“The curtailment of the right to travel and liberty of movement of former house representative Liza Maza shows how the US government transgresses on the basic rights and freedoms of individuals and groups, even those outside its territory,” said Karapatan Secretary General Cristina Palabay in a press conference with Maza.

On July 9, 2015, Maza was barred to board her 12:20 p.m. flight to the US via Korean Air 622. Airline staff and immigration officials told Maza they received email from the Customs Border Protection of the US Homeland Security saying she cannot board the plane. Maza has a valid 10-year US visa (2008-2018) and had traveled to the US before and after 2008. Her last trip to the US was in 2013.

Palabay said “Maza was not even informed of the reasons why she was not allowed to travel. That, by itself violates her right to due process — violating fundamental rights enshrined in the Philippine Constitution, the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.”

Maza was invited by Gabriela chapters in the US to meet with Filipina migrants and immigrants, and women’s groups. She was slated to attend the International People’s Tribunal on the Crimes of the Obama-Aquino regimes in Washington DC as an expert witness on how the Enhanced Defense Agreement (EDCA) and the US-RP Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) violates Philippine sovereignty and the Filipino people’s rights.

Maza was among the 30-women delegation of known women peace activists who crossed the demilitarized zone (DMZ) between North and South Korea last May 24, 2015 as a symbolic action to call for the reunification of the two Koreas and the reunion of families, and women’s participation in the peace process. The event also highlighted women’s contributions in promoting peace in the Asia Pacific region and beyond. Among the women in the delegation were Nobel Peace Prize laureates Mairead Maguire and Leymah Gbowee, Gloria Steinem, and other feminist activists and artists.

Whether Maza was barred from travelling to the US because of her role in the IPT or her participation in the women peace delegation in the two Koreas, it is clear that the US government considers her a ‘person of interest,’ one who is targeted because of her activism for peace and human rights and her vocal opposition to US imperialist designs that infringe on the sovereignty of peoples,” Palabay said.

Karapatan said Maza’s recent experience bolsters the charges lodged at the IPT against the US government for violating the Filipino people’s rights. “Karapatan, victims of rights abuses and their kin, and other progressive organizations—acting as complainants—have indicted the US government and the BS Aquino regime for the numerous civil, political, economic and socio-cultural rights violations and violations on the people’s right to self-determination,” Palabay stated.

The IPT 2015 will be convened on July 16-18, 2015 by the International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines, International Association of Democratic Lawyers, US-based National Lawyers’ Guild and Ibon International.

See also: press conference of Liza Maza describing how she was barred from boarding a plane bound for US, where she was set to testify at the upcoming International Peoples’ Tribunal on the crimes of the Aquino government. Pinoy Weekly video

http://www.karapatan.org/US+gov%E2%80%99t+barred+former+Rep.+Maza+to+travel+to+US

Contact Person:
Cristina Palabay
Secretary General
+639173162831

Angge Santos
Media Liaison
+639189790580

———————————————————————
PUBLIC INFORMATION DESK
publicinfo@karapatan.org
———————————————————————
Alliance for the Advancement of People’s Rights
2nd Flr. Erythrina Bldg., #1 Maaralin corner Matatag Sts., Central District
Diliman, Quezon City, PHILIPPINES 1101
Telefax: (+63 2) 4354146
Web: http://www.karapatan.org

KARAPATAN is an alliance of human rights organizations and programs, human rights desks and committees of people’s organizations, and individual advocates committed to the defense and promotion of people’s rights and civil liberties.  It monitors and documents cases of human rights violations, assists and defends victims and conducts education, training and campaign.

Karapatan today assailed the recent spate of harassment and trumped up charges against Karapatan human rights workers Honey Mae Suazo, Secretary General of the organization’s chapter in Southern Mindanao; Rev. Allen Bill Veloso, Chairperson of Karapatan-SoCSKSarGen; and Pastor Sadrach Sabella, Secretary General of Karapatan-SoCSKSarGen.

The three were included in the numerous harassment suits against human rights defenders, pastors of the United Church of Christ in the Philippines (UCCP) and religious workers from Panalipdan-Southern Mindanao and Rural Missionaries of the Philippines (RMP) filed at the Office of City Prosecutor in Davao City and the Office of the Provincial Prosecutor in Malapatan and Alabel, Sarangani province.

“These charges were filed against them because they have been steadfast in supporting the indigenous people and farmers who were killed, tortured and forcibly evacuated due to military operations of the 10th Infantry Division and the 73rd Infantry Battalion of the Phil. Army (IBPA) in Mindanao. Because of this, they have been called ‘enemies of the State,’ repeatedly vilified, and are now facing reprisals because of their human rights work,” Palabay said.

The charges were filed by the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group of the Philippine National Police, Philippine National Police-Alabel, elements of the 73rd IBPA and their assets in local government and in the community.

Also included in the charges of kidnapping, serious illegal detention, violations of Anti-Trafficking Act in Davao City are Suazo, UCCP Rev. Jurie Jaime of the Promotion of Church People’s Response-SMR, Sr. Stella Matutina of Panalipdan-SMR, Sr. Restita Miles of the Rural Missionaries of the Philippines, Sheena Duazo of Bayan SMR, Ryan Lariba of Bayan Socsksargen, Tony Salubre of the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas-SMR, Jaja Necosia of Kilab Multimedia, Kerlan Fanagel, Sr., secretary general of the Lumad group Pasaka, Isidro Andao, spokesperson of Pasaka, Kharlo Manano, national secretary general of Salinlahi Alliance for Children’s Concerns and spokesperson of the Save Our Schools network; Rius Valle of the Children’s Rehabilitation Center-SMR and activists Jimong Marciano and Pedro Arnaldo.

In the charges filed before the Sarangani fiscals on attempted murder, violations of the law for the protection of children and on International Humanitarian Law, inciting to sedition, among others, the following were included in the charge sheet as respondents: Sabella, Veloso, Ryan Lariba of Bayan Socsksargen, Anelfa Gemilo, Lorna Mora and Junard Cayamba of Lumad group Kaluhhamin, Lorencio Teo of Makasdalu, Bert Padayao of Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas, UCCP Rev. Roger Rafalez, Mercedes Arlene P. Alonzo and Marmar Cawan of Clans, Nestor Masalon of Kafye de Lagad Marlo Magramo of Bayan Muna, Borning Manganyong, Alfredo Manganyong, Armand Teo, Bulahing Masalon, Ruben Wating, Hermis Tuco and Rodel Lumayas.

During numerous occasions since last year and especially this year, Suazo has experienced surveillance, threats and harassment from the notorious 69th IBPA, also known as the Palparan battalion, and the 10th IDPA under Maj. Gen. Eduardo Año. Sabella, meanwhile, is reportedly on the military’s Order of Battle list.

“We will hold the Armed Forces of the Philippines accountable for any further violation against the rights of these human rights defenders. The fabricated charges against them have no merit at all, and all of the allegations are merely products of the AFP’s utak-pulbura imagination,” Palabay concluded.

http://www.karapatan.org/Stop+harassment+and+trumped+up+charges+vs+Karapatan+workers%2C+rights+defenders

Contact Person:
Cristina Palabay
Secretary General
+639173162831

Angge Santos
Media Liaison
+639189790580

———————————————————————
PUBLIC INFORMATION DESK
publicinfo@karapatan.org
———————————————————————
Alliance for the Advancement of People’s Rights
2nd Flr. Erythrina Bldg., #1 Maaralin corner Matatag Sts., Central District
Diliman, Quezon City, PHILIPPINES 1101
Telefax: (+63 2) 4354146
Web: http://www.karapatan.org

KARAPATAN is an alliance of human rights organizations and programs, human rights desks and committees of people’s organizations, and individual advocates committed to the defense and promotion of people’s rights and civil liberties.  It monitors and documents cases of human rights violations, assists and defends victims and conducts education, training and campaign.

“Akin to former Pres. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s acclamation of “The Butcher” Gen. Jovito Palparan during her State of the Nation Address in 2006, BS Aquino’s promotion of Lt. Gen. Hernando Iriberri as AFP Chief of Staff and assigning either Maj. Gen. Ricardo Visaya or Eduardo Año as Phil. Army chief are blatant affirmation of the regime’s policy of war against the discontented Filipino people. These three generals are the present-day Palparans and they have blood on their hands,” said Cristina Palabay, Karapatan secretary general.

On Friday, Aquino appointed Iriberri as the new AFP Chief of Staff, vacating the position of the Army chief. Over the weekend, sources from Malacañang revealed that Visaya and Año are among those interviewed by BS Aquino to replace Iriberri as chief of the Philippine Army.

Año was exonerated from the charges filed by Edita Burgos on the disappearance of her son Jonas, which Karapatan believed is “a form of whitewash” on the case. Since 2014 to present, with Año as commander of the 10th Infantry Division in Mindanao, Karapatan has documented several Palparan-style human rights abuses, which includes extrajudicial killing, disappearances, illegal arrests, torture, hamletting, and forcible evacuation of civilians.

Similarly, Visaya’s assumption as 4th Infantry Division commander in Mindanao also resulted in the same pattern of human rights violations. According to Karapatan, Visaya is responsible for the 2004 bloody massacre of 12 farmworkers in Hacienda Luisita; the abduction and torture of farmers Manuel Meriño, Raymond and Reynaldo Manalo, and UP students Sherlyn Cadapan and Karen Empeño; and the “urban militarization” of communities in the National Capital Region in 2006 to 2007, immediately before the national elections.

Iriberri, as Army chief, led the whole Phil. Army in “perpetrating rights abuses and violations of the international humanitarian law across the country, especially in Mindanao.” Also, as chief of the 503rd Infantry Battalion assigned in Abra, communities were bombed. In one of the bombings, two girls were almost hit in the villages of Umnap, Buanao, and Lat-ey in the municipality of Malibcong in 2013.

“As Army Chief, he even praised his men who “won” battles against members of the New People’s Army despite violations of international humanitarian law and human rights. Such is the case of the firefight in Lacub, Abra, in September 2014 where the eight NPA fighters killed bore torture marks and civilians were killed. Gen. Iriberri even awarded the soldiers with medals of valor,” Palabay said.

Under the BS Aquino administration, there are 262 documented victims of extrajudicial killings and 293 victims of frustrated killings; and more than 60,000 persons displaced and dislocated due to military combat operations in the countryside (data as of June 30, 2015). Karapatan attributes this to the counter-insurgency program Oplan Bayanihan, commanded by the three generals who are its “rabid implementers.”

“With these murderers and torturers at the helm of the Philippine military, especially on BS Aquino’s last year in office, his regime will leave a bloodied legacy—using a Palparan-like solution violence against the civilian population tagged as “enemies of the State.” With this, and his haciendero arrogance, Aquino will go down in history as one of the most-hated regimes in the country,” Palabay concluded.

http://www.karapatan.org/Aquino+promotes+present-day+Palparans+before+last+SONA

Contact Person:
Cristina Palabay
Secretary General
+639173162831

Angge Santos
Media Liaison
+639189790580

“Under BS Aquino, perpetrators of the Hacienda Luisita massacre were never prosecuted. They are promoted instead.”

The Unyon ng mga Manggagawa sa Agrikultura (UMA), a national federation of agricultural workers, slammed outgoing AFP Chief Gen. Gregorio Pio Catapang for recommending another “massacre general” to replace him at the helm of the country’s military establishment after his retirement on Friday.

“Gen. Catapang was appointed by Aquino precisely for his loyalty to the hacienderos of Tarlac – for his active involvement in the 2004 Hacienda Luisita massacre,” said Ranmil Echanis, UMA deputy secretary general.

Catapang reportedly named five generals as “worthy replacements” including Gen. Ricardo Visaya, who is widely-criticized as a human rights violator,right-hand man and protégé of “butcher” Jovito Palparan.

Visaya was the commander of the 69th Infantry Battalion, the army unit directly implicated in the massacre of striking Hacienda Luisita farmworkers in 2004. Visaya, who is currently the chief of the AFP Southern Luzon Command (SOLCOM), is also implicated in harassment and extra-judicial killings of indigenous peoples, peasants, agricultural workers and union leaders during his stint in Mindanao.

UMA also said that Gen. Catapang, who would retire on July 10, lied in his counter-affidavit dated January 27, 2009 when he stated that no AFP personnel fired a single shot during the Luisita massacre.

This was belied by the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) report dated February 8, 2005 which cited two witnesses namely then-Department of Labor and Employment(DOLE) Sheriff Francisco Reyes and an ambulance driver, Arturo Dayrit who were quoted as saying that they saw soldiers firing their guns.

These findings were substantiated by the report made by the Health Alliance for Democracy (HEAD)and Health Action for Human Rights (HAHR) which was submitted to the to the Senate Committee on Labor on January 12, 2005.

The report concluded that “the health team finds adequate substantial evidence to state that the strikers of Hacienda Luisita were shot not ‘as a defensive stance’ or because the PNP and AFP ‘were provoked’ but rather as a direct armed offensive assault on the picket line. This assertion is supported by: a) the number and types of injuries and deaths, b) the character of the injuries and physical findings, and c) the volume and length of gunfire sustained against the strikers.”

The NBI report affirmed that the protesters’ sworn statements were more credible than those of the government personnel. The report states, among others, that “even the independent witnesses who submitted sworn statements corroborated the claims of the protesters that the government side fired their weapons directly to the position of the protesters.”

President Aquino, then-congressman and administrator of the estate, is one of the respondents in the massacre case.

“Under Aquino, court proceedings for the Luisita massacre case were ‘murdered’ twice – only a few months after Aquino held office in December 2010, when police and military respondents were allowed to go scot-free by the Ombudsman; and in October 2014, a month before the 10th anniversary of the massacre, when the Ombudsman junked the survivors’ appeal to reopen the case,” said Echanis.

UMA and its affiliate AMBALA, the local farmworkers alliance in Hacienda Luisita, are studying the possibility of filing new charges against Aquino, outgoing Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) Chief Gen. Catapang, and others involved in the Hacienda Luisita massacre.

Meanwhile, Aquino’s role in recent human rights violations in Hacienda Luisita is among the grounds for charges to be heard in the International Peoples’ Tribunal (IPT) to be convened by human rights advocates and lawyers in Washington, DC from July 16-19.

REFERENCE:
Gi Estrada
UMA media officer
0916.611.4181

Agricultural workers under the national federation Unyon ng mga Manggagawa sa Agrikultura (UMA) urged lawmakers to look into a P3.9 billion public-private partnership (PPP) project involving disputed property within the controversial Hacienda Luisita estate.

The proposed Tarlac Solar Power Project entered into by the Department of Energy (DoE) with the PetroGreen Energy Corporation(PGEC) last March was earlier reported to be located in a 50-hectare area “near Hacienda Luisita.”

However, documents obtained by farmworkers reveal that the solar plant is planned to be constructed in a disputed agricultural area located in barangays Balete and Lourdes (Texas) in Hacienda Luisita, according to Ranmil Echanis, UMA deputy secretary general.

The area is part of the 500-hectare property under the Hacienda Luisita, Inc. (HLI) approved for land-use conversion by the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) in August 1996.

Part of this property was ceded to the Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation (RCBC) a few days after the Hacienda Luisita massacre in 2004. Some 200 hectares remain with the Luisita Realty Corporation (LRC), another Aquino-Cojuangco firm. While the area remains agricultural and undeveloped until now, the property is generally referred to by the media as part of the Luisita Industrial Park (LIP).

In 2012, the Alyansa ng mga Manggagawang Bukid sa Asyenda Luisita or AMBALA, UMA’s local affiliate in Tarlac, filed a petition to revoke DAR’s conversion order. Armed security guards and goons hired by RCBC and the Aquino-Cojuangcos figured in violent attacks against Luisita farmers tilling portions of the disputed property.

AMBALA’s petition reads: “HLI and its successors-in-interest violated the terms and conditions of the order for conversion order and the rules and regulations on conversion. The land remained agricultural in use and therefore should be placed under the coverage of the agrarian reform program.

“HLI and its successors-in-interest clearly failed to comply with their obligations mandated under the conversion order. Specifically, HLI did not pursue the proposed development plan that was contained in the application for conversion and instead disposed of the 500 hectares to other Cojuangco-owned companies and to RCBC. It also failed to implement the development plan within 5 years from 14 August 1996, the time when the Order of Conversion was granted by the DAR.”

Echanis added: “While the Supreme Court’s (SC) HLI decision excluded this 500-hectare property from land distribution, Luisita farmers believe that their petition for revocation of DAR’s conversion order remains valid and relevant as the property is still fit for agricultural use. This area should have been covered by land reform even before the SC released its final decision.” AMBALA’s petition is still pending.

PetroGreen or PGEC is under the majority ownership of the Yuchengco Group of Companies which also owns RCBC. The Yuchengcos are known business partners of the Aquino-Cojuangcos in the Luisita Industrial Park, Co. (LIPCO).

“In one state of the nation address (SONA), Aquino even questioned the feasibility of solar power projects. Paano raw kung makulimlim? Now, is he allowing this PetroGreen project to make way for the landgrabbing efforts of his family and their business partners?” asked Echanis.

Hundreds of residents in Barangay Balete are among disgruntled farmworker-beneficiaries dislocated by the Aquino-Cojuangcos’ aggressive landgrabbing complemented by the DAR’s bogus land distribution scheme. Land allocated to most Balete residents are located some 20 kilometers away in Concepcion town, making it impractical for farmers to till the farmlots.

The residential areas as well as the agricultural lots tilled by Balete and Lourdes farmers since 2005 are near the SCTEX access road where another Aquino-Cojuangco firm, Tarlac Development Corporation (TADECO) suddenly claimed ownership over another 258 hectares of agricultural land. TADECO ordered the eviction of hundreds of farmers and bulldozing of ready-to-harvest crops in a series of violent incidents coinciding with the DAR’s land distribution activities starting 2013.

“Aquino will most likely boast of government’s so-called land reform accomplishments in his last SONA on July 27. Once sessions resume, we dare lawmakers to immediately look into this anomalous deal entered into by the Aquino government to justify corruption, violence and landgrabbing with such noble causes as protection of the environment and renewable energy,” said Echanis.

UMA will present a comprehensive report on the state of agrarian reform in Hacienda Luisita in a media conference on July 20, 4pm at the UP Diliman College of Mass Communication, a week before Aquino’s last SONA.

REFERENCE:
Gi Estrada
UMA media officer
0916.611.4181