PLEASE REPOST: LFS calls for the immediate release of 3 UP students illegally arrested in Cebu

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

AUGUST 29, 2011

 

LFS calls for the immediate release of 3 UP students illegally arrested in Cebu

 

Reference:

Jed Bautista, 09329138187

 

 

The League of Filipino Students calls for the immediate release of 3 University of the Philippines Cebu students who were illegally arrested and are currently detained in Philippine National Police Precincts in Toledo City and Pinamongajan.

 

Melanie Montano, a member of the League of Filipino Students UP Cebu chapter; Remy Jade Manzon, a member of KARATULA UP Cebu chapter, and Januelle Rontos of the Nagkakaisang Kusog ng mga Estudyante, a political party in UP Cebu were arrested while elements of the Philippine National Police violently dispersed a protest camp of peasants in Sitio Camarin, Brgy Bonbon, Aloguinsan, Cebu. The students were there for an immersion program, joining the campaign against land grabbing allegedly led by the powerful corporate family of the Aboitizes, to convert the 168 HA of land into a shipyard and a special economic zone.

 

At around 5:30 in the morning, a 300-strong group of PNP units and SWAT elements coming from 5 municipalities in the area, including Aloguinsan, roused the sleeping camp saying they have an order to arrest everyone who was staying at the camp. By 10 am, the 3 students, with peasants and youth, were arrested and brought to the custody of Toleda City Jail and Pinamongajan Municipal precinct.

 

The League of Filipino Students is fuming over this recent blatant violation of the people’s human right, another manifestation of whose interest the government is serving. The peasants of Sitio Camarin have all the right to defend their land, more so continue to till it, but elements of the government’s defense, the Philippine National Police became the principal ushers of the ruling few in stepping on the right of the peasants to the land and their right to peaceably assemble for redress of grievances.

 

This incident soundly fit the framework of the Aquino regime, putting first the few’s interest for more profit, in this case the filthy rich Aboitizes, over the land and lives of the 200 families whose ancestors have tilled the land.

 

All over the country, hundreds of thousands of peasant families experience the same fate, to be betrayed by their own government in pursuit of greater profit for the ruling elite and foreign corporations. This mirrors Aquino’s skewed agrarian reform policy or the CARPER.

 

While the Aquino government and its whole machinery continue to use force and the people’s money to quash the rights and interests of the people, thousands upon thousands of youth and students will continue to join the peasant’s fight for genuine land reform and the people’s fight for a government that will truly serve its interests.

 

IMMEDIATELY RELEASE MELANIE MONTANIO, REMY JADE MANZON, JANUELLE RONTOS!

 

GENUINE LAND REFORM, NOW!

 

FIGHT THE FASCIST AND ANTI-PEOPLE AQUINO REGIME AND ITS COHORTS!###

Another Summer, Another Exposure Trip!

Ever since LFS-SFSU has existed, one of our main goals has been to not only talk about and study the movement in the Philippines, but to experience it for ourselves. As a chapter of LFS in the Philippines and a member organization of BAYAN-USA, we have a direct link to our kasamas in our homeland. With that link, comes the opportunity to visit, study, and integrate with the various mass organizations in the Philippines fighting for National Democracy.

Each summer we plan “Baliksambayanan”, our annual exposure trip to the Philippines. The number of exposurists can vary year-to-year. Sometimes we have over 10, others times there are less than 5. Also, you don’t have to be Filipino to attend the exposure trip. We welcome anyone who wants to learn about our movement and how our kasamas organize in the Philippines. However, there is a process. We always say: “The exposure trip begins as soon as you commit yourself to the trip.” That means much preparation months before you leave.

This year, we are proud to have sponsored Jack Stephens, LFS member and former Educational Development Officer (2007-2008). Though he is our lone exposurist this year, we are very excited for him and know that he will receive the same rich and life-changing experience others have had before him. Though Jack is not Filipino, he has done much work for LFS throughout his years as a member and an officer. It’s all about international solidarity yall!

Jack will be in the Philippines for 3 weeks, integrating with various sectors of society such as the workers through Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU) and peasants through Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP). Jack will be writing about his experiences in the Philippines through his blog, The Mustard Seed. Check it out! Especially if you’re interested in participating in Baliksambayanan one day, or with any of our other BAYAN-USA organizations or with other programs that connect you back home, such as the Philippine Studies Program. He’s already put up a couple entries up.

We look forward to the stories and lessons learned. Good luck Jack! See you in 3 weeks!

Philippines: Revolutionary Option

Story Location: http://www.bworldonline.com/BW062609/content.php?id=143

Philippines: Revolutionary option

“Whether one sympathizes with it or not, the fact is that this revolutionary movement is present and exerts significant political influence. It continues to challenge the ruling system and regime in power at every turn and raises the possibility of overturning the crisis-ridden system one day and introducing a radically different alternative…”

June 26, 2009 | MANILA, PHILIPPINES
BusinessWorld Online – Quezon City,Philippines

By Carol Pagaduan-Araullo

AFP Chief Gen. Victor Ibrado recently admitted that the military is having difficulty meeting the deadline imposed by de facto Commander-in-chief Gloria Arroyo three years ago, to end the decades-old communist insurgency in 2010. (Philippine Star, June 22, 2009). This was after he and his predecessors had repeatedly boasted that the military was on track in achieving the defeat of the New People’s Army (NPA).

The lame excuse is that the armed guerrillas “are just crisscrossing borders and transferring to another guerrilla front” even when the AFP had already allegedly “dismantled” the political and military infrastructure of numerous rebel fronts.

One need not be an expert on military strategy and tactics to know that guerrillas by nature employ flexibility and shifting tactics. This is a guerrilla movement’s way of dealing with the overwhelming superiority, in terms of numbers and weapons, of the state’s armed forces. Instead, it uses the favorable physical and social terrain in the countryside — i.e., the rugged mountains and remaining forested areas as well as the support of the rural populace — to conduct its revolutionary warfare.

Time and again ruling regimes announce the impending demise of armed revolutionary movements in much the same vein and for the same reasons that they belittle the democratic protest movement. The aim is to conjure strength and stability, to foist the illusion of popular acceptance if not support, because government is supposedly undertaking reforms that address the causes of armed conflict and mass protest actions.

Deceptive propaganda works up to a certain point, given government resources and numerous levers to manipulate, if not control, the mass media. But reality always catches up and the truth becomes so glaring that the regime’s minions are compelled to eat their words and offer the lamest of excuses or persist in the most egregious of lies.

The Philippines’ Disappearing Dissidents

Something I’ve leared in journalism class: One important aspect of news is that it’s new.

This article is almost a year old, but unfortunately its still news. The government’s war on legal activists is alive and well. Let’s use this as a reminder of why it’s important for us, U.S. citizens and residents, to continue to speak out against these atrocities. Jonas Burgos is still missing. Many more activists are still missing and are being killed as we speak. Do we really want our tax dollars supporting a government that can’t protect its own citizens? And, even worst, perpatrating these violent crimes on its own people?

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1813070,00.html

By Peter Ritter/Manila Monday, Jun. 09, 2008

On April 28, 2007, Jonas Burgos, a 37-year-old Philippine political activist, was eating lunch in Ever Gotesco shopping mall in Manila. At around 1:20 p.m., a group of four men approached his table. They spoke quietly to Burgos for about 20 minutes. Then the men began pushing him toward the mall’s exit. “I’m just an activist,” a waitress heard Burgos shout. A mall security guard approached the group. As the guard would later testify, the men warned him that they were police officers. They hustled Burgos outside and into a maroon Toyota. As the car vanished into traffic, the guard wrote down the license plate.

Burgos’ family began to worry immediately when he didn’t show up for a family event that evening. His mother, Edita, tried dialing his mobile phone, but when he answered, he seemed groggy, as though he’d been drugged. When she called again later, his phone had been turned off. Two days later, Edita Burgos called a hasty press conference to ask for help finding her son. Tips began to trickle in. One tipster, who claimed to be a former army intelligence officer, said that Jonas Burgos had been snatched by the Philippine military. “I had no sleep,” Edita Burgos recalls. “I was imagining all sorts of horrors.”

On Tax Day: Cancel the $400 Million Payment of U.S. Tax Dollars for Human Rights Violations

**Please forward widely**

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

April 15, 2009

Reference: Rhonda Ramiro, Secretary General, secgen@bayanusa.org

On Tax Day: Cancel the $400 Million Payment of U.S. Tax Dollars for Human Rights Violations

Filipino Alliance in the U.S. Calls for End to Costly Balikatan War Exercises in the Philippines

Today, 138 million people in the U.S. will file their income taxes and pay a third or more of their income to the U.S. government. Today, 8,000 miles away in the Philippines, the U.S. will launch military exercises and begin its spending spree of $400 million taxpayer dollars over the next 10 years to pay for military war games, training, and materiel that fuel violence, rape, killings, abductions, and other human rights violations against innocent civilians.

BAYAN-USA condemns the continuation of the joint military exercises between Philippine and U.S. troops in the Bicol region of the Philippines, which begins today and runs through April 28. The resumption of the so-called Balikatan (Shoulder-to-Shoulder) exercises clearly indicates that President Barack Obama has not fundamentally revised the foreign policy of his predecessor. The Balikatan exercises show that the U.S. continues to use its military power to enhance its geopolitical interests in the world, at the cost of innocent lives in countries like the Philippines and hundreds of millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars that are desperately needed for education, health care, affordable housing, and other domestic services.

STRENGTH IN UNITY CONTINGENT: This Sat. 21 10:30 in SF

PLEASE FORWARD FAR AND WIDE

Join the International League of People’s Struggle (ILPS)

as we march alongside thousands at the 6th annual protest against the war on Iraq

STRENGTH IN UNITY CONTINGENT
  

at the Anti-War March

Saturday, March 21, 2009

10:30 AM:  Gather in the park at Washington and Drumm Streets on the Embacadero

11 AM:  Program with music and speakers

11:30 AM: Join main demonstration at Justin Herman Plaza

12 noon:  March to Civic Center

March with us to demand an end to unjust U.S. war, occupation and intervention everywhere

and for social and economic justice here at home

Sponsored by the ILPS Bay Area Grassroots Organizing Committee | Participating organizations (partial list):

Active Leadership to Advance the Youth (ALAY)  |  Arab Resource and Organizing Center | AYPAL-API Youth Promoting Advocacy and Leadership |  AnakBayan East Bay |  babae SF  | BAYAN USA | Collision Course Video | Malcolm X Grassroots Movement

For More Information, Contact: ilpsbayareagrassroots@gmail.com

Ka Mabait

Ka Mabait went on Exposure Trip with the League of Filipino Students – San Francisco State University during 2005 visiting various sectors of the Philippines organized by BAYAN and LFS.  Ka Mabait is currently working with Bayan-USA.

His dedication to the National Democratic Struggle is one example that many students can follow.  The below writing is a reflection of his growth during his first time to the Philippines. 

I’m Home?  

June 28th 2005

I already begin to the feel the heat the moment I exit the plane. Princess makes a comment about the humidity which sounds somewhere between a lament and a sigh of relief.  After dealing with all of the usual logistics of travel… currency exchange, customs, who’s riding where, etc. We leave Aquino Int’l Airport in a jeepney w/ members of Rachel’s family.

Immediately after the jeepney exits the loading area of the airport two youth jump onto the back of the vehicle. They stare 
blankly with a glazed over look in their eyes. Their eyes pass over each one of us indescriminantly. That look… the end result of frustration… hopelessness. They are babbling… pleading in Tagalog. We all shake our heads and offer apologies.

we have nothing for you.

I can feel that they know we’re lying to them.

We’re balikbayan… we have plently of money