PHILIPPINES: For almost three weeks, five members of Congress have taken sanctuary in their office building. By day, they attend official meetings. At night, they sleep in the same room and worry that they could be arrested at any time.
The left-wing members of the Philippines House of Representatives are vocal critics of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, who ordered their arrest last month for allegedly participating in a plot to force her from office. They have called on her to resign but deny trying to oust her.
Granted temporary immunity in the congressional office compound, they spend each night in a large conference room next door to the office of the speaker of the House. Congressional security guards stand watch outside their door to protect them from a possible pre-dawn police raid.
Liza Maza, the only woman in the group, gets the couch. The others sleep on mattresses placed on the floor. They wash their clothes in a bathroom sink and hang their laundry outside their offices.
"It's a crazy thing," said Joel Virador, one of the five, as he got ready for bed on Tuesday night. "But they have the guns. We are not taking the risk."
The standoff between Mrs Arroyo and the left-wing caucus began with the president's declaration of a state of national emergency on February 24th.
Officials said she was the target of an attempted coup in which she and other top political figures were to be assassinated.
The five congressmen - and a sixth who was arrested before he could reach the safety of the building - are at the heart of her contention that the alleged coup was a conspiracy between left-wing rebels and military officers.
Mrs Arroyo lifted the state of emergency after a week, saying that the coup threat had subsided, but the government maintains it can still arrest coup suspects without a warrant.
Some military officers have been relieved of their posts and confined to quarters, but only one person is behind bars for involvement in the alleged coup attempt. He is Crispin Beltran (73), who has diabetes and earlier suffered a minor stroke.
Mr Beltran was arrested on February 25th on a 21-year-old warrant for sedition dating back to when Ferdinand Marcos was president. He is now charged with rebellion against Arroyo, a capital offence.
The other five learned of Mr Beltran's arrest while they were at a hotel holding a press conference to criticise Mrs Arroyo's emergency declaration.
As police moved in, Satur Ocampo, their leader, escaped out a side door. Officers stopped his official vehicle and arrested two aides, but Mr Ocampo (67) jumped into a back-up car and escaped. Soon after, the other four slipped out the back of the hotel.
Two days later, the five made their way to the legislative building, known as the Batasan, where the House voted unanimously to give them protection until the congressional session ends or warrants are issued for their arrests.
If the Batasan Five, as they have become known, step outside the compound, police say they will arrest them.
With Congress insisting that legal procedures be followed, police have struggled to come up with sufficient evidence to obtain arrest warrants from a judge. But that has not keep Mrs Arroyo from pronouncing all six guilty in an interview on Saturday with the Philippine Star newspaper.
"They have committed a crime," the president said.
"They are committing a continuing crime. And we have laws to deal with that. In fact, they are disrupting the work of Congress with what they are doing."
Mrs Arroyo added that arrest warrants were unnecessary but, as a concession to Congress, her administration had agreed not to arrest the five without them.
Mrs Arroyo has maintained a tenuous hold on the presidency since her staff last year accidentally released a recording of her directing a top election official to make sure she won by one million votes in the 2004 presidential election.
She survived impeachment attempts in Congress, where her supporters control most of the votes, and she has rejected repeated calls to resign.
The six lawmakers deny they were plotting to overthrow the president and say she is trying to silence them because they are among her most outspoken critics. The Batasan Five's congressional immunity could expire on April 7th when the House goes into recess.