Author
TANGGULAN: Portraits of Filipino Environmental Defenders
As the world celebrates the 51st Earth Day, Center for Environmental Concerns – Philippines, Kalikasan People’s Network for the Environment, 350 Pilipinas, Sama-samang Artista para sa Kilusang Agraryo, Council for People’s Development and Governance, and Youth Advocates for Climate Action Philippines presents TANGGULAN: Portraits of Filipino Environmental Defenders.
This coffee table book offers different stories of environmental rights defenders across the Philippines ranging from community health volunteers, conservationist groups, indigenous peoples, to fisherfolk communities and others.
The book is divided into 4 sections namely 1) Tanod Gubat, which covers the stories of different environmental defenders and organizations who protect our forests; 2) Tanod Lupa, which covers the plight of land rights defenders against destructive “development” projects; 3) Bantay Dagat, which covers the stories of faces and groups who protect and conserve marine biodiversity; and 4) Manghahabi, which highlights the importance of grassroots community development workers.
Environmental defenders and development workers protect the world and the people hand in hand. Their role, aside from the promotion of sustainable use of limited resources and its preservation, is also to uphold the rights of the people and the land, including its sovereignty.
This project is made possible through the assistance of the Swedish International Cooperation Agency (SIDA) through the CSO Partnerships for Development Effectiveness, and the Shared Resources, Joint Solutions Partnership.
Download Tanggulan HERE
Iloilo Legislatures Slam Attacks Against Law Practitioners
Iloilo City – Iloilo Province and Iloilo City legislatures slam the continuing attacks against lawyers, judges, and other law practitioners during their respective regular sessions held last March 09, 2021.
Both the city and provincial legislatures expressed their strong condemnation on the acts of violence committed against legal practitioners. To the Iloilo Provincial Board, the attack against NUPL’s Atty. Angelo Karlo “AK” Guillen “sends an alarming message and shows an increasing cases of violence against law practitioners and manifests a culture of impunity.” The board also added that such “violence against law practitioners does not only endanger the lives of individual law practitioners but also sends a chilling message to deter and silence those who are working to pursue legitimate causes.”
Moreover, Iloilo City council said that cases of violence against lawyers, judges, and other officers of the Court are still prevailing in Iloilo City and in Western Visayas for the past three years despite provisions in the Constitution as to their protection. The council added that the attack against Atty. Guillen “does not and should not have a place in the City of Iloilo.”
The city council also urged the law enforcement authorities to “thoroughly investigate” the incident involving Atty. Guillen, pursue the perpetrators, and solve the case. Furthermore, the council calls for the creation of measures and programs for the protection of lawyers, judges, and officers of the Court./PT
FILIPINO PROGRESSIVES IN FRANCE, FORBIDDEN TO SEND A LETTER TO THE EMBASSY
Yesterday, March 09, 2021, Dhaizie Joie Bongay, coordinator of the Nagkakaisang Pilipino sa Pransya (NPSP), a non-profit and progressive organization of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs), and other Filipino nationals based in Paris, submitted a letter of appeal to Philippine Embassy in Paris, France Ambassador Ma. Teresa P. Lazaro. However, Bongay was forbidden to enter the embassy.
In their letter, NPSP appealed to the said embassy to stand with them and “denounce the terroristic programs of Duterte’s regime” following the Bloody Sunday massacre and mass arrest of activists in Southern Tagalog under the Synchronized Enhanced Management of Police Operations last March 07, 2021.
The group said that similar operations were also done during the Tumandok massacre in Panay and the massacre of peasant and social activists in Negros island. Moreover, the group also pointed out that the killing witnesses just like what happened to a Tumandok Barangay Captain Julie Catamin, and attempts in the lives of the lawyers just like what happened to Tumandok case lawyer, Atty. Angelo Karlo Guillen, have become the norm.
NPSP said that such “massive attack on human rights may spread panic on the part of the uncontrived citizen.” Moreover, the group believes that such norm and attacks are “criminal and grossly unacceptable in [the] international parlance.”/PT
General Luna Street
By ALEXANDER SANGUINIS
A blue and yellow screwdriver was still embedded in the left temple of human rights lawyer Angelo Karlo“AK” Guillen when paramedics took him to a hospital in Iloilo City…Guillen’s colleagues and the human rights community believe the assailants had intended to kill the 33-year-old lawyer who has been red-tagged and represents 16 members of the indigenous Tumandok who were arrested in Capiz and Iloilo Provinces on December 30, 2020 for alleged possession of firearms and explosives and for alleged links to communist rebels.
– Nestor Burgos Jr. “Lawyer for red-tagged tribal folk stabbed; laptop documents taken” INQUIRER.NET
1.
Death shaped the tip
of a screwdriver plunged deep—
wielded as a knife
straight into the left temple,
the head’s frontier, skull bone’s
skin ripped open
in the middle of the night’s
deepening daze. A city’s peace
once more cracked, broken
by a heinous deed
against a barrister of a people’s
rights. Nothing to explain
this scheme than the desire
to kill the targeted brain.
How will this be judged
and remedied
when the Law
cannot protect itself
from blatant lawlessness?
Where does this lead us
when the lawful
is unsanctified, debased?
Bleeding, his blood—
dark liquid crawling
on asphalt and cement,
almost a fatality.
The Law—
stabbed
and gravely wounded, near-
death
in General Luna Street.
2.
Bloodied hole
in the left temple,
a stab wound.
Never a Divine
Will—God
was not even there
when it happened.
Never sanctioned
by Heaven –
you must
remember
that primeval couple
forced to flee
the Garden
ages ago
with their shame
newly discovered
and intact.
The screwdriver
in lieu of the shining,
sharpest blade—
a kitchen knife,
dagger or balisong.
The screwdriver
like those spectacles
used by a former bodyguard
of Michael Corleone
to puncture
an enemy’s neck.
The screwdriver
like those spectacles
is never made
for killing.
The mind can be
criminal. The hands
murderous.
And something
close to murder
is still murderous.
Shamelessly murderous.
Alexander Sanguinis is a pseudonym of the long published poet who is from the Hiligaynon-speaking Region (VI). The poet is an established writer in both languages of the Region and English. With anonymity, readers are enjoined to focus on the pieces rather than on externalities of the texts.
Tokhang: An Improvised Villanelle
By ALEXANDER SANGUINIS
…Three years since President Duterte launched the Philippine War on Drugs, much has been written regarding the degree of violence deployed by State and quasi-state mechanisms to rid the Philippines of an alleged 3.7 million drug users. Approximately 29, 000 deaths attributable to this policy have been recorded as of July 2019…Human Rights Watch (2017) has condemned the punitive treatment of suspected drug users and dealers. The concentration of victims in urban poor communities has led international and local groups …to report that the war on drugs is a war on the poor…
—Pangilinan, MKA et al. 2021. Examining the Effects of Drug-Related Killings in Philippine Conditional Cash Transfer Beneficiaries in Metro Manila 2016-2017. Journal of Illicit Economies and Development 2(2) p. 111 DOI: https://doi.org./10.31389/jied.50
When your voice no longer bears the weight
of what you must say, then language must have gone away,
or forcibly buried underground,
silenced the fascist way.
The eyes deliberately turned towards
a vision blinded by a full unquestioning
acquiescence and the tortured mind seeks
a possible means of utterance, escape,
or even a redress of grievance.
When your voice no longer bears the weight
of what you must say, then language must have gone away,
or forcibly buried underground,
silenced the fascist way.
For whatever you have to say
must be said without ever prodding
the rush of army boots, the camouflage
green uniforms, unwanted police warrants
foregrounded on stereotypes and sheer suspicion.
When your voice no longer bears the weight
of what you must say, then language must have gone away,
or forcibly buried underground,
silenced the fascist way.
Each home, every household—those hastily built makeshift shelters,
tenements right smack in the urban jungle, shacks lining the railroad tracks,
river banks of trash, or beneath bridges, or huts standing wobbly
on bamboo poles in coastal margins unguarded from storm floods,
vulnerable to the surge of the open sea.
When your voice no longer bears the weight
of what you must say, then language must have gone away,
or forcibly buried underground,
silenced the fascist way.
Those parts of the metropolis prone
to the vagaries of the tidal weather where the mid-morning
sun is hotter than the warm suburban midday
or the night darker, more ominous than the lighted
parks, avenues and boulevards at evening time.
When your voice no longer bears the weight
of what you must say, then language must have gone away,
or forcibly buried underground,
silenced the fascist way.
They had become battlegrounds, shacks riddled with bullets,
a shooting spree, blood at the tip of the rifle or gun, “..nanlaban kasi…”
they fought back.. we had no choice but to shoot—everyone
had been singled out: parent, sibling, teenager or child,
a pusher, user, dealer, an addict.
Their voices no longer bear the weight
of what they must say, their language gone away,
or forcibly buried underground,
silenced the fascist way.
The fascist way.
The fascist way.
Alexander Sanguinis is a pseudonym of the long published poet who is from the Hiligaynon-speaking Region (VI). The poet is an established writer in both languages of the Region and English. With anonymity, readers are enjoined to focus on the pieces rather than on externalities of the texts.
Cordillera ‘Tokhang’ Resolution Puts Journalists in Grave Danger
Altermidya* Network condemns the Cordillera Regional Law Enforcement Coordinating Committee (RLECC) for passing a resolution recommending a “Tokhang-style” tactic against individuals, including journalists, who are known Left-leaning personalities.
This development coincides with the ongoing international probe on the deaths linked to the administration’s drug war, with Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra admitting in a report to the United Nations Human Rights Council that “the law enforcement agents failed to follow standard protocols” in many drug war operations.
And now, the Cordillera RLECC resolution: a dangerous document that explicitly names the media as possible targets in the conduct of Tokhang.
The resolution comes amid non-stop attacks against alternative media practitioners in the Cordillera. In fact, our colleagues in community news outfit Northern Dispatch (NorDis) are facing all forms of attacks and persecution: from red-tagging and filing of cyber libel charges to attempted murder.
In 2019, Brandon Lee, a Nordis correspondent and environmentalist, was shot by unidentified gunmen in front of his home in Lagawe, Ifugao. He was seriously wounded and is continuing to recover.
In 2020, a series of complex, overlapping legal maneuvers have also been conducted against Nordis staff. A cyberlibel charge was filed against Nordis editor-in-chief Kimberlie Quitasol mere days after two courts have already dismissed libel charges filed by the same complainant, Cordillera Police Regional Director Brigadier General R’Win Pagkalinawan.
The same tactic was also employed against another Nordis journalist, Khim Abalos. The subject of the cases involves stories critical of Pagkalinawan, which were published in April 2020.
In June 2020, the La Trinidad Police Station openly red-tagged Abalos as a recruiter of the New People’s Army. Several reports of flyers red-tagging Nordis reporters have also been recorded in several instances. And as far back as 2017, Sherwin de Vera, Nordis managing editor, was also charged with rebellion, a case that was junked in October 2020 for lack of evidence.
Another colleague, Paola Espiritu, our Ilocos correspondent for Nordis, has been linked with the communists and maligned by the military since 2018. Last year, the 81st Infantry Battalion, on three different occasions, accused Paola of being an NPA member. The relentless harassment against her has taken a toll on her emotional state, and according to our Nordis colleagues, she now has to seek refuge.
We have been denouncing these incidents as attacks meant to silence the grassroots, pro-people reporting upheld by Nordis, whose stories shed light on issues that affect the communities of peasants and indigenous people in Cordillera. With the Cordillera RLECC resolution, the situation is expected to get worse, and may even expand to other practicing journalists in the region – at the expense of our freedom of expression and right to information.
Just as we fear for the lives of our colleagues in Cordillera, we also surmise that the Cordillera RLECC is a test case that government officials will use for future plans of employing Tokhang tactics to stifle dissent in other parts of the country.
We call on the national government, as well as concerned agencies to immediately stop the enforcement of the said resolution. This resolution will surely be used in tandem with the Anti-Terrorism Law and would usher in more attacks, if both were not stopped. We call on our fellow journalists, human rights advocates, and the Filipino public to denounce the Cordillera RLECC resolution. We need to jointly, resolutely fight this new attack against our fundamental freedoms.
*AlterMidya – People’s Alternative Media Network is a national network of over thirty independent media outfits in the Philippines. Formed in 2014, AlterMidya seeks to promote journalism for the people.
WESTERN VISAYAS BISHOPS CONDEMN TUMANDOK 9 MASSACRE
ILOILO CITY – Eight (8) bishops across Western Visayas, in their pastoral letter signed 15th January 2021, expressed their strongest condemnation to the massacre of nine (9) Tumandok leaders and the illegal arrest of 16 others during the joint operation of the AFP and PNP last December 30, 2020.
“WE CONDEMN in the strongest possible term, all the KILLINGS and especially, the KILLINGS of our BROTHERS– the TUMANDOKS,” said bishops.
The bishops also empathized with the Tumandoks especially to the family of the Tumandok 9. They demanded for a thorough investigation of the incident by an independent body; for the government, the church, and the business community to “listen to the legitimate cries of the Tumandoks against the construction of the Jalaur Mega Dam;” to stop the militarization of IP communities; for the state forces to follow the ethical standard in their operations; and for the police officers to use body cameras in all its operations to prevent false accusations, and to protect the civilians from the use of violence or abuse of power.
“We also encourage the ILONGGO community to reach out in compassion to our bereaved and displaced TUMANDOK brothers and sisters,” the bishops said.
The bishops ended, “let us all together contribute whatever we can do to: STOP THE KILLINGS; RESPECT THE RIGHTS OF PEOPLE TO LIVE IN PEACE; and STOP THE MILITARIZATION OF THE IP COMMUNITIES!”
Read the Pastoral Letter of Western Visayas Bishops on the Tumandok Killings HERE
PANAMBI SANG TUMANDOK
PANAMBI SANG TUMANDOK
“Tumandok kami, pangayaw lang kamo. Tanum kawayan sa inyo pagalubngan!”
Ang maaslog nga tubig suba sang Pan-ay mapula pa sa nagadabdab nga langit bag-o mag abot ang kasisidmon
Naga pamangpang sa kataas, makusog ang buslug sa kaakig. Singgit sining suba Pan-ay —
“Gin-usik nga dugo sa duta dapat uli-an!”
Ang dungganon nga tubig suba sang Jalaur indi na matinung. Kinagubot ang bation nga kutib-kutib padalhay sa hukmungan sang kaaway
Naga lubid hugot mag-ibwal nga lulon-baha sa kalalawran. Singgit sining suba Jalaur —
“Gin-utang nga kabuhi sa bukid dapat baydan!”
Itimalos ang mga inosenteng nga pinamatay sang pasista nga estado!
Sa maabot bag-ong Sugidanon matagsing nga hinambiton ang ila mga ngalan.
Sa masunod nga maragtas isaysay ang ila maayong binuhatan
Kay marumpag na ang kampo sang mga kaaway
Bangon, itimalos ang mga inanak mong hugot nag palangga sa imo —
Kaupod ninyo kami sa kaabtik nga magbangon padulhog sa patag sukbit ang mga hinganiban:
ang walay tupong nga paghigugma sa dutang binun-agan!
— ni Tomas Talledo ¦ 30 Disyembre 2020
