Migrante Europe | Press release | BAYAN MUNA CONDEMNS MAD RUSH FOR THE RETURN OF US BASES

News Release
April 12, 2014

References: Bayan Muna Rep. Neri Colmenares, 09178350459
Bayan Muna Rep. Carlos Isagani Zarate, 09177174014

BAYAN MUNA CONDEMNS MAD RUSH FOR THE RETURN OF US BASES
Says it is already studying option to question new US-PH deal at the SC

Protesters display placards and banners as they march towards the gates of the U.S. Embassy during a protest in Manila, July 4, 2013. (Photo: Reuters)

Bayan Muna Reps. Neri Javier Colmenares and Carlos Isagani Zarate today said that it is beyond doubt that the Aquino administration is in a mad rush to complete the sell out of Philippine sovereignty through the Agreement on Enhanced Defense Cooperation (AEDC) when United States of America Pres. Barack Obama arrives in April 28.

Rep. Colmenares charged that the AEDC will practically bring back US military bases in the Philippines without a treaty, without rent and without limits as the American may use all Philippine military facilities - an arrangement worse than the Bases Treaty rejected by the Philippine Senate in September 1991.

“Simply put, it is like a dog’s welcome gift to his master. They are trying to move heaven and hell so that Obama would be here for the signing of the AEDC; coupled with pro-imperialist charter change, would again make the Philippines a full pledged American colony,” said the senior deputy minority leader.

“Even if they say that “key provisions and modalities of the AEDC would reflect, among others, full respect for Philippine sovereignty, nonpermanence of US troops and no US military basing in the Philippines and a prohibition against nuclear weapons, we all know that these can be circumvented by the fact that in reality it is the US government is the one calling the shots and not the Aquino administration,” said Rep. Colmenares.

“Case is point is the supposed no US military basing provision; but the US can say that it would fund the construction of Philippine bases in every province in the country and under the AEDC they are allowed to use all these bases. So technically they do not own the base but it is practically an American base. This would also be the framework for the existing bases, in paper it is a Philippine base but in reality it is a US base,” said Rep. Colmenares.

Meanwhile Rep. Carlos Zarate said that “another point is the supposed prohibition of nuclear weapons, but we know that even if the US respects and observes this prohibition it can still bring other types of weapons of mass destruction that would make us a prime target of US enemies,”

“Furthermore, they already found a way to circumvent the constitutional ban on the presence of foreign troops in the country thru the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) but now they will further maximize this and increase US troop presence in the country. So in truth the AEDC is a very deceptive deal,” said the progressive solon.

“This early we are already studying the option of questioning the AEDC at the Supreme Court because it is a clear violation of our Constitution particularly Sections 3 and 7 and possibly Section 8 of Article II. We are also of the position that this is not a mere executive agreement but a treaty and should be scrutinized by the Senate and the House of Representatives,” added Colmenares.

“We must learn from history that the Filipino people ousted the bases in 1991 not only because its presence violates our sovereignty but they were also magnets for attack from the many enemies of the United States. The presence of US troops here will increase the tension in the region and threatens its stability. We do not want to become another Iraq where the US troops remained even if Saddam Hussein has long been dead. We should stand against China’s bullying but we should get the support of the international community instead of the US,” ended Rep Colmenares.###

US Naval base at Subic Bay 

Satur Ocampo - Activist, Journalist, and outstanding Congressman

Posted by Pahayag ng Mogrante
Rome, Italy 11/04/2014

Ka Satur during his visit to Rome September-October 2013 with the author (Photo: Pahayag ng Migrante)

Satur Ocampo was born in Sta. Rita, Pampanga to a family of landless tenant farmers. He graduated from elementary and high school at the Sta. Rita institute in 1952 and 1956 respectively. After studying at the Philippine College of Commerce (now Polytechnic University of the Philippines or PUP), Manuel L. Quezon University and Lyceum of the Philippines, by 1963 he was working as a full-time business journalist for the Manila Times. He was a vice president of the National Press Club (NPC) from 1970 to 1972.

Ocampo was involved in politics from an early age. In 1964, he was a founding member of the student-youth organization Kabataang Makabayan (Patriotic Youth). Soon thereafter in 1967-1968, he was on the National Council of the Movement for the Advancement of Nationalism (MAN).

President Ferdinand Marcos declared Martial Law on Sept. 21, 1972 and Ocampo, like many others, was forced to go into hiding. In 1973, Ocampo co-founded the National Democratic Front, seeking to unite various anti-dictatorship forces.

In 1976, he was arrested and incarcerated as a political prisoner. For the next 9 years he was severely tortured in various prison camps. Though tried by a military court for rebellion, he was never found guilty. In 1985, while on pass to vote at the National Press Club annual elections, he escaped from the soldiers guarding him and rejoined the underground revolutionary movement.

After the dictatorship fell in 1986, and President Corazon Aquino called for peace talks and Ocampo headed the NDF peace negotiating  panel. When the talks collapsed due to the killing of 18 farmers at a rally near the Malacañang Palace on January 22, 1987, Ocampo returned to the underground.

In 1989, he was arrested again along with his wife, Carolina Malay. He was freed three years later, in 1992, a year after his wife was released. Neither of them were found guilty of any crime. He wrote columns for the Philippines and Features, Diaro Uno, Pinoy Gazette and Sunstar Manila in the 1990's.

On September 25, 1999, major people’s organizations of the Philippines met to form a new political party including, most notably, Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (BAYAN). The new party was calledBayan Muna or "People First". As the first president of the party, he was the party’s leading nominee in its first foray into electoral politics in the May 14, 2001 party-list Philippine election.

Bayan Muna topped the party-list race with an unprecedented 11.7% of the votes cast, earning it more than the required number of votes for three party-list seats in Congress. Their efforts led to tangible results as two Bayan Muna-sponsored bills, the Overseas Voting Act and Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act, were enacted into law. Ocampo spearheaded the formation of an alliance, Legislators Against War (LAW), to oppose U.S. aggression in Iraq and worldwide. To protect Philippine industry and agriculture he helped form the Legislators-Businessmen-People’s Forum (LBPF), mitigating the destructive impacts of globalization.

Ocampo was reelected president of Bayan Muna in its third national convention last January 13, 2004 and headed the party’s nominees for party list representatives in the May 10, 2004 elections where Bayan Muna garnered 10.8% of the votes cast, again securing three seats in Congress.

Ocampo currently chairs the House Special Committee on Peace, Unity and Reconciliation. He is also vice chairman of the Human Rights Committee and member of several other committees, such as Appropriations, National Defense, Health, Foreign Affairs, Public Information, Suffrage and Electoral Reforms and is now a practicing journalist with Sun Start on his column At Ground Level.

Rome OFWs - THUMBS DOWN TO HB 3576

Posted by Pahayag ng Migrante

Rome, Italy 10.04.2014

(Photo: Belarmino Dabalos Saguingh) 

HB 3576, a bill filed in the House of Representatives requiring overseas Filipino workers (OFWs)  to send money back to their family or dependents in the Philippines or else their passport will not be is a resurrected Marcos law.

It is stupid, unnecessary and obviously just another money-making scheme and the OFWs of Rome Italy is vehemently opposing its passage.

Section 1 of HB 3576 states that OFWs ”are required to remit regularly a portion of their foreign exchange earnings to their family or legal dependent recipient in the Philippines.”

The bill also states that “Ambassadors, Consul Generals, Chiefs of Mission, or Charge d’ Affaires are authorized to withhold the renewal or approval of the passport of an erring OFW unless proof of compliance of the remittance requirement of his financial support is submitted,”

The bill is a clear thrtowback of Marcos’ draconian EO 857 “forced remittance law”  that “drove OFWs in deeper debt.

It a slap in the face of OFWs around the world who are already knee-deep in debt and barely coping with the global economic crisis, by a representative who doubtlessly ignorant of the OFW situation.

 EO 857, which was enacted December 13, 1982, required seamen, contractors, doctors, engineers, and other professional workers, to remit 70 percent of their basic salary while domestic and other service workers should remit 50 percent.

Section 4 of EO 857 states that “the Ministry of Labor and Employment shall not approve the renewal of employment contracts and agency or service agreements unless proof of remittance of foreign exchange earnings is submitted.

Punishment also includes the non-renewal of the OFWs passport and suspension or exclusion from the list of eligible workers for overseas employment.

We strongly refuse to accept this resurrection of a law that we have already junked many years ago.

OFWs remitted more than $21.4 billion in 2012, according to the records of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas. The figure has steadily risen from $20.1 billion in 2011 and $18.7 billion in 2010. This bill appears to be designed with the assurance that the remittances will be flowing into the coffers regularly, which make the bill an unnecessary burden for the migrant wotker who left the country precisely to enable them to have a chance to give their family a decent human life which is not possible to attain since the government has neglected to create jobs in the country that is driving more and more workers to flee the country in search of a better alternative.

Meantime, an e-petition opposing the said bill is circulating among OFWs worldwide.

OFWs signing petition vs. HB 3576 in, Italy 06042014 (Photo: Pahayag ng Migrante)

This bill is not favourable to all OFWs and we will make sure that it does not get approved,

OPINION | Today, the nation observes the “Araw ng Kagitingan” honoring the heroes of Bataan.

Posted by Pahayag ng Migrante

Rome, Italy 09.04.2014

There are no doubts about the heroism of the Philippine Scouts and the Philippine Army during the battle of Bataan, a battle celebrated as one of the most decisive during Second World War. At great odds stacked against them, they faced the Japanese hordes gallantly, defeated but defiantly proud.

But in a true nationalist point of view, their gallantry was in vain. They werte fighting for the wrong cause. The heroes of Bataan sacrificed themselves more for the benefits of the American imperialistic motives and not for the motherland. They fought so that the capitalist could remain in power to oppress the poor masses.

They are heroes, as many in history are heroes because of their act. There are thousands of heroes who fought in the great crusades who died thinking they were fighting for their God. There are countless heroes who fought for Kings and emperors. They have been made to believe that they were fighting for the keepers of the Lord’s laws. But history, without divesting them of their heroic status, proved that they fought and died for the wrong cause.

We honor them and keep their names on the altar of the immortals, but not the cause they died for. The heroes of Bataan did not die for the Philippines. They died for the American capitalist imperialists. 

The Philippine Scout and the Philippine Army are not even Filipino Organizations. They are manned by Filipinos but were organized, trained and equippedby the US precisely for the object of serving American interests. During the Fil-American war, they were used to fight against the Filipino revolutionaries who continued the struggles for independence. During the American occupation,, they were used to bring down the upsurge of nationalism of those who rerjected the American rule. In the Second Worlwar, they are used to defend the American corporations and American imperialist role in the area.

HONOR TO THE FILIPINO HEROES, DOWN WITH THE US IMPERIALISM!

OFW groups criticize the institutionalizing of government mega-recruitment firms.

Posted by Pahayag ng Migrante

Rome, Italy 06/04/2014

The Philippine government has found a way to maximize the move by the Saudi government in 2011 stopping the issuance of working visas to Philippine-hired household service workers, by pursuing a new recruitment scheme in the deployment of Filipino workers through institutionalization of Saudi based mega recruitment firms into the existing bilateral labor agreement between the two countries. These mega-recruitment firms, which are being pushed for by Rosalinda Baldoz, secretary of the Philippine Department of Labor and Employment, is designed to further intensify the recruitment and deployment of OFWs and aspiring job-seekers from among the millions of unemployed Filipinos. 

“Yet protection mechanisms for OFW workers’ rights remain diluted in the absence of defined social legislations taken by the host government to ensure that their rights are recognized, respected and honored.” Said John Leonard Monterona, coordinator of Migrante Middle East-North Africa (MENA).

“The decision by the host government to stop issuing work visas to Philippine-hired household service workers (HSWs) in 2011 had created a row between the two governments,” he said.
“The Philippines’ Labor Department had imposed several requirements, such as a sketch of employers’ houses in Saudi Arabia, a minimum wage of $400 and the provision of ATM cards to domestic workers, among other stipulations,” he said. “This came in response to demands made by OFW groups to provide concrete protection for OFWs. These groups were spearheaded by Kapatiran sa Gitnang Silangan (KGS), an affiliate of Migrante >International in Saudi Arabia.”

The Saudi Labor Ministry temporarily stopped issuing work visas for one year at the time following objections on the strenuous requirements issued by the Philippines government. The mega recruitment scheme was then created in 2012 following rounds of negotiations between the two labor departments.

According to Hans Cacdac, chief of the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA), the mega recruitment scheme was signed during Baldoz’s visit to Riyadh in Febrauray, These companies are highly capitalized recruitment ventures and will allegedly ensure that recruiters in the Kingdom have the right resources to provide accommodation, protection and repatriation costs.

“Clearly, the agreement between the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) and the POEA is solely focusing on intensifying the exportation of Filipino labor amid worsening unemployment woes in the country,” said Monterona. “Sad to say, all this comes at the expense of OFWs well-being, rights and welfare.”

“We have serious doubts about some of the provisions stated in the scheme, such as the end of service or gratuity clauses,” he said. “The latter is not even recognized by the Saudi labor law.”

“These firms will now be solely responsible for the employment of OFWs, diminishing the role of government officials in solving labor cases,” he said.

The government failed to generate local jobs with decent wages and benefits for Filipino workers. This is why it is desperate in pushing for the implementation of the mega recruitment scheme, which had been recently rejected by the Shoura Council and the Saudi Council of Ministers.

The current government relies heavily on foreign remittances instead of developing the local economy by implementing agrarian programs and national industrialization schemes.

Migrante.Eur/Vantage Point/BusinessWorld | THE 118-YEAR WAR

Posted by Pahayag ng Migrante 03.04.2014

By LUIS V. TEODORO
Vantage Point | BusinessWorld

They were “insurrectos” during the late Spanish period, “insurgents” during formal US occupation, and “insurgents” still today.

Echoing the country’s former and current colonizers, the Philippine government calls what the guerillas of the New People’s Army (NPA) are waging an “insurgency.” But more accurately can it be described as a war — and a war that has been going on for over a century.

That war has been described as “the longest running” of its kind in Asia and quite probably in the entire world. Forty-five years have passed since the founding of the NPA on March 29, 1969, but as the successor of the forces of the failed Philippine Revolution of 1896, it can trace its provenance even farther, to the late 19th century. That makes the “insurgency” 118 years old, its parentage being the Katipunan.

No doubt the Philippine military will reject that idea. The official line is that it is the Armed Forces of the Philippines that’s the successor of the Katipunan, despite its origins as an anti-Katipunan force organized by the US colonizers to complete the conquest of these isles at the turn of the 20th century.

In search of markets for its products and coaling stations for its ships, from 1899 onwards US forces and their local henchmen smashed the armies of the First Asian Republic and decimated the rural population, transforming vast areas of the Philippine countryside into the “howling wilderness” US Army General Jacob Smith wanted Samar converted into in the aftermath of the Balangiga incident, which the US still describes today as a “massacre” perpetrated by “insurgents.” (It also refuses to return the Balangiga church bells, trophies of its first “bloody, blundering” war of conquest.)

The continuity is evident beyond the “insurgent” and “insurgency” label — or the Philippine military’s referring to Benito Tiamzon, alleged chair of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), as, a la Andres Bonifacio, the NPA “Supremo.”

The proffered means for achieving them have changed, but the demands for social justice, for authentic independence, equality, and progress resonate across the decades, whether articulated by Katipunero, peasant rebel, Huk — or NPA guerilla.

The Katipunan and the Republic were defeated at the turn of the century, but were soon replaced by other formations, the many uprisings and rebellions that persisted during the US occupation and after being their reincarnations and embodiment. Thus were the Huks defeated only temporarily in the 1950s, their NPA successors picking up where they had left off, and persisting to this day.

Indeed have the fortunes of the 118-year war waxed and waned, with its leaders arrested, exiled or killed, its fighters imprisoned, killed in battle, or ravaged by age and illness. In 1977, CPP founding chairman Jose Ma. Sison and many others were arrested, while still others — among the best and brightest sons and daughters of the Filipino people — were killed, tortured, imprisoned, or forcibly disappeared by the dark forces of the Marcos regime. But the war has continued.

Like Sison’s arrest then, the arrest of Benito Tiamzon and his wife last week has been described by the Philippine government and military as a mortal blow against the “insurgency,” and has become one more occasion for the latter to reissue its challenge for NPA guerillas and members of the CPP to “join the mainstream” and to fight for what they believe in in the legal sphere.

Like the claim that the AFP is into protecting human rights, the latter is a call few familiar with the extrajudicial killings of legal activists will take seriously. But even more challenging to credibility is the claim that the arrest of two people will put a halt to the war that through foreign conquests, invasion, two world wars, a declaration of martial law, two People Power uprisings and a succession of administrations since that of Marcos has persisted.

It persists for a reason. As basically rational beings, men and women do not risk life, if not fortune, lightly. For founding the Katipunan, Bonifacio’s reward was death, as was Rizal’s for his novels and other efforts to awaken his countrymen to the horrors of colonial rule — as was that of countless others who fought Spanish colonizer and American invader, and as was that of the poet, playwright and essayist Emmanuel Lacaba, killed extrajudicially (“salvaged”) in 1976 for joining the army of the poor.

The Greek novelist Nikos Kazantzakis said it best in The Last Temptation of Christ: the greatest temptation of all is to be and to live like others, the path to redemption or revolution being strewn with those perils the instinct for survival rejects. And yet, even in these isles of compromise and paths of least resistance, thousands of men and women have, over the decades, travelled the road usually not taken called resistance and revolution.

What has driven them is the poverty, the injustice, the miseries and the terrors that define the daily lives of millions, and it is what drives them still. If poverty is the worst form of violence — as Mahatma Gandhi once declared while fighting for the independence of India from the British — violence as a means of ending it, though denied its victims by those who use violence to perpetrate the violence of poverty, has a compelling legitimacy.

Bonifacio understood that against the violence of poverty only organized violence could free its victims, as did those who opposed the violence of martial law — and as those who, repeatedly told that they can contend in the legal arena, have seen those who did so murdered by the very same forces of deceit and greed that urged them to join the so-called legal mainstream. Inevitable that they should arrive at no other conclusion than to take up the gun towards dismantling the structures of power and privilege that make poverty the inevitable lot of millions.

It’s been said before, and even by those who say it without understanding, and it bears repeating: only by addressing the fundamental ills against which the 118-year war has been and is being waged can there be peace in these isles of violence. Peace can be achieved through a negotiated agreement between the State and its adversaries to democratize political power; dismantle a land tenancy system so archaic its continuing existence defies understanding; implement an authentic industrialization program; and release the country from its bondage to foreign overlordship, among others.

Otherwise the State can arrest hundreds, even thousands of Tiamzons, but as long as poverty, injustice, and mass misery define the lives of millions, the 118-year war will continue.

Comments, blogs and other columns: www.luisteodoro.com, and www.cmfr-phil.org

Luis V. Teodoro is on Facebook and Twitter (@luisteodoro)
Published in Business World
March 27, 2014

- See more at: http://bulatlat.com/main/2014/03/29/the-118-year-war/#sthash.w9Aj0epO.dpuf

An OFW consultation on HB35767 in Rome, Italy

Posted by Pahayag ng Migrante
Rome, Italy 01042014

Photo: Migrante International

A consultation meeting is being organized by Umangat-Migrante and allied groups in Rome, Italy on April 6 2014 at 2PM (15OO GMT) to discuss the proposed law authored by OFW Family Club Partylist Representative Roy Seneres.

Majority of migrant workers in Italy are opposed to the said House Bill and talks among them say that they will bond together make unified steps to have the Bill junked before it becomes a law.

The author of the mentioned HB 35676 has published an article explaining his motives in forwarding his Bill, but the OFWs rejected it as ‘salestalk’ to make them swallow the bitter potion he prepared.

 According to some, the Bill is full of loopholes that could be bent and used by abusive embassy officials and unscrupolous recruiters.