Filipino-Americans in Seattle Rally Behind the “Morong 43” Health Workers

For Immediate Release

Media Contact  – Chel Cendana, NW Regional Coordinator, pnc@bayanusa.com

February 17, 2010

Filipino-Americans in Seattle Rally Behind the “Morong 43” Health Workers

Seattle, WA – Several concerned Filipino-Americans rallied in South Seattle to show support for the 43 detained health workers in the Philippines.  They condemned the Philippine police and military’s abduction of community health workers and doctors who were conducting health skills training in Morong, Rizal, on Saturday, February 6, 2010. They are being accused of being rebels and learning how to make bombs.

The health workers and doctors administer health services to poor communities, and were participating in a First Responders Training, sponsored by the Community Medicine Foundation, Inc. (COMMED) and Council for Health and Development (CHD).  This was held at the farmhouse of Dr. Melencia Velmonte, professor emeritus of the UP College of Medicine and a consultant at Philippine General Hospital.  The home is also frequently used for annual global health conferences for the University of the Philippines.

According to reports by the media and the human rights alliance KARAPATAN, approximately 300 soldiers and police of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and the Philippine National Police (PNP) forcibly arrested and took the participants to a nearby military base. The military denied the health workers their right to legal counsel for three days and blocked a team from the Commission on Human Rights.  When the detainees were seen by lawyers and human rights advocates they gave accounts of torture for forced confessions of being rebels. Lawyers and human rights workers have noted that the warrant used for the arrest had inaccurate information and was illegal in the first place.

Several Philippine congressmen have denounced the raid and abuse saying it may violate the recently passed Anti-Torture Act as well as the UN Convention Against Torture.  Many medical groups & professionals including Dr. Alberto B. Roxas, professor and dean of the UP College of Medicine have criticized the raid.  Presidential candidates including Manny Villar and Nonoy Aquino have also condemned the raid.

“This raid sends the message that it is ok for Filipino doctors and nurses to work abroad but will be harassed for staying in the Philippines to serve the poor,” said Pinay sa Seattle Chair Claudia Alexandra Paras. “These detained health workers are the same people who jumped into action in the aftermath of Typhoons Ondoy and Pepeng last year.”  The health care workers feel they are being targeted with trumped up and claim that the military planted evidence after they were rounded up.

The military has been criticized for inconsistencies in their arguments and defying a Supreme Court order to bring the detainees to court.  After alleging early that they were merely bomb makers, Maj. Gen. Jorge Segovia reversed himself and admitted that they were health workers but working for rebels.  The military also points to the detainees’ legal counsel of Romeo Capulong as evidence of being rebels.

At the rally, Fil-Ams carried signs demanding the government “Free the 43” and condemning American tax dollars being sent to finance the Philippine military and its on-going human rights violations.  They also noted the contrast in treatment of the “Morong 43” relative to the Ampatuan clan, suspects of the “Maguindanao Massacre” where 60 people including 30 journalists were killed on November 23, 2009. “For years under Oplan Bantay Laya, President Arroyo and the AFP maintained a policy of war against unarmed political activists and making peace with the warlords such as the Ampatuans in Mindanao,” said AnakBayan Seattle Chair Sincere Born.  “The Ampatuans are comfortably awaiting trial during a slow investigation while the Morong 43 are being tortured and immediately charged with rebellion.”a

Seattle Vows to Fight Violence Against Women

Press ReleaseContact: Chel Cendana, Pinay sa Seattle pinayinfo@gmail.com ###

Seattle Vows to Fight Violence Against Women

SEATTLE, WA – Pinay sa Seattle in collaboration with Tadaima, a radical Japanese American organization and Khmer in Action (KIA), a progressive group of Khmer people, have come together for a night of collective action to take a stand against violence in our communities particularly against women and children.  The Filipino Community of Seattle and its Kultura Arts program is sponsoring an event on Friday, February 19th called “IVOW…I vow to fight violence against women,” a show calling for an end to violence against women in our API community. 

In the US, violence against women and children is further perpetuated in times of economic crisis and war.  Violence is prevalent particularly in communities of color, immigrant households, and families that are struggling to make ends meet.   For women of the third world, and in particular the Philippines, the challenge with violence is far greater in a place where feudal and patriarchal values still take precedence in addition to grappling with the everyday challenges of poverty and war.

To address these issues, Pinay sa Seattle, a member organization of GABRIELA USA, is launching a nationwide campaign to fight violence against women called Voices of Women vs Violence Against Women or iVOW.  The campaign is an ongoing educational campaign calling for individuals to take a vow to end violence, and that begins with addressing the root causes, discussing the systemic effects these root causes have on women, and vowing to take a stand to fight violence with resistance against oppression.  The iVOW campaign is a comprehensive campaign that addresses issues such as human trafficking, domestic violence, rape, incest, sexual harassment, prostitution, sexual abuse, sexual discrimination and exploitation, militarization, political repression, and connecting these issues with violence due to economics. 

Currently the Philippines is under heightened political repression due to the coming elections in May, where violence against its own people is rampant.  On February 6th, 43 community health workers, 26 of whom were women, were raided, abducted and tortured by the Philippine military during a training seminar in Morong Rizal (neighboring province of Manila) held by the Council for Health Development (CHD).  Donna Denina of Pinay sa Seattle states “It’s a sure sign of desperation by the Philippine government to steep to such levels because they know that these health workers are in full support of members of the progressive party list groups.  It’s election season, so it’s no surprise that these human rights violations are happening, but it doesn’t give the government the right to commit these acts of crime without being accountable to the people.” 

To learn more about the iVOW campaign, community members are encouraged to attend this free show on Friday February 19th.  Doors open at 6:30pm and show starts at 7:00pm.  There is a sliding scale donation of $5-$10 if you’d like to contribute to the ongoing campaign to end violence against women, but no one will be turned away for lack of funds.  For more information, contact pinayinfo@gmail.com.

FIL-AM WOMEN CALL ON PHILIPPINE MILITARY TO STOP THE TORTURE AND HARASSMENT OF MOTHERS AND PREGNANT WOMEN

Health Care Workers Should Be Released To Their Families And Communities Who Rely On Them For Health Care Given The Government’s Neglect Of This Basic Need

Contact: Valerie Francisco, Vice Chair, GABRIELA USA, fire.nyc@gmail.com
Filipino women member organizations of GABRIELA USA across the United States demand the release of the 43 illegally detained healthcare workers. Of the 43 healthcare workers, 26 are women including a woman doctor and midwife, and two are pregnant. Most of the healthcare workers are peasant women from various poor communities that were taking classes on first aid and basic healthcare.  However, the Philippine military justifies the illegal arrest, detainment, and torture by claiming that they are members of the New People’s Army. 

For a great majority of poor women and children in the provinces as well as urban poor areas, community healthcare workers provide the only access to basic healthcare, education, and prevention services because it is not being provided by the government. The ratio of doctors to patients in the Philippines, according to the Department of Health, is at 1:30,000.

These healthcare workers should be praised and supported for their work in their local communities.  Instead, they have been illegally detained and maltreated with forms of torture and sexual harassment. During their detainment, they were also denied access to food and bathroom privileges, and subject to inhumane treatment.   They were also blindfolded and handcuffed for days on end.  In this process, the Armed Forces of the Philippines has even defied the Philippine Supreme Court’s writ of habeas corpus, an order that compels them to present the 43 community health workers.  

“While so many nurses and doctors have left for greener pastures to the United States and other countries, these community healthcare workers have chosen to stay and serve the poor. Many of them are mothers who have volunteered their time out of their busy schedules from working on their farms and taking care of their children to serve their communities with basic healthcare. They should not be criminalized. The real terrorism that has plagued our country is a broken, fascist government that has denied basic necessities like healthcare to the majority of the people.” stated Raquel Redondiez, chairperson of GABRIELA USA, chapter of GABRIELA Philippines.  

GABRIELA USA, a national alliance of progressive Filipino women organizations, stands in solidarity with the members of 43 illegally detained healthcare workers and their families. GABRIELA-USA is an overseas chapter of GABRIELA Philippines, with Babae in San Francisco, Pinay Sa Seattle, Sisters of Gabriela Awaken in Los Angeles, and Filipinas for Rights and Empowerment in New York City.FREE THE 43 HEALTHCARE WORKERS NOW!
JUSTICE FOR THE VICTIMS OF HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS!
STOP TORTURE AND VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN!
###

Detained health workers cry torture

Thursday, 11 February 2010 00:00
BY FRANK LLOYD TIONGSON Reporter

The Manila Times
http://www.manilatimes.net/index.php/news/nation/11313-detained-health-workers-cry-torture

Detained health workers suffered various forms of torture at the hands of the military to force them to admit they are members of the New People’s Army (NPA), it was revealed Monday.

“Based on accounts by the detainees, the AFP [Armed Forces of the Philippines] has subjected them [health workers] to various forms of torture and sexual harassment,” said Dr. Geneve Rivera, secretary general of the Health Alliance for Democracy. Rivera was accompanied by Human Rights Chairman Leila de Lima, who visited the detainees on Monday.

The 43 health workers, detained since Saturday at Camp Capinpin in Rizal, were arrested while conducting a training-seminar at a resort in Morong, Rizal based on suspicions that they were members of the NPA, the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines.

According to the detainees, they were handcuffed and blindfolded for more than 36 hours after being forcibly brought to Camp Capinpin, headquarters of the 202nd Infantry Brigade. They were also allegedly denied food and even bathroom privileges.

Arrest of 43 health workers, foul and election-related – Gabriela Women’s Party

08 February 2010
 
Reference: Rep. Luz Ilagan, House of Representatives
Contact No. : 09209213221

Arrest of 43 health workers, foul and election-related – Gabriela Women’s Party
 
Gabriela Women’s Party decries the arrest of 43 health workers and professionals, 26 of whom are women, attending training seminar held by Council for Health Development (CHD) as foul. It is part of a design to revive anew the state’s attempt to link progressive partylists with the armed revolutionary movement.
 
“It is foul, truly a characteristic of the Arroyo regime.
 
“We can see through clearly the malicious intent behind this arrest. CHD and the participants of the said training are known supporters of the progressive partylists’ causes and have a long, fruitful history of delivering health services to many neglected areas. By tainting their reputation, this regime hopes to dissuade the people from voting for progressive candidates and party lists,” Rep. Luz Ilagan said.
 
The 300 heavily armed soldiers and policemen barged into the rest house of Dr. Melecia Velmonte in Morong, Rizal, where the training was being held, Saturday, February 6, 2010. Explosives and guns along with Bayan Muna campaign materials were purportedly found as the rooms were searched without the presence of witnesses.

In NYC, Roxas & Enriquez Address Worsening Human Rights Crisis in the Philippines

News Release
February 3, 2010

Reference: Yoko Liriano, NY Committee for Human Rights in the Philippines (NYCHRP), email: nychrp@gmail.com

To view pictures from this event, click: here

NEW YORK– Nearly 100 concerned New Yorkers gathered at the Martin Luther King Jr. Labor Center this past Saturday to listen to Melissa Roxas, the first US citizen under the Obama administration to be subjected to a gross human rights violation in the Philippines, and veteran Philippine human rights activist Marie Hilao-Enriquez, speak about the worsening human rights situation in the Philippines under the Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo administration.

Both Roxas and Enriquez were guest speakers at the second annual Pagpupugay (Tribute), an event honoring anti-martial law activists and human rights defenders sponsored by the New York Committee for Human Rights in the Philippines (NYCHRP). This year’s event was also co-sponsored by SEIU/Local 1199 United Healthworkers East.

Re-living Torture

Still fighting back tears, Roxas shared her story of abduction at gunpoint followed by six days of torture before surfacing in Quezon City last May 25th, while conducting community surveys in preparation for a volunteer medical mission in a rural town in La Paz, Tarlac.

Roxas, who is based in Los Angeles, is a founding member of the national Filipino-American alliance known as BAYAN USA.

 

“It is very hard for survivors to speak out in the Philippines because most are still harassed and threatened by the Philippine military and police and threatened with death and harm to themselves and their families,” Roxas explained. “Torture survivors, like myself, also find it very hard because every time I talk about the experience its like re-living it again. But because many more have been silenced and because one the main objectives of torture is to silence and create fear, and to debilitate people, it is important to speak about it.”

Raped OFW may get 100 lashes after miscarriage

JERRIE M. ABELLA, GMANews.TV

01/20/2010 | 09:44 PM

An overseas Filipino worker launguishing in a Saudi Arabian jail suffered miscarriage and now fears getting a hundred lashes before finally being freed.

Camille (not her real name) has been in prison since August last year after her employer turned her over to authorities because she got pregnant out of wedlock by a co-worker who raped her.

Camille, who lived with her in Quezon City, went to Dammam on May last year to work as a janitor in a dental clinic on a two-year contract, the victim’s mother told GMANews.TV in an interview.

Three months into the job, a co-worker – a Bangladeshi national – raped her.

But Camille chose to keep quiet, fearing her rapist would kill her if she reports the incident.

In September, after undergoing a medical check-up – a requirement before she decided to return to the Philippines – she discovered she was pregnant and was reported to Saudi authorities by no less than her employer.

Canada law named after Filipina caregiver

INQUIRER.net

First Posted 08:38:00 12/17/2009

MANILA, Philippines—(UPDATE) Canada is set to adopt a law nicknamed after Juana Tejada, a Filipina caregiver who had fought hard to improve the situation of fellow foreign live-in caregivers, it was learned Thursday.

In the website of Canada’s Citizenship, Immigration, and Multiculturalism, Minister Jason Kenney on Saturday announced proposed regulations to better protect the rights of live in caregivers and to make it easier for them and their families to obtain permanent residence in Canada.

According to the Philippine Overseas Labor Office in Toronto, of the 400,000 Filipinos in Canada, about 66 percent (or 264,000) are caregivers. And by the end of 2008, a total of 1,821 new hires were deployed to Canada as caregivers.

“Our government fully supports the ‘Juana Tejada Law.’ We propose to implement this change in her honor, to ensure that no one else has to endure this same painful experience,” said Kenney after extensive consultations with caregiver groups from across the country, as well as heartfelt testimony before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration.

The first proposed change to the Live-in Caregiver Program eliminates the requirement for live-in caregivers to undergo a second medical examination when applying to become permanent residents, a change advocated by the late Juana Tejada.

Tejada developed cancer while working as a live-in caregiver. She was initially denied permanent resident status when she did not pass her second medical examination.

It was only through special ministerial intervention that she gained status in Canada on humanitarian and compassionate grounds.

According to Jonathan Canchela of Migrante-Ontario, the announcement is a great honor for Tejada and organizations like the Independent Workers’ Association which worked for improved working conditions for live-in foreign caregivers.

”It was Juana Tejada who exposed this ambiguity in the immigration system. She risked her status and fought the threat of deportation so that other caregivers like her could have better protection of their rights. It was she who, with the help of her lawyer Raffy Fabregas and numerous advocates and activists and the community in general, pushed the immigration officials to act in the right direction,” he said.

“If there is someone to be called ‘champion and hero’ for the gains caregivers just won, it was Juana Tejada. She is, in this sense, a true ‘champion and hero’ of the Filipino people in Canada,” he added.

Toll Rising in Philippines Massacre

November  26, 2009

By Carlos H. Conde

MANILA — The death toll in Monday’s election violence rose to 57 on Wednesday, the Philippine authorities said, as 11 more bodies were recovered.

The regional police commander in Maguindanao Province, Josefino Cataluna, said the bodies were dug out from a shallow pit near a grassy hilltop where police officers and troops had found 46 others after Monday’s attack, The Associated Press reported. He said the victims included the family of a gubernatorial candidate and 18 Filipino journalists who accompanied his relatives in filing his election papers.

President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo on Tuesday declared a state of emergency in the contiguous provinces of Maguindanao and Sultan Kudarat and in the city of Cotabato on the southern island of Mindanao. The measure gives the police and army the authority to apprehend and detain those who carried out the slaughter.

The southern Philippines has been plagued for years by secessionist and Islamist insurgencies. The United States sends $1.6 billion annually in military and economic aid to the Philippines, with much of it aimed at a shadowy Islamist group, Abu Sayyaf, which has ties to Al Qaeda.

The authorities said that this week’s election violence had nothing to do with those groups, but that it was rooted in rivalries among local clans that the government had empowered as a way of combating the insurgents. One clan, the Ampatuans, is considered the closest political ally of Mrs. Arroyo in that part of the southern Philippines.

Statement on the Maguindanao massacre

Press Statement

 November 23, 2009

The Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (BAYAN) condemns in the strongest terms the recent election-related violence in Maguindanao province which claimed the lives of 36 people, including members of the Mangundadatu family, their supporters and staff, 2 lawyers and several journalists. The abduction and killings were so brazen that it has shocked everyone, even those in Malacanang. The massacre was indiscriminate and was carried out with utter disregard for the law by apparently powerful and influential forces. We condemn in particular the killing of women, lawyers and journalists.

A swift and impartial probe must now be conducted and the perpetrators of this heinous crime must be brought to justice. The full force of the law must be made to bear on the killers.

President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo must not let her political association with the Ampatuan family stand in the way of a speedy and impartial investigation into the incident. The national government must step in and enforce the law since the local police is not likely capable of conducting an impartial probe or may be vulnerable to pressure by the powerful political families in the province.

We support the call for the disarmament and dismantling of private militias in the area which have long existed but have been seemingly tolerated by the government. The national government can no longer turn a blind eye to the long-standing problem of warlordism and violence in the province.

Those public officials being linked to the killings must now be relieved or must take a leave of absence in order to give way to an impartial probe. The Philippine National Police leadership in the province should also be relieved.

Armed Forces of the Philippines spokesman Lt. Col. Romeo Brawner was quoted as saying the 100 men who staged the abduction were allegedly led by Mayor Datu Unsay Ampatuan and one Police Senior Inspector Dicay of the Philippine National Police (PNP) in Shariff Aguak. This serious allegation involving local government and police officials should also be looked into.