With HSA, poor communities most vulnerable to rights abuses
The National Union of Journalists of the Philippines is alarmed over reports that no less than the chief of the Armed Forces of the Philippines has prevented a reporter from covering legitimate news events in Mindanao, particularly in the province of Basilan.
“In Davao City in Mindanao, several corpses were found bearing placards similarly suggesting they that were criminal offenders. What is shocking is the implied acceptance by the authorities and the public regarding this practice without seriously reflecting on the tremendous implications if it is allowed to continue,” says the Asian Human Rights Commission.
Across Mindanao, Lumad vs. Lumad as firms gobble up tribal land
Childrens vulnerabilities have further been aggravated by reports from the DSWD in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao that on August 19, eight kids aged 4 to 16 years old from Indanan, Sulu, were arrested and tortured along with their parents by the militarys Joint Special Operations Force.
On this day of the desaparecidos, Anakpawis SOCSKSARGEN calls for the immediate surfacing of abducted labor leader Jaime Jimmy Rosios.
Rosios, a Board Member of Yellow Bus Lines Employees Union, and a vocal critic of the YBL managements unfair labor practices, was abducted by armed men aboard a Tamaraw FX, just outside the Yellow Bus garage in Koronadal City, South Cotabato last August 11, 2007.
“There is no dignity, in policy nor in practice, in the way our indigenous peoples are being treated. Indigenous communities are being displaced and threatened by mining concessions; they are being massacred supposedly in the name of development. There is an ethnocide going on in this country,” Gabriela Rep. Luz Ilagan said.
By COLLETTE CUIZON | Davao Today
The Philippines’s anti-terrorism law could be misused by the military, the groups said, adding that there would be constant disruptions in the lives of children because of the HSA. “Even in places where there is no actual fighting, classrooms are oftentimes transformed into evacuation centers, disrupting school classes. Children bear the trauma when their parents are illegally arrested and detained, or, in worst cases, killed.”
By ANGELA LIBRADO-TRINIDAD
We have hoodlums in robes, we have cheats at the highest echelons of the government, we have crooks in Congress, landgrabbers and killers well-entrenched in state machineries and business, and the irony is, despite the laws available to victims, to the poorest among us, these criminals appear decent and held with high regard in our society. We see the young shoplifter, the young molester or the young drug pusher and, alas, we are immediately agitated to have them removed from our sight and from the streets!
By Rose B. Palacio The Rotaract Club of Munting Pag-asa Davao district 3860, a duly recognized and registered member of…
