have approached agencies such as the European Union and AusAid. . . Unfortunately, these agencies don’t appreciate the realities of law enforcement in the Philippines. They see is as a task of government and think the NGOs have no business doing enforcement work,' Chan said.
But the local government sees things differently. In 2009, Puerto Princesa Mayor Edward Hagedorn gave Chan’s team a one million peso (22,753 dollar) fund and a secondhand off-road vehicle. 'Attorney Chan’s work needs to be supported by local governments. This is the true essence of good governance participation,' Hagedorn had said when he signed the check for the fund.
© Inter Press Service (2010) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service