"In societies where Robbing Hoods are treated like a celebrity it is but natural to expect political parties to act like a Mafia syndicate" Political Jaywalker "In a nation where corruption is endemic people tend to confuse due process with aiding and abetting criminals" Political Jaywalker "War doesn't determine who is right, war determines who is left" Bertrand Russell "You have just one flash flood of money, you keep your people poor. It's like a time bomb and it's scary" Philippine Lawmaker

Poem: While Silence is Her Refuge

Today is International Day to end Violence Against Women. I am sharing my ten year old poem that was published in Chaneg ten years ago.



While Silence is Her Refuge

He crushed her being

spat on her education

raked her self-confidence

burned her plans

charted in the kitchen

where her work was never done.

Violence upon violence

visited her scar-ridden body

The pain - so severe

she could not even scream.

Silence was her refuge.



Her wounds ran much deeper

than sisters could imagine

But she swam alone in the

sea of her nightmares and anguish

Fears covered, cries stifled

Silence was her refuge.

 
The crowd had a million ears

but not one for the moans

of a sister’s tortured soul

It taunted her for her questions

crucified her for her speech

Word of pain was infamy

The crowd rubbed salt on the

raw, bleeding wound

Since then, silence became her refuge



A daughter now does the work

that is never done

Her spirit protests not

numbed by her mother’s death

and her own, for like her mother

she died a hundred deaths

and will die a hundred more

because silence is her refuge.


The crowd does not know

that silence betrays

The crowd itself has run

a million times

to silence for refuge

It still does.

When will the crowd realize

that silence is a foe?

It harbors violence

and squeezes the blood

that waters and keeps alive

the tree of death

that has eternal life

while silence is woman’s refuge./ Cheryl L. Daytec, 13 March 2000

Open letter from CHRP on the Maguindanao Massacre

President Benigno Simeon Aquino III
Malacanang Palace
Manila
Republic of the Philippines

23 November 2010

Dear President Aquino,

It is now one year since 57 people were massacred in Magindanao in the Philippines by a local private army. Among the victims were 32 journalists, making this the worst massacre of journalists on record.

Disappearances, torture and murder remain a constant threat to community activists, church workers, lawyers, journalists and trade unionists in the Philippines. Since 1991 there have been over 1200 political killings in the Philippines and the level of killings and abuses shows no sign of abating following your election. The complicity of the Philippines armed forces in these abuses of human rights has been placed on record by among others Philip Alston, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions.

There is hope and expectation from all those around the world concerned with human rights that a new government in the Philippines will usher in a new concern for human rights. However, the first 100 days following your coming into office witnessed 16 further political killings. This surpasses the rate of killings of the last months of the previous president Mrs Arroyo. On 12 November the president of the Calamba Water District Union was gunned down by masked men on motorcycles. We have similarly seen disappearances continue with the recent cases of Agusto Ladera and Reanato Deliguer, two farmers who were abducted by soldiers in Surigao del Sur in August.

We call upon your government to bring the suspected perpetrators of the Maguindanao massacre to justice speedily; to bring to justice all those responsible for torture, murder and disappearances in the Philippines; to end the climate of impunity which allows political killings and disappearances to take place; and to ensure a safe environment for journalists and all those who work to defend a free society.

Yours sincerely

Reverend Canon Barry Naylor
Chairman
Campaign for Human Rights in the Philippines (UK)




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Government neglect, disservice to OFWs

The ongoing hullabaloo about the 11 Filipino victims of illegal recruitment/human smuggling who sought refuge in Los Angeles after fleeing from their recruiters in Mississippi focuses once again on this nefarious malady in our society. It brings to mind past headlines about the more than 300 Filipino teachers recruited in Louisiana; of others enticed with fake jobs and scholarships to the United Kingdom using student visas; still others recruited with promises of job placements only to be left abandoned in Bangkok; the 67 female caregivers who had no days off and were made to work for 12 hours or more daily in Saudi Arabia; of workers made to work in Singapore for long hours, not enough food, and not paid their salaries for six months; the case of 137 sent to non-existing driver positions in Dubai, and so on and so forth. All of them were treated badly by illegal recruiters and made to pay exorbitant placement and other fees

My encounter with the group of alleged victims now in LA that has been a hot issue in online discussion boards was instructive of the human capacity to endure and adopting to adverse circumstances. Understandably sulking and sad, they nevertheless exuded the appearance of a people betrayed but have decided to make the most of the situation. Needless to state, we should be concerned with the plight of our kababayans in distress because without friends, kin and financial support they are more vulnerable and easily intimidated here. Being scammed by illegal recruiters is one of the worst scenario imaginable considering that not only the job seekers are victimized; their families left behind have no more breadwinners to depend on and then there are the usurers demanding payment for money lent so the workers can leave for their foreign destinations.

For decades now the Philippine government has depended on the export of labor as an important part of its development strategy and a way of reducing unemployment as well as boosting foreign currency reserves. The fact that OFW remittances have helped much in propping up the homeland economy battered incessantly by government corruption and inefficiency earn for the former the tag "Modern Heroes." But not all things are rosy and the adverse effects include family ties and lives destroyed.

The Labor Code of the Philippines provides penalties for offenses committed in connection with the foreign labor market and there are agencies like the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE), the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA), the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA), and a medical care program to safeguard and protect the best interests of OFWs. But OFWs continue to suffer, illegal recruiters proliferate and rules and prohibitions circumvented with schemes of ghost loans, cash advances, double contracts, and who knows what else. Why?

The case of a single OWWA officer, Alberto Adonis Duero, posted in Los Angeles could provide a glimpse of what ills Philippine bureacracy. With no resources and no fund at hand, Duero supposedly has jurisdiction in more than 20 countries including the entire United States. Among the problems that currently occupy him are the case of distressed OFWs in Haiti and Cuba, and the 300 teachers and victims from Mississippi mentioned above.

His request for funding to cover the food and accommodation requirements of the latter while their case and immigration status are being threshed out by US authorities has been denied. In addition he is now in hot water reportedly because higher-ups didn't want the story of the victims to be known to the community. He also had the gumption to write to his superior, Secretary Rosalinda Baldoz of DOLE, reiterating his "request for an immediate investigation of the illegal recruitment activities by several agencies and individuals in the Philippines and to revisit the direct hire policy of POEA."

The scrapping of direct hiring is one of the demands that HongKong OFWs and the Migrante advocacy group are urging President Noynoy to do. Duero said that the direct hire policy is the root cause of all these problems pertaining to illegal recruitment and alleged human trafficking of Filipino workers. Suddenly Duero's LA posting is cut short and he may be sent back to the Philippines before the year ends. This turn of events, as well as the arrogant and rude manner Pinas News columnist Pex Aves was treated in the consulate while following up the victims' story, gave rise to the intriguing questions: What is it that some in the Philippine officialdom is trying to hide? Are some of them involved in the multi-million illegal recruitment syndicates? -- Dionesio C. Grava

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Dionesio C. Grava - Part-time community journalist based in Los Angeles and editorial writer at Forum Asia.









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