Filipino Youth for Peace

Stop the War and Pursue Peace Talks Now!

admin — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 15:50:17 +0000

(Call of the Interfaith Youth to End Hostilities in Sulu and Basilan)
National Interfaith Youth Leaders Conference
Bishop La Verne Mercado Ecumenical Center, NCCP
August 24-27, 2007

Let the deafening cry for peace of our brothers and sisters in Mindanao be heard! May an end to the war be sought in the spirit of justice and lasting peace!

The war in Basilan and Sulu is but the latest chapter in the historical conflict in Mindanao. For the Moro people, bloodshed, displacement, and fear had become a familiar scenario. The vicious cycle of violence had claimed thousands of lives, further insecurity, and human rights violations. The same holds true to the Christians and Indigenous People who are also victims of the war in the affected areas.

Today, we are witnessing the all-out war under the government’s “war against terror” resulting to massive displacement, destruction of lives and livelihood. Since the eruption of the military offensives in the areas and communities which the military has claimed to be the lair of the bandit Abu Sayaff group, the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) estimated that there are already 24, 000 evacuees. About 14, 455 person or 2, 723 families from Sulu sought temporary shelter in public schools. However about 2, 256 families (14, 455 persons) who fled Basilan villages have no temporary shelter and stayed with their relatives from other communities and evacuated to cramped public schools.

We believe that most of the affected victims are youth and children who have been severely affected by the impact of the war. Their studies have been suspended indefinitely, their source of livelihood disrupted, and many of them are psycho-socially traumatized in varying degrees. The continued massive deployment of soldiers already numbering 17 battalions in Sulu and Basilan had also undermined the peace process between the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and the government. As result of which, we are afraid that the conflict would eventually spill over other areas in Mindanao. Furthermore, there are even multiple cases of illegal arrest and detention not only in Basilan and Sulu, but also in Metro Manila.

We are worried that the United States’ announcement of continued presence of US military troops in Mindanao and US military aid to the Philippine campaign against terror, will aggravate the situation and prolong the conflict in Mindanao.

Our experiences should have taught us that blood and bullets could not pave the road for lasting peace and progress, especially in Mindanao.

We call on our fellow Filipino youth, churches and religious leaders to add their voice in support for the increasing clamor to stop the war, and make efforts in attending to the immediate needs of the affected families and communities who are in dire need of food, potable drinking water, medicines and temporary shelter or sanctuaries.

We, the newly formed Religions for Peace Philippine Interfaith Youth Network composed of Muslims, Indigenous Peoples, Christians and peace advocates, call on our government to stop the war in Mindanao and address the roots of the problem through peaceful and constructive means.

Statement of the Religions for Peace Philippines Interfaith Youth Network

admin — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 13:51:38 +0000

National Youth Leaders Interfaith Cooperation Conference
Bp. La Verne D. Mercado Ecumenical Center,
National Council of Churches in the Philippines
Quezon City, Philippines
August 24-27, 2007

We are youth of diverse backgrounds; our faiths, cultures and traditions differentiate and separate us in many ways. Yet, we are united by our longing for peace, justice, and morality that the dismal situation of our society had denied from us.

We are a newly formed network of various faith and culture based national youth organizations that promote religious and ethnic dialogue and advocacy for genuine peace through mutual understanding and cooperation, in collaboration with the Religions for Peace Philippines and other like-minded organizations.

We, Catholics, Protestants, Muslims, Indigenous Peoples and advocates, work for genuine and lasting peace, justice, and morality through the lenses of our faiths. The deteriorating state of our society compelled us to unite, which on our own would be a tremendous task to overcome.

We take courage to face the challenge to overcome all forms of discrimination, oppression, and domination, to resist anti-people policies, to defend human rights and to continue the journey with the people’s struggle for their right to self-determination, and religious-ethnic harmony.

The three-day conference managed to identify the following issues of the renewed and escalating war in Mindanao and other areas experiencing armed hostilities, Indigenous People’s ancestral land, human rights and the fragile peace process as its primary concerns to be addressed.

The participants have likewise agreed to carryout education and awareness raising programs, advocacies and campaigns and special projects relevant to the needs of the people. We also have agreed to issue a statement of concern to stop the war in Mindanao and to express deep concern over the miserable situation of the displaced families and communities.

Therefore, we the members of the Religions for Peace Philippine Interfaith Youth Network, affirms that hope lies in the combined strength and wisdom each of us have committed to share. We as young people uphold our historic role and responsibility to contribute in the clamor of many to effect meaningful change in society in solidarity with various sectors working for a just, peaceful and prosperous Philippine society.

International Response to the Bush Declaration on the Palestinian Right to Retur

admin — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

To join, please write to responsetobush@yahoo.com

In response to the most recent declaration given by President of the United States, George W. Bush, to Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, on April 14, 2004, at the White House, we, the undersigned affirm the full individual and collective inalienable Right to Return of the Palestinian Arab People to their homes, property and land of origin. We assert in no uncertain terms that such a fundamental right is inviolable as it is based on the unbreakable natural belonging of a people to their property and place of origin, as enshrined in international law. Accordingly, we hold that the Palestinian Right to Return is an indispensable obligatory prerequisite for the achievement of any justice and peace.

We consider any attempt to weaken, lessen, or alter such a right in any form through any proclamations or agreements between any parties to be counter to the human, political, civil, and national collective right of the Palestinian Arab People. Hence, such an attempt, along with its implications and ramifications, are null and void in total, regardless of the passage of time and the entities entering into such agreements or issuing such proclamations.

On November 2, 1917, Great Britain issued the Balfour Declaration that promised Palestine to a European settler colonial movement, amounting to the inevitable dispossession and exile of the Palestinian people. Today, at a time when another Deir Yassin massacre is carried out in Fallujah in an attempt to cement the US occupation of Iraq, the Bush Administration is simultaneously attempting to complete the Balfour project of 1917 by nullifying the Palestinian Right to Return, and by giving an international cover to the creation of a truncated and walled collection of Bantustans that would normalize and legitimize the process of ethnic cleansing.

Recognizing this existential and imminent danger, we stand against this new Balfour Declaration, and reaffirm our unwavering position that the Palestinian Right to Return is an inextricable anchor and prerequisite to full Palestinian self-determination, freedom, and liberty.

(This public declaration will be submitted to all members of the UN General Assembly and other relevant parties on May 15, 2004. For endorsement, please write to: responsetobush@yahoo.com)

For the list of signatories please visit http://www.ror-congress.org/.

END U.S. OCCUPATION OF IRAQ! BRING HOME PHILIPPINE TROOPS NOW!

admin — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

Statement of Iraq Solidarity

We, representatives of various organizations in the Philippines, have formed ourselves into a solidarity alliance called “Iraq Solidarity” in support of the Iraqi people’s intensifying struggle against the illegal occupation of their land and to demand the withdrawal of US, British and other allied troops from Iraq. From our own government, we demand the immediate pullout of Philippine troops in Iraq.

We raise these demands as the body count to this illegal war and occupation continue to pile up. In the first three weeks of April alone, more than 1,000 Iraqis, most of them civilians, and at least 110 U.S. soldiers have been killed.

Support the Iraqi Peoples’ Resistance

Over the past few weeks, we have seen the conflict in Iraq intensify as the resistance to the illegal US-led occupation continues to gather strength and unity.

March 20 marked one-year after the invasion of Iraq. Saddam Hussein has been captured and is now a prisoner of the United States government. And yet, no weapons of mass destruction have been found. Today, the illegal occupation of Iraq has led to an uprising of the Iraqi people mobilized, organized and armed, united around a single unmistakable demand: an end to US-led occupation.

The US government has called the uprising a handiwork of a small group of “thugs, goons” and mainly “foreign fighters” and has even tried to link it to Osama bin Laden’s al Qaida network. But news reports, even from journalists who were “embedded” with the occupation army and supported the invasion, describe an armed uprising backed by millions of Iraqis: workers, students, shopkeepers, women, children and especially, the youth.
Journalists describe children as young as ten and thirteen, as well as women, who have taken up arms against the occupation.

Several cities in Iraq are now no-go zones for occupation troops and are under the control of a people armed. News reports are streaming through of the occupation forces losing control of Fallujah, Najaf, Kufa, Kerbala:
names of cities previously unknown to many of us, but are now known around the world as battlegrounds of the continuing resistance

The US-led coalition is determined to crush the uprising at any cost. This is crucial to the US imperialist agenda: a) because they have huge economic interests at stake as they attempt to control one of the largest source of oil in the world, Iraq, in a region, the Middle East, strategically crucial to US and other imperialist interests; b) to deepen and expand US political and military control over the Middle East; and c) to gain market access and control over Iraq’s economy as part of its neoliberal globalization project..

The US army, the most powerful military force on earth, is responding with brutal force against the Iraqi people resisting occupation with whatever means they possess. In a chilling declaration of their intent to crush the people’s uprising, the Bush administration has named its military operation in Iraq “Operation Resolute Sword”.

Fallujah is a symbol of the people’s resistance. In one week the US-led occupation forces killed over 600 Iraqis, including hundreds of women and children, as they tried to retake control of the city. Some 60,000 refugees, one-third of the cities population, have fled the city to Baghdad. There are eyewitness reports of US B52 bombers being used to attack people as they fled.

The US government announced a much publicized eight-hour “cease fire” to negotiate with the resistance. But even during this declared break in the fighting, US snipers were taking shots at people’s heads, killing several, including many women.

News reports also state that the resistance has united the two main Muslim communities in Iraq. The erstwhile divided Shia and the Sunnis, have united and are now fighting together as one.. In Fallujah, a Sunni city, thousands of Shia across the country are donating blood in a dramatic show of solidarity, for their Sunni brothers and sisters fighting in Fallujah.

RP troops, out of Iraq now!

Amidst all this, there are Filipino forces, sent by the government of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, serving on the side of the US occupiers against a people fighting to liberate their country, from those former colonial powers that Filipinos fought against in their quest for genuine national liberation

Our government claims that the Filipino forces are non-combat troops and that they are in Iraq for “humanitarian” reasons. There is no middle ground in occupation and uprising. In Iraq you are either with the occupation or against it. It is also clear to everyone that the GMA government sent the Filipino forces in Iraq in line with its all-out support to George Bush’s “War on terror”. In Iraq, our troops are viewed as mercenaries, fighting a war for money and profit.

The action of the GMA government is not only shamefully illegal, it is also dangerous! It is because of this regime’s support for the US “war on terror”
(which has also been described as the Bush administration’s “War of Terror”), which is a code for colonial-style occupation to advance imperialist interests, that the Philippines is under threat of retaliatory Madrid-style terrorist bombings. The Madrid bombings have, in fact, led to the electoral collapse of the Spanish ruling party and the newly elected Zapatero government’s decision to pullout Spanish troops from Iraq.

The Bush administration has threatened economic sanctions against the Philippines if Philippine troops are pulled out of Iraq. This is tantamount to blackmail and a gross violation of national sovereignty. A genuinely sovereign nation must have the right to decide its own foreign policy without being dictated to by any foreign power.

We call on the Arroyo administration to immediately withdraw support to the US-led “war on terror” and to pull out the Philippine troops from Iraq now.We also demand from the GMA government that it ensures the safety of Filipino workers whose lives are in danger in Iraq and secure safe passage for those who want to leave the country.

We call on everyone to join us in solidarity actions to show our support for the Iraqi people and their resistance against the occupation so that they can achieve genuine national sovereignty and freedom.

April 23, 2004

Signatories: as of April 26

Justice, Peace and Integrity of Creation Commission of the Association of Major Religious Superiors
in the Philippines (JPICC-AMRSP)
Focus on the Global South (Philippines)

Young Moro Professionals Network
Gathering for Peace

Peace Camp

Institute for Popular Democracy (IPD)
Bukluran ng Maggagawang Pilipino (BMP)

AKBAYAN

ALTERNATIBA

Anti-Globalization Movement (AGM)

GOMBURZA

Kilusan para sa Pambansang Demokrasya (KPD)

Samahang Demokratiko ng Kabataaan (SDK)

Youth for Nationalism and Democracy (YND)

SANLAKAS

Youth Resource

Center for People’s Development (RCPD)

Freedom from Debt Coalition (FDC)
SANLAKAS

Gazton Z. Ortigas Peace Institute
Manggagawa para sa Kalayaan ng Bayan (MAKABAYAN)

Partido ng Manggagawa (PM).

Center for Agrarian Reform Empowerment and Transformation (CARET)
Pambansang Katipunan ng Makabayang Magbubukid (PKMM)

League of Urban Poor for Action (LUPA)

Pagkakaisa ng Kababaihan (KAISA KA)
Nuclear Free Philippines Coalition (NFPC)

Teatrong Bayan Progresibong Alyansa ng Mangigngisda (PANGISDA)
Confederation for Freedom and Democracy (CONFREEDEM)

Women’s Education, Development and Productivity, Research and Advocacy
Organization

People’s Task Force for Bases Clean Up Philippines

PADAYON

SARILAYA

Liga Manggagawa

Pambansang Katipunan ng Magbubukid sa Pilipinas (PKMP)

(The Iraq Solidarity Campaign was founded last April 19, 2004 as a network of Filipinos committed to

- calling for the end of the US occupation of Iraq

- advocating the withdrawal of the Philippine government’s support for the occupation

- supporting the Iraqi people’s resistance

To help achieve its aims, the campaign has established an e-mail list-serve for discussions on plans and strategies, debates on political issues, and sharing of information on Iraq.

If you wish to be a member of the network and/or the list-serve, please contact Corazon Fabros at nonukes@tri-isys.com.

The Condi Rice Version of History

admin — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

Laura Flanders, AlterNet

April 7, 2004

Editor’s Note: The following is an excerpt from the chapter “Sweetness and Light: Condoleezza Rice” from Laura Flanders’ new book Bushwomen: Tales of a Cynical Species (Verso Books). For more information about the book, visit www.lauraflanders.com.

Condoleezza Rice became George W. Bush’s national security adviser, having directed an oil company, managed a multi-million-dollar university and served as a Soviet expert in Washington during the collapse of the Soviet Union.

She was assuming a post in her second Bush administration, the top national security position in the cabinet; but when The New York Times ran a story on the 46-year-old professor, it didn’t discuss her views on national security until the twenty-seventh paragraph. The subject cropped up near the end of the Times’s long feature, which was dominated by talk of her dress-size, her hair, her hemline, and her place of birth.

Los Angeles attorney, Connie Rice, a second cousin of Rice’s, says such coverage is simply sexist: “You don’t hear the press asking where Dick Cheney likes to shop.”

No Times story so far dwelt on the VP’s youth as a white man in pre-civil rights Nebraska, but the Times dedicated fully half of their feature on Rice to her childhood. In that, the paper was hardly alone. Read a dozen features on Condoleezza Rice, and you’re likely to read twelve almost identical stories about her family and her childhood and almost nothing about just what’s she done since she rose from there to here.

Kiron Skinner, a former dissertation student and friend of Rice’s, thinks the fascination with Rice’s personal narrative smacks of racism. It’s no wonder why U.S. media are interested in Rice’s background — American “trailblazers” are inherently newsworthy, and Rice is certainly one of a kind. But “I think there’s a kind of racism going on to keep puzzling about why she’s doing what she’s doing at this point,” says Skinner. “I think she’s exactly where she should be, given her background, her education and her experience.”

But the public mostly doesn’t know about that Rice’s experience in politics and business. And that’s because somehow it seems to have been decided that the National Security Advisor’s professional career makes for less heart-warming spin than her firecracker rise out of “Bombingham.”

The daughter of two African-American teachers in the South, Rice was born in 1954, in Birmingham, a city Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was to call “by far the worst big city in race relations in the United States.” Children in ’50s Birmingham learned to recognize the sign “colored” even before they could read. Their lives depended on it. The town featured white-only schools and white-only cinemas and white-only libraries. The local police commissioner - “Bull” Connor had a habit of driving through black families’ neighborhoods in a freaky white metal tank and announcing on the radio when a “nigger family” moved into a “white” part of town. So common were bombings of black homes in one area that it earned the name “Dynamite Hill.” (A third of Connor’s police force was said to be in the Ku Klux Klan.)

Rice’s childhood coincided exactly with the make-or-break years for multi- racial America. In the year she was born, the Supreme Court, in Brown v. Board of Education, ruled public school segregation unconstitutional. A year later, the Montgomery bus boycott led the Court to ban bus segregation too. By the time Rice turned eight, the Birmingham city government had yet to implement either ruling. That spring, in 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his colleagues came to town and subjected themselves to multiple arrests to protest, but local papers studiously kept them off the front page.

To up the ante, thousands of students and high school children organized and took to the streets themselves. Forty years later, still the most famous — and horrifying — pictures of the civil rights struggle tend to be pictures of what happened next in Birmingham. When Connor’s men loosed dogs and water cannon on the nonviolent demonstrators, the images of children beaten, bitten and washed down the Birmingham’s streets were seen around the world. Repulsion at the events in Birmingham helped draw a quarter of a million people to Washington that August. People who’d never heard or seen Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. watched his “I Have a Dream” speech live on all three TV networks. (”He’s damn good” President John F. Kennedy is said to have told an aide.)

But the defenders of white supremacy in Birmingham weren’t about to concede. In the months after the youth marches, bomb attacks had increased. A gas bomb was thrown into the house of the Rices’ across-the-street neighbor, civil rights attorney Arthur Shores, and just two weeks after the March on Washington, bombers targeted Birmingham’s 16th St. Baptist Church, the hub of the local civil rights movement.

The device in the church was planted precisely to target the city’s rebellious youth. The explosion took place just as Sunday school began. The four murdered children were all girls, downstairs, fixing their clothes before joining the service. Eleven-year-old Denise McNair, and 14-year-olds Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson and Adie Mae Collins were high achievers, popular in town. One attended Rice’s school, a second lived on her street.

Rice wrote about the event for Time magazine in 2000. “I remember being at a church which was a few blocks away from the 16th St. Baptist Church, and just being completely shocked by the sound. It was almost like a train coming — I don’t remember being frightened at that moment although it was a terrifying time. I just felt sad.”

One reason that personal biography has come to dominate the media coverage of Condoleezza Rice is that Rice herself appears happy to place her family’s history in center stage.

At the Republican National Convention in 2000, speaking in prime time, George W’s foreign policy guru dedicated fully half her precious slot to talk about her father and her grandfather. “My father was the first Republican I knew,” said Rice. “My father joined our party because the Democrats in Jim Crow Alabama of 1952 would not register him to vote. The Republicans did. I want you to know that my father has never forgotten that day, and neither have I. (Cheers, applause.)” She told a story about her father’s father, John Wesley Sr., a sharecropper who converted from Baptist to Presbyterian to get a free education. “The Rices” she said, “have been Presbyterian — and college- educated — ever since.”

In September 2001, just before the attacks on Washington and New York, the Washington Post magazine ran a long Sunday feature in which Rice talked in depth about family beliefs. “My father was not a march-in-the-street preacher,” she said. Rather than agitate, Rice’s parents stressed self-improvement.

Her mother Angelina and her mother before her were music teachers. Her father, John Wesley Rice Jr., preached at the weekends in the local Presbyterian Church, and worked as a guidance counselor in Ullman High School. “My parents were very strategic” Rice told the Post’s Dale Russakoff. “I was going to be so well prepared, and I was going to do all of these things that were revered in white society so well, that I would be armored somehow from racism. I would be able to confront white society on its own terms.”

Rice says it didn’t take a movement or the government to open doors for her. “Black Americans of my grandparents’ ilk had liberated themselves,” she told the Post. The family strategy was to ignore racism, she said: Racism in Birmingham was so routine, “you ceased to notice its existence.” She was conditioned to succeed: “My family is third-generation college-educated — I should’ve gotten to where I am.”

To a party-political spinmeister, this is spine-tingling stuff. Used to justify extremely conservative, anti-government beliefs, personal biography is gold in the political economy. Usually uncontested, often uncontestable, any carefully selected detail can be deployed for broad political effect. Ronald Reagan, the son of an alcoholic shoe salesman, had his story. Bill Clinton, fatherless child of a single mom — the “man from Hope” — had his. Verisimilitude matters less than the power to melt hearts, make good media and cast a negative light on those who talk about structural discrimination and want the government to act to change.

The up-from-oppression narratives of powerful people of color pack a particular punch; they can cast liberal complainers as bigots. Those who bemoan discrimination against groups — so goes the argument — underestimate the power of one.

The Yale men of the Bush dynasty are hard up for hard-luck stories, but the first and second Bush presidents have kept people around them who aren’t. Linda Chavez, Reagan’s anti-civil rights, Civil Rights commissioner points to her own success as a Hispanic in America. She wasn’t held back by bias, she says. Bush’s Labor Secretary Elaine Chao has no end of stories to illustrate how she overcame the obstacles faced by Chinese immigrants.

The most famous and contentious African-American narrative belongs to Clarence Thomas. Judge Thomas would never have been confirmed to the Supreme Court if it hadn’t been for his supposedly “inspirational” life story. Born to a destitute teenage mother in segregated Georgia, Thomas edited out that part of his history that involved getting help from government programs like welfare and affirmative action, and claimed he’d graduated by dint of determination alone, “from the outhouse to the courthouse.” It wasn’t entirely true, but it worked.

With Condoleezza Rice’s story, the Republicans hit the rhetorical jackpot. Here was an African-American who grew up in the middle of the most brutal period of anti-equality backlash, and yet her parents kept her out of the movement for government intervention — and her father registered with the G.O.P., the party that opposed the Civil Rights Act.

Call it “up-by-the-boot-straps version 8.0,” Rice articulates a new model of an old program. Years after Thomas, her story depicts not a single miraculous individual who fights against racist odds, but an entire group of middle class African-Americans — the children and even grandchildren of industrious souls who were never beaten down by the legacy of slavery. From a Republican strategist’s point of view, Rice’s story contains the potential to challenge the whole notion that African-Americans as a group are the “natural” constituents of Democrats, (the party that passed the 1964 Civil Rights Act.)

The Act was a historic advance, Rice has said, but she bristles at any suggestion that she was ever held back on account of her skin color. To hear her tell it, her success was assured, virtually predetermined — not by federal laws or the civil rights movement — but by her family heritage. Her love for the Bushes is a family thing and it goes both ways she added: “George W. Bush would have liked Granddaddy Rice,” she gushed to the GOP.

Romanticize U.S. race history and this is the cozy picture you can end up with. It works because people want it to, and because the nation’s memory tends to be fuzzy and short.

By way of reality-check, George W. never met Granddaddy Rice, but while John Wesley Sr. was trading his church for an education, Bush’s grandfather, Prescott Bush, was running a Wall St. bank. Prescott’s son, the first President Bush, opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 when he ran for the U.S. Senate from Texas that year. George W. grew up in Midland Texas, a de facto segregated place, where the Bushes’ black maid recalls being banned from wearing anything but work clothes downtown.

Rice’s rosy picture conveniently glosses over the past. Generations of smart young African-Americans “should” have risen to the highest places in US society as she has, but the fact is that legal discrimination shut them out. In the case of Rice, a child born on the after-side of a slew of measures outlawing discrimination, we will never know where she “would” have ended up if there had been no Rosa Parks, no Dr. King, no Southern Christian Leadership Council, no March on Washington and no Congressional and Presidential support for the end of American Apartheid.

Laura Flanders is an author, journalist, and host of Your Call, broadcast live in San Francisco every weekday, 10-11am on KALW, 91.7FM.

� 2004 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.

Release of Political Prisoners: A Promise Long Overdue

admin — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

By Bulatlat.com

Sana hindi mapako. This is the response of human rights groups and relatives of political prisoners to the government promise to release 32 political prisoners within a month starting April 5. The phrase is from the Filipino colloquial term “pangakong napapako” which means a broken promise.

Girlie Padilla, 33, has been a volunteer for human rights groups since 2000, when Joseph Estrada was still president. She said human rights groups had submitted to Estrada a list of political prisoners whom he promised to release. When Estrada was ousted three years into his term, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo assumed power and she too promised to release political prisoners. Twenty-three of those she promised to set free however remain behind bars to this day.

This time, the list that the government promises to release contains 32 names. Among them are seven women including a nursing mother, Zenaida Llesis, who is now held at the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) office in Quezon City. Llesis, who was picked up and detained in Bukidnon more than a year ago, was allowed to nurse her ailing baby girl who was hospitalized in February for heart ailment.

Others are 10 minors and six sick and/or elderly.

Under the Oslo Joint Statement signed by the GRP and NDFP peace panels just last April 3, the Macapagal-Arroyo government agreed to pursue its commitment to release 32 political prisoners. The GRP and NDFP peace panels met in Oslo late March, more than a month after the resumption of the talks early February.

With this, political prisoners, who number 310 nationwide, lifted April 7 their one-week nationwide protest fasting and hunger strike. Human rights groups and their relatives on the other hand launched their 30-day countdown for the political prisoners� release in a press conference on the same day.

Weary but hopeful

But Padilla, although hopeful that something concrete would come out this time because of the formal talks between the government and National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP), expressed fear because the promised release “has remained a press release so far.”

“We are happy with the developments, especially with the possibility of release of political prisoners. But at the same time, we are sad because many of those who have been promised their freedom in 2001 are not included in the list, including Donato Continente,” added Padilla, who is with the human rights group Karapatan or Alliance for the Advancement of People�s Rights.

Padilla, who has seen the hopes of political prisoners and their relatives rise in elation and be crushed in frustration under Estrada and the early months of Macapagal-Arroyo, said that she and other human rights activists are working hard to prepare whatever documents are needed to process the release.

“Hindi kami titigil sa pagsuporta sa kanila, kahit tumigil na ang hunger strike. Magpapatuloy ang pagkilos namin para mapilitan ang gobyernong tuparin ang pangako nila” (We will continue supporting the political prisoners even as they have lifted their hunger strike. We will pursue actions that will pressure the government to fulfill their promise), she said.

Not included

Mila Continente, mother of Donato Continente, alleged killer of American Col. James Rowe, lamented how her son has been excluded from the list. Convicted for the killing of a special counter-insurgency specialist, Col. James Rowe in the late 1980s, Continente had finished serving his minimum sentence two years ago. His release, however, has been consistently blocked by the U.S. government.

Also not included were the six farmers from Mamburao, Mindoro Occidental charged with murder of the Quintos brothers who belong to a politically influential family in the province.

Nanay Mila and Shirley Llesis, mother of Zenaida, both appealed to the president to honor her commitment.

The teary-eyed mother of Continente, who suffered a stroke last year, said, “Ang pangarap ko, bawian man ako ni Lord ng buhay, makalaya lang po ang anak ko itong taon na ito” (My wish is for my son to regain his freedom this year, even if the Lord takes me).

National security adviser

The release of the PPs is however threatened by renewed attempts by hardliners and military authorities in government to scuttle the peace talks. Last Monday, National Security Adviser Norberto Gonzales moved to disqualify from the Party-list elections Bayan Muna and five other groups for being “front organizations” of the CPP-NPA-NDFP. He also accused them with diverting millions of countrywide development funds to the clandestine organizations.

In a statement on April 5, Fidel V. Agcaoili, a member of the NDFP negotiating panel, denounced Gonzales� accusations as a “green light” by Macapagal-Arroyo for the AFP and national police “to intensify their attacks and human rights violations against the six progressive party lists, and to intimidate the people from supporting them.”

Agacoili, who also co-chairs the Joint Monitoring Committee, said that if government cannot respect the rights of progressive Party-list groups guaranteed by its own constitution and election laws, “how can it uphold and promote human rights and international humanitarian law?”

Thirty-eight Bayan Muna leaders and members have been killed under the Macapagal-Arroyo government. The Party-list group and human rights organizations have condemned the government for the attacks.

Bayan Muna topped the Party-list elections in May 2001 with three seats in Congress. The six Party-list groups accused by Gonzales are also faring well in election surveys, with Bayan Muna leading.

Teddy Casi�o, a Bayan Muna nominee and former Bayan secretary general, said Gonzales was engaged in sour grapes considering that his own group, the “social democrat” Partido Demokratiko Sosyalista ng Pilipinas, lost in the 1998 and 2001 elections.

Indemnification

In the April 3 Oslo Joint Statement, the government also pledged to set aside at least PhP8 billion from the millions of dollars in Marcos hidden wealth now held in escrow by the Philippine National Bank for the indemnification of 10,000 torture victims during the dictatorship. For the amount to be released, the government will work for the passage of a bill that provides for the compensation of martial law victims.

With regards the outstanding issue on the “terrorist listing” of the CPP, NPA and NDFP Chief Political Consultant Jose Maria Sison, no categorical commitment was made by the government panel to work for their effective delisting. It only agreed, together with the NDFP, “to undertake an information campaign…(focusing) on the fundamental principles enshrined in subsisting agreements of the parties.”

The two panels also called on all foreign governments “to refrain from any action that may impede or impair the peace process.”

In addition, the Joint Monitoring Committee (JMC) will be formed this April. The JMC will monitor the implementation of the Comprehensive Agreement on the Respect for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law (CARHRIHL). Some members of the JMC held their first meeting in Oslo on April 1.

The JMC members, on the GRP side, are: Prof. Carlos P. Medina, Jr., Co-Chairperson; and lawyers Edgardo B. Gayos and Robert L. Larga. On the NDFP side: Fidel V. Agcaoili, Co-Chairperson; Coni K. Ledesma and Danilo F. Borjal. Sitting as NDFP- nominated independent observers are Supreme Bishop Tomas A. Millamena and Marie Hilao-Enriquez. The two GRP-nominated observers, Mercedes Contreras Danenberg and Mary Aileen Bacalso, were not present.

The two panels also agreed to convene for a joint meeting in this coming May their sub-committees for phase two of the peace talks, Economic Sovereignty and National Patrimony and National Industrialization and Economic Development.

Subsequently, the two parties� Reciprocal Working Committees for Social and Economic Reforms (RCWs-SER) will meet in June this year either in Beijing, Hanoi or Hong Kong.

Leading the GRP panel was former Justice Secretary Silvestre Bello III with Luis Jalandoni for the NDFP side. They are set to meet again end of this month, in a foreign neutral venue.

The latest Oslo talks was witnessed by Tore Hattrem of the Norwegian government which serves as Third Party Facilitator.

Delegations

The GRP delegation was headed by Secretary Teresita Quintos-Deles, Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process. Aside from Bello III, in the delegation were Undersecretary Jose Luis Martin Gascon, lawyer Rene V. Sarmiento and Ana Theresia Hontiveros-Baraquel; Panel Adviser Edgardo Pamintuan and Panel Consultant Gov. Luis Chavit Singson; RWC-SER Members: Rebecca Ta�ada, Atty. Sedfrey M. Candelaria and Assistant Secretary Ma. Cleofe Gettie C. Sandoval; JMC Members Atty. Carlos P. Medina Jr., Atty. Robert L. Larga and Atty. Edgardo B. Gayos; Executive Director and Panel Secretariat Head Ma. Carla Munsayac-Villarta; Secretariat Staff Coordinator for SER Oscar B. Bathan and Secretariat Staff Coordinator for JMC Fe A. Oaing.

The NDFP delegation included Jalandoni as chairperson of the NDFP Negotiating Panel and Fidel V. Agcaoili, Julieta de Lima, Coni Ledesma and Asterio Palima as members of the NDFP Negotiating Panel; Prof. Jose Maria Sison, Chief Political Consultant; UN Ad Litem Judge Romeo T. Capulong; Senior Legal Consultant of the NDFP Negotiating Panel; Jose Danilo Borjal and Rey Claro Casambre, Consultants of the Panel; Atty. Jayson Lamchek, Special Legal Consultant on the Issue of Terrorism; Ruth de Leon, Head of the Secretariat; Atty. Marie F. Yuvienco, Legal Consultant on Social and Economic Reforms; Rafael Baylosis and Randall Echanis, members of the Reciprocal Working Committee on Social and Economic Reforms; and Vivian de Lima, Economics Consultant, Lualhati Roque and Alvin Firmeza, staff and researchers; Atty. Edre U. Olalia, Legal Consultant for the JMC; Marie Hilao-Enriquez, Independent Observer in the JMC.

Iglesia Filipina Independiente Supreme Bishop Tomas A. Millamena attended as Third Party Depositary and Independent Observer in the JMC. Bulatlat.com

Also posted on QC Indymedia

Renewal and Repentance

admin — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

by Dennis Espada

As a child, Lent was not my favorite time of the year. It is a week without cartoons on T.V.; a week less playing for children. Church processions, masses and the pabasa–all these are associated with what I call then as a gloomy and boring season. One could not compare this day to the joyous gift-giving activity during Christmas, or to the delightful dating on Valentine’s.

Growing ten years older (or more), I begin to understand why Lent has become a traditional manner of personal sacrifice for faith and hope.

But what is Lent? For Christians, Lent symbolizes the forty days of Jesus Christ’s fasting in the wilderness. It was expected of them to manifest repentance, grief and personal sacrifice so that they may be able to experience a higher level of spirituality along “God’s will.” It precedes the Christian holiday of Easter.

We commemorate Lent by keeping in mind the Jubilee theme of “proclaiming freedom to all inhabitants of the land.”

Let us begin with repentance. Sins occur because we have shortcomings and mistakes. Thus, in the process of repentance, it is necessary to point out our shortcomings and mistakes so that sins may be avoided in the future. A passage from Job 11:13 says, “Put your heart right, Job. Reach out to God. Put away evil and wrong from your home. Then face the world again, firm and courageous. Then all your troubles will fade from your memory, like floods that are past and remember no more.”

To put away evil and wrong, we have to make mechanisms for self-correction. What use do we get if we repent today but commit a sin tomorrow? This way of life is called split-level Christianity.

Understandably, the road to righteousness is difficulty and thorny. In fact, it is so difficult that we tend to vacillate and succumb to temptations we can’t resist.

We should make effort to do away with our selfishness. Christ said: “We cannot serve God and mammon” (Matthew 6:24), “He who loves faather and mother more than me is not worthy of me…” (Matthew 10:37-38), and “Anyone who starts to plow and then starts looking back is of no use for the Kingdom of God” (Lke 9:62).

The path to renewal is quite similar with regards to repentance. In the midst of wrongdoings, we realize the need to make things new. Second Corinthians 5:17 says that a “person who is in Christ is a new creature; the old things are passed away…” This passage refers to change that is taking place in the consciousness of an individual as well as his/her lifestyle. Although change comes from the internal, it cannot be separated from changes going on in our society where the individual lives and moves and from where he/she draws his/her being.

A person who has really renewed and transformed should in any way engage in the ministry of making things new. This involves thoughts and actions that are revolutionary in essence. Christ who said, “behold, I make things new” was killed by the Roman authorities because he dedicated his who life to such a ministry.

No one patches up an old coat with a new piece of cloth, says Matthew 9:17. It further says, “nor does anyone pour new wine into used wineskins, for the skins will burst, the wine will pour out, and the skins will be ruined. Instead, new wine is poured into fresh wineskins, and both will keep in good condition.” You see: the new contradicts with the old. If we truly want to renew ourselves, we have to induce the downfall of the old to be followed by the victory of the new.

When many Filipinos took to EDSA and other places to demand President Erap Estrada’s resignation last January 2001, they wanted changes in the government and society…thus, putting an end to corruption, poverty and injustice. They saw Erap’s regime not working for the interests and aspirations of majority of Filipinos. That’s the reason why they bravely defied the authority of Erap until the day he resigned from office.

Well, Lent also speaks about turning our hearts to the poor and underprivileged. As for urban-dwelling professionals, both young and old, they begin to look at the world from the eyes of those who are hungry and helpless. They become more interested in joining and sympathizing with the toiling masses than being too busy about their careers.

But what is inspiring, though, are those chivalrous beings who have transcended from their old selves and took up the cross. They are the selfless souls engaged in a life-and-death struggle for social liberation. #

(This was first published at Insurance World monthly magazine, April 2001 issue.)

GMA, Bush To Face War Crimes Tribunal

admin — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

By Dabet Casta�eda
Bulatlat.com

President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo (GMA) joins U.S. President George Bush, Jr. and British Prime Minister Tony Blair in facing an indictment planned to be brought before an international people�s tribunal for the war against Iraq launched on March 20 last year. Filipino lawyers will join international prosecutors in the trial slated this year.

A group of Filipino and foreign lawyers plan to sue President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, U.S. President George W. Bush, Jr., British Prime Minister Tony Blair and outgoing Spain�s President Jose Maria Aznar who led and supported the U.S. invasion of Iraq on March 20 last year.

One of the Filipino lawyers, Edre Olalia, told Bulatlat.com March 20 that Macapagal-Arroyo, Bush and other heads of state involved in the war will be charged before an international people�s tribunal that is expected to be held this year. The charges will be filed for violations of the 1998 Rome (or the International Criminal Court) Treaty, the United Nations Charter and other international treaties and covenants.

Bush launched the war to rid Iraq of its �weapons of mass destruction� (WMDs) and to topple the Saddam Hussein government. But no WMD has been found one year after the invasion that killed, according to independent estimates, 50,000 people and Iraqi soldiers.

Joining Olalia in the Filipino lawyers� team are Marie Yuviengco and Jayson Lamchek. All three are from the Public Interest Law Center (PILC) headed by UN Ad Litem Judge Romeo T. Capulong. Also expected to act as prosecutors are lawyers from the Netherlands, Great Britain, Brazil, Turkey, Brazil and Afghanistan. All the lawyers belong to the International Association of People�s Lawyers (IAPL).

Olalia made the announcement as the world commemorated the first anniversary of the bombing of Iraq. The U.S.-led invasion took place 18 months after its bombed Afghanistan to topple the Taliban government and hunt down Osama bin Laden.

In a statement released to the press March 20, IAPL joined the international community in condemning the U.S. �war on aggression� against Iraq and its people.

Macapagal-Arroyo

The inclusion of Macapagal-Arroyo in the coming suit is based on her declaration of full support for Bush�s war against Afghanistan and Iraq and allowing the Philippines as the U.S.� �second front� in the �war on terror.� A Philippine police contingent is now in Iraq as part of the coalition peacekeeping forces.

Olalia said the decision to file charges against Bush et al was reached in a meeting of the IAPL in Istanbul, Turkey November last year.

He told Bulatlat.com that the international people�s tribunal will be composed of a multi-disciplinary group of judges and jury with the IAPL lawyers acting as prosecutors. He also said that the international peoples� tribunal was formed in response to �the inadequacies and inutility of other international legal forums.�

No venue has been decided for the holding of the tribunal, Olalia said however.

Belgian suit

The IAPL suit will be the second to be filed in connection with the war on Iraq. Last year, a group of Belgian doctors charged the U.S. commander of the coalition forces in Iraq with war crimes before a Brussels court.

In its indictment emailed to Bulatlat.com, the IAPL accused the governments of the United States, Great Britain and their heads of state with having committed crimes against humanity, genocide, war crimes, aggression, violation of international humanitarian law and the crime of undermining peace and of having acted against national and international law as a result of their embargo, aggression and occupation waged against Iraq and its people.

Olalia, however, clarified that the indictment, which was presented to the AIPL congress in Istandul, is expected to be finalized before the groups� next meeting this year. He also said that the group will push through with its plan to file a case against Bush regardless of the results of the U.S. elections in November this year.

In particular, the IAPL�s indictment charges the prospective respondents with violating: the United Nations Charter, the Resolutions of the UN General Assembly and Security Council, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the 1907 The Hague Convention, the 1949 Geneva Conventions and its supplemental protocols, the Treaty against Genocide, the UN Environmental Convention, the Paris Convention on the Safeguarding of the Cultural and Natural Heritage of the World and the 1998 Rome Treaty establishing the International Criminal Court (in the case of Great Britain).

Specific crimes

Specific violations cited by the AIPL included:

Undermining the UN and preventing it from carrying through its professed role of establishing and maintaining peace in the world;

Imposing a food and medicine embargo on the Iraqi people, affecting especially children, elderly, sick and women and causing the death and suffering of hundreds of thousands of civilians;

Concentrating its military forces in the countries and seas around Iraq, threatening Iraq and world peace by declaring openly that this was preparation for war and carrying through its threat;

Taking control of Iraq�s oil wealth, redrawing the borders of the countries of this region and hiding the real reason for this war from its own people and the world secure the borders of Israel, which is the only country in that region to have nuclear weapons;

Making false statements and deceiving its own citizens and the other nations of the world with the aim of spreading fear and hatred and thus neutralizing opposition to its own policies of aggression and occupation;

Ignoring the will and liberty of the Iraqi people by appointing a governing council and using this council as a means to impose its own decisions from the top after having overturned by military means the Iraqi government, attempting to destroy the historical values and cultures and the liberty and freedom to govern their own faith of the Iraqi people;

Bringing about the death of thousands of innocent civilians, making millions of them homeless and refugees in their own countries;

Creating wide-ranging and long-term environmental damage with its bombing and missile attacks towards Iraq. Even the excessive number of military flights has created air pollution over the usual amount. The thousands of tons of explosive materials have polluted the air with dangerous chemicals and the explosions have created clouds of dust and fires which lasted for days;

Destroying basic foodstuffs essential for the people of Iraq. Carrying through missile attacks that systematically destroyed fundamental manufacturing, stocking, distribution, health and irrigation facilities related to the provision of food, water, electricity, medicines and health services to the people of Iraq;

Destroying or seriously damaging the buildings of the economic, social, cultural, health provision, diplomatic and religious institutions of Iraq. Organizing destructive and harmful attacks with the aim of destroying the economic and social structure of Iraq;

Looting and permitting the looting of the museums, libraries and ancient artifacts in Baghdad and Basra;

Using banned weapons analogous to weapons of mass destruction that cause mass killings. Threatening with aggression, imposing economic pressure and sanctions and offering bribes, with the aim of gaining individual and governmental level support to its policies of aggression and occupation;
Arresting, kidnapping, murdering people in extra-judicial ways and subjecting them to physical and moral torture;

Preventing people that have been detained from sleeping, obliging them to stay in painful positions, keeping them for a long time with their heads covered, firing on detainees, damaging or confiscating objects found in houses during searches, keeping people in prisons under unacceptable conditions or in excessively hot tents, keeping them in camps without water and sanitary facilities;

Initiating bidding processes regarding the oil wealth of Iraq and taking other decisions about this, even though it has no right or authority;

Refusing to ratify the Rome Statute creating the International Criminal Court based in The Hague with the aim of escaping prosecution for the crimes its military troops and civilian authorities committed and are going to commit, including crimes against humanity, the crime of genocide, war crimes;

Using international media under its control to depict the Iraqi people as a primitive society requiring modernization and made up of potential terror supporters and murderers, with the aim of gaining support for its aggression. Bulatlat.com

On the Streets of Iraq: A Review of Musikang Bayan’s Songs for Peace

admin — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

by Dennis Espada
Bulatlat.com

Music is incomparable as a medium for chronicling history. In every piece of uniquely-assembled notes and lyrics, a composer can accurately depict the nature of both war and peace. This is what the alternative cultural group Musikang Bayan (People�s Music) has done in its new album called Songs for Peace.

As can be surmised, modern-day music has evolved from dealing with the unrequited love as theme, to giving a deeper insight about social realities and contradictions that insistently demand actions. Much of this musical evolution should be credited to a number of protest musicians of the 1960s and 1970s.

Songs for Peace, the latest album by Musikang Bayan, is more than just a plaintive cry or an invocation to �imagine� a peaceful world to live in. Its album cover says the opus is meant �to protest in strong terms imperialist wars of aggression of any kind anywhere in the world.�

Recorded live and released in mid-2003, this album carries politically-sharp and refreshing sounds, a stark contrast to some commercial artists and gospel musicians that war-mongers like the Macapagal-Arroyo regime use to downplay the raging anti-war protest movement. However, the simplicity of acoustic instrumentation that dominated its previous albums namely Rosas ng Digma and Anak ng Bayan are still present, with the lyrics as straightforward as ever.

The fab four composed of Levy Abad Jr., Empiel Palma, Danny Fabella and Jess Bartolome�all singers, songwriters and guitarists�vow to make their musical talents serve the people, despite meagre resources common to most alternative artists.

In three weeks that started a year ago, the United States invaded the oil-rich country Iraq under the pretext of waging a �war on terror� amidst worldwide mass resistance. It has deployed 250,000 American and British troops launched 12,000 air missions that fired, among others, 725 Tomahawk cruise missiles, 50 cluster bombs and released 12,000 �precision-guided missiles,� killing thousands of Iraqi people, with hundred thousands more dying from hunger and diseases.

The first song in the album�Over the Streets of Iraq�is a tearful tune that mourns the horrors of an unjust war. It begins with a loud siren; a warning signal for the Iraqi people to rush to safety as the countdown to the deadly air strike of the U.S.-led Coalition Forces began.

The chorus goes:

�Our lives are not your toy/The world is not yours to own/The arrogance you�ve shown/An act we�ll not condone/Under the cloak of peace/You surfaced like a beast/Over the streets of Iraq.�

Stop your stupid war, says Not in Our Name, an anthem apparently inspired by the American people�s famous battlecry opposing the U.S.� invasion of Iraq:

�The days and nights are burning hell/An endless flow of blood and tears/But all the fears that rule the land/Will be a force to crush you down/As we shout it again and again:/Not in our name will you make another war.�

Light a Candle is a tribute song in commemoration of all the martyrs whose ultimate sacrifice is not only a �worthy gift to remember� but also a piercing reminder to everyone that �the struggle for peace must be won.� This brings to memory human rights advocate Eden Marcellana and peasant leader Eddie Gumanoy, who were brutally slain last year allegedly by the military�s roving �death squad� and to whom this album was dedicated.

Oh God! narrates the agony of a young girl asking God to stop the war: �This war she learned from her father/Is a war between greed and righteousness/Would it help if you keep on asking the question/Oh God! When would this war come to an end?� Not satisfied with the father�s explanation, she later discovers the voraciousness of the U.S. military-industrial complex as the root of the perennial conflict.

Irony of terrorism

The irony of the U.S.� terrorist labeling of legitimate dissenters is depicted in the song You�re A Terrorist, while the ballad The Peace We Want exhibits the vision of women and children for a peaceful world. The melancholic, blues-like Don�t Talk About Freedom expresses lament on the countless atrocities and oppression that U.S. imperialism has committed against different nations and races, while the agitating Warmonger castigates and calls on the U.S. to disarm, asserting that the weapons of mass destruction is in �its bloody hands� and not anywhere within Iraq.

Union of the Weak likens U.S. monopoly-capitalism to an evil monster whose reign of terror and fascism, in the end, will soon be crushed by a broad united front of all the people in the world. With a congruous fusion of a solo acoustic guitar and a congo, a part of this apocalyptic song goes:

�But undaunting spirit never sleeps/The fight for redemption never ceases/The empire will crumble, all our wars will be won/The union of the weak will defeat the strong.�

Meanwhile, To A Poet is a guitar-accompanied poetry rendition asking contemporary poets not to offer the audience with candied rhymes that �sweetly poison the consciousness while the wounds of the masses are festering.� It is a resolute plea to all writers to open their hearts and minds on the plight of the exploited classes.

This cut sounds like �Kung Ang Tula Ay Isa Lamang� (If There is Only One Poem), a poem by protest musican Jess Santiago. By comparing the pen to a blazing torch, it reveals a philosophy that a writer�s potency is measured by his/her revolutionary fervor.

Listen to Musikang Bayan�s Songs for Peace by heart and you will surely be surprised at how it makes more sense than the usual love songs that have pierced our ears for a long time. Bulatlat.com

Sa Pagbagsak ng Pro-US na si Aznar, Pagkatalo ni Arroyo, Inaasahan –Gabriela

admin — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

“Nagsisimula nang magbayad ang mga tuta ng Estados Unidos.”

Ito ang obserbasyon ni GABRIELA Womens Partylist President at 1st Nominee na si Liza Largoza Maza, kasabay ng pagpapahayag nito na sa kabila ng mga nilulutong sarbey ay tiyak na rin ang pagkatalo ni Gng. Arroyo sa darating na halalan sa Mayo.

Ayon pa kay Maza, matagal nang tinutulan ng mamamayan ang pagsalakay ng US sa Iraq. Tulad ng naging pagbagsak ni Aznar sa Spain, ang pagiging sagad-sagaring maka-US ni Arroyo ang siya ring magpapabagsak sa kanya sa halalan.

Sa unang taong anibersaryo ng panggegyera ng US at ng mga alyado nitong mga bansa sa Iraq, muling kinondena ng GABRIELA Womens Partylist ang patuloy na ginagawang illegal na pag-okupa ng US sa Iraq, at ang tumitinding karahasang nangyayari dito.

Ang patuloy na pananatili ng US sa Iraq ay nangangahulugan ng patuloy na pinsala at karahasan sa maraming kababaihan at mga bata sa Iraq. Habang nagpapatuloy ang mga pambobomba at atakeng gerilya na tugon ng mamamayang Iraqi sa pagsalakay ng US, patuloy na mahihirapang bumalik sa normal at nakasanayan nilang pamumuhay ang mga mamamayang Iraqi, lalo na ang mga bata at kababaihan, ani Maza.

Binatikos rin ng grupo ang patuloy na pagsuporta ng gobyernong Arroyo sa kampanyang war on terrorng US. Ang pagiging pro-US at pro-war ng gobyernong Arroyo ay nagpapatunay lamang sa pagiging anti-kababaihan nito.

Ayon pa kay Maza, Pilit ng kinakaladkad ni Gng. Arroyo ang Pilipinas sa gyera ng US. Sa patuloy na ipinapakitang suporta ng kanyang pamahalaan sa US ay higit tayong nagiging bulnerable sa mga atake buhat sa mga kaaway ng US.

Idinagdag pa ni Maza na Ang lokal na bersyon ng kanyang kampanya laban sa terorismo ay nagdulot ng matinding militarisasyon lalo na sa Mindanao na pumapaslang sa marami nating mga kababayan, at pumipinsala lalo na ng mga kababaihan at mga bata gayundin ang pagkasira ng kanilang kabuhayan.

Lumahok sa isang multi-sektoral na kilos protesta noong Sabado ang GABRIELA Womens Partylist bilang paggunita sa unang taon ng pagsalakay ng US sa Iraq.