According to Brittanica, terrorism is the act of using violence in order to create fear in a

population, to be able to bring about a particular political objective. In many different countries,
there have been or even ongoing attacks of terrorism. To protect the citizens, the governments
from different countries have done actions such as passing or create laws that are focused in
minimizing or eradicating terrorism. In our country, the Philippines, the Anti-Terror bill was
signed by our president, Rodrigo Duterte on July 3, 2020. The said bill aims to update “Human
Security Act of 2007” and to remove terrorism in our country. With this in mind, the six
following phrases defines what is considered to be a terror act stated in the Anti-Terror bill,
“intimidate the general public”, “spread message of fear”, “influence by intimidation the
government”, “seriously destabilize or destroy”, “create a public emergency” or seriously
undermine public safety”. Those who are found guilty of this charge will face life imprisonment,
along with those who participated in conspiring, recruiting, training and planning a terror act.
Meanwhile, those who threaten, propose, profits, aids or assists in escape, conceals evidence and
voluntarily join in terrorism will be facing lesser jail time of 12 years. Additionally, the
government can arrest anyone with suspicion of said these acts without any existing warrant and
put in detention for 14-24 days. Furthermore, the Anti-Terror Council (ATC) whose composed
of many cabinet officials, has the authority to appoint an individual or organization as terrorist/s
once they find evidence.
Although the bill was already signed, I believe there are still a lot of ongoing petitions
against it for many strongly disagrees with the bill. I am also one of those people because I
personally think that the law itself creates fear and panic to the people of our country. There is no
guarantee that abuse of power wouldn’t happen and from my point of view there are more
untrustworthy officials than those who are honest and reliable. Other than that, it takes us away
our freedom of speech, freedom of expression and freedom of the press. “It’s dangerous to be
right when the government is wrong”-Voltaire.

Each of our lives is open for any possible things that can occur, the future is always
unsure for it is yet to happen. With this in mind, fear exists in each and every one of us for we
are all afraid of something, we fear of the things we want avoid and cease to take place.
Eventually, fear then takes over and we start to limit ourselves of everything we do. Aung San
Suu Kyi stated that “the only real prison is fear and the only real freedom is freedom from fear”,
this statement supports my belief in freedom, for I, myself is a victim of fear. I often hold back
and limit myself from doing things that I want to do. In connection with the Anti-Terror Bill, I
believe that the said bill could become a prison of fear that would take our freedom away.