Alston’s New Report Gives Fil-Ams Justification to Ramp Up Pressure on Philippine Government

For Immediate Release

May 8, 2009

Reference: Katrina Abarcar, Katarungan: Center for Peace, Justice, and Human Rights in the Philippines katarungan@comcast.net

Professor Philip Alston

Justice for Rebelyn Pitao!

Alston’s Upcoming Report Gives Filipino-American Human Rights Advocates Justification to Ramp Up Pressure on Philippine Government

Washington, DC – Recent news that Philip Alston, UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Executions, believes the Philippine Government has failed to institute the substantive reforms he recommended to address extrajudicial killings and other human rights abuses in the country is the evidence that US Congress needs to strengthen the past conditions it placed military aid to the Philippines.

According to Katrina Abarcar, Coordinator of Katarungan: Center for Peace, Justice, and Human Rights in the Philippines. “In fact, we have basis to demand all US military aid and training to the Philippines be cut until the widespread problems extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, illegal arrests and politically motivated prosecutions of activists is indisputably solved.”

REMOVE SISON FROM TERRORIST LIST! RESUME GRP-NDFP PEACE TALKS NOW!

News Release
April 14, 2009

Reference: Peter Arvin Jabido, NY Committee for Human Rights in the Philippines, email: nychrp@gmail.com

REMOVE SISON FROM TERRORIST LIST! RESUME GRP-NDFP PEACE TALKS NOW!

NEW YORK, NY– A human rights advocacy group in New York City is calling for the delisting of Philippine political refugee Jose Maria Sison from the foreign terrorist lists of the US State Department and the European Union (EU). Sison, an author, poet, and founding chairperson of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), has been in self-exile in the Netherlands since 1987. He is also the current Chairperson of the International League of People’s Struggle (ILPS), a global formation of grassroots people’s organizations around the world opposed to the US government’s economic, political, and military intervention worldwide.

“The continued foreign terrorist listing of Professor Jose Maria Sison, the CPP and the New People’s Army (NPA) must end in order for genuine peace in the Philippine to begin,” states Lolan Sevilla of the NY Committee for Human Rights in the Philippines (NYCHRP). “We also cannot tolerate the continued pursuit of the Philippine government to repress Sison’s political and democratic rights.”