Community Civil Rights Protest to Mar Gloria Arroyo’s U.S. Visit Sunday
| Protest to Mar Gloria Arroyo’s U.S. Visit Sunday |
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| Communities - Civil Rights | |||
| Saturday, 10 April 2010 19:53 | |||
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By JOSEPH G. LARIOSA (© Journal Group Link International)
Protest to Mar President Gloria Arroyo’s U.S. Visit Sunday
C HICAGO (JGLi) – Filipino-American human-rights advocates are holding demonstration Sunday (April 11) to protest the visit of Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, who is attending a two-day summit participated by leaders from 44 nations starting Monday (April 12), hosted by President Barack Obama.
The protestors were able to secure a permit to hold demonstration in front of the White House on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, in Washington, D.C., at 2:00 p.m. along the sidewalks near Lafayette Park in between West and East Executive Avenues.
In a press statement, the Never Again to Martial Law (NAML) group said, “President Arroyo or GMA has created a legacy of human-rights violations with her brutal counter-insurgency program, ‘Oplan Bantay Laya.’
The statement also noted that in 2009, the U.S. State Department Country Report on the Philippines, under the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, recognizes the major problems of human rights as unlawful arrests, detentions, political killings, and consistent impunity and rampant corruption.
It added Filipino Americans must remind the Obama Administration that U.S. military aid and training should not support an administration and military that has consistently used state power to terrorize its citizens.
“For a president whose human-rights record has been bloodier than that of the deposed dictator Ferdinand Marcos, we wonder how she personally reconciles this political hypocrisy?” asks a press statement issued by NAML.
The statement issued by Dr. Dante Simbulan and Atty. Arnedo S. Valera said, “President Arroyo basks in power with greed and corruption characterizing her illegitimate rule. Despised and hated by the people, she clings on to power only thru the backing of compliant generals, whom she showers with promotions and highly-desirable appointments.”
The statement said, “We Filipinos and Filipino Americans are opposed to President’s Obama’s continued support to the Arroyo administration. We do not want our tax dollars to shore up the Arroyo regime. We do not want our tax dollars to be used in the perpetuation of military abuses in the Philippines.
It added, “The continued U.S. support to a corrupt and repressive government will erode the confidence of people everywhere, especially in the Philippines, on the Obama administration; that it is reneging on its promise not to continue the Bush Administration’s policy of supporting corrupt and repressive leaders such as Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.”
Mrs. Arroyo was described as the holder of “the highest record of human-rights violations that now reach more than 1,000 victims of abductions, illegal detention and arbitrary killings.
On December 2, 2009, in a special press release, the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights Philip Alston, and Frank La Rue, UN Rapporteur on freedom of expression, both condemned “the pre-mediated killing of political opponents – a tragedy of the first order.”
It said, “to date, the Arroyo government still holds captive 43 medical-and-healthcare workers who were rounded up in private houses in Morong, Rizal, forcibly abducted and illegally detained by Arroyo’s military.
The healthcare workers were training seminars under the auspices of the highly respected Community Medicine Foundation, Inc. and the Council for Health and Development. They were suspected of holding an anti-government meeting of sorts.
The press statement also accused Arroyo for “covering up” for the Ampatuan clan behind the massacre of 57 people, including 31 journalists, and the family of incumbent vice mayor, whose wife was about to file the vice mayor’s certificate of candidacy for governor.
Human-rights watchdog such as Amnesty International, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and the National Union of Journalists in Great Britain and Ireland, together with the Campaign for Human Rights in the Philippines had strongly condemned the Arroyo government and the military’s creation of paramilitary forces, which were responsible for the massacre.
The military is also accused of abduction, torture and illegal detention of Melissa Roxas, a U.S. citizen with roots in the Philippines.
Accused of amassing vast amount of wealth, Arroyo is also suspected of scheming the failure of election on May 10 to keep herself in power by forming a junta under her command. (lariosa_jos@sbcglobal.net) # # #
© opyright 2009 The Journal Group Link International. The contents provided in the JGLi may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of the Journal Group Link International.
(Editor’s Note: Watch out for the upcoming outlet-oriented, subscription-based website of Journal Group Link International that guarantees originally sourced stories, features, photos, audios and videos and multi-media contents.)
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| Last Updated on Sunday, 04 July 2010 19:34 |
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Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence.Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent.Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb.Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts.Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.~Calvin Coolidge~
Los Angeles, April 10, 2010—Again, the Alliance-Philippines (AJLPP) raise the question- Why puppet Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo goes to the United States at the exorbitant cost of millions of dollars while her country is in poverty ?
The AJLPP does not buy the regime’s spin doctors reason “ that she will join 43 other world leaders in the Nuclear Security Summit to be hosted by the United States on April 12 to 13 to prevent nuclear terrorism, the Department of Foreign Affairs said in a statement Saturday.”
They further said that “the President was among those invited by US President Barack Obama to discuss the threat posed by illegal diversion of nuclear materials and to develop steps to secure vulnerable nuclear materials; combat nuclear smuggling; and deter, detect and disrupt attempts at nuclear terrorism.”
But in a slip of the tongue, the DFA said they will “ discuss measures to promote nuclear security at the national, regional and global levels . The Philippines supports efforts to prevent nuclear terrorism with millions of Filipinos living and working in many parts of the world,” it said.
Obama-GMA Meeting.
The Obama- Arroyo meeting will be crucial. Although Arroyo will not dare to stay in power beyond June 2010 without the consent of her imperialist masters, the US and her regime still can strike a deal .
In that case, that means that the US has special interest in keeping her in power and will risk offending all those presidential candidates who have spent money and effort in the current electoral campaign. Another scenario is that the Arroyo is not indispensable to the US.
But in any case the Alliance-Philippines (AJLPP) condemns the Arroyo trip to ingratiate itself to the Obama administration. The fact stands out. The United States anchors the US-Arroyo regime in it’s human rights violations, in its anti-people’s war in Mindanao and other parts of the nation and the path of keeping the Philippines under the neocolonial and neoliberal economic status.
The AJLPP sees the Obama-Arroyo meeting as a case of a puppet consulting with her master. Nothing anything good will ever come out of this client state status of a master-puppet consultations under the guise of “nuclear security Summit.”.
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