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December 6, 2011
PRESS RELEASE

Occupy PH day 1 met with police violence
Why is gov’t afraid of CampoutPH?

The people experienced state fascism first-hand.

Peaceful protest launched by students and other sectors met violence as state forces armed with truncheons and water cannon beat and protesters who attempted to breach a police barricade blocking Recto Avenue that leads to Mendiola, the seat of government power and the site of the 5-day protest dubbed CampoutPH.

“Pinakikita lamang nito na desperado na ang gobyernong pigilin ang galit ng sanlaksang mamamayang lumalaban para sa tunay na pagbabago, para sa isang makatarungang lipunang nagsisilbi sa nakararami,” said youth group Anakbayan National Chairperson Vencer Crisostomo.

The Occupy PH protest, the country’s own version of the worldwide Occupy Movement, seeks to topple the country’s social system biased to foreign interests and the ruling elite. December 6 marks the first day of the week-long protest.
“Sawang-sawa na tayong makaranas ng kahirapan at krisis panlipunan. Sawang-sawa na ang mamamayang dumanas ng matinding kahirapan, habang nagpapakasasa ang iilan,” said Crisostomo.

Despite police forces’ deliberate attempt to block protesters from reaching Mendiola, protesters vow to set Campout PH. “Walang makapipigil sa mamamayan na irehistro ang kanyang galit sa rehimeng US-Aquino,” said Crisostomo. Several mass leaders also advised police forces to “give way.”

“Tumabi kayo, paraanin niyo kami,” the mob chanted. Crisostomo stressed that the people are the police forces’ real boss.

Should the police not yield to the peaceful demands of the protesters, various mass leaders warned to launch CampoutPH in Recto Avenue, signifying the people’s undying desire to change the system.

“Bakit natatakot ang gobyerno sa kampuhan?” asked Crisostomo. “Dahil hindi na nito kayang ikubli ang kabuktutan ng kasalukuyang kaayusang panlipunan, dahil guilty sila sa kanilang mga kasalanan sa sambayanan.”

Reference:

VANESSA FAYE BOLIBOL, Campout PH media officer
09261703655

For press releases, media advisories, schedule of activities, analysis, factsheets and backgrounders, you may contact Strike Lead, the information desk of the youth strike. Strike Lead was organized by the College Editors Guild of the Philippines, the widest and longest-running alliance of student publications in the country.

We are also accepting reports, media advisories and other notices from organizations that engage in the fight for quality and accessible basic services. If you want to be part of Strike Lead, you can volunteer as a correspondent/photographer/artist for the desk. For inquiries, contact Gidget Estella, CEGP national deputy secretary general, at 0915.335.2021.

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December 7, 2011
PRESS RELEASE

At day 2 of Occupy Mendiola
A bigger mobilization of youth, workers, OFWs march to Mendiola

The government has always tried to dismiss the protest actions under the Aquino regime. However, yesterday, at the first day of the Occupy Mendiola camp out, ten wheeled trucks, a fire truck and around 60 policemen were stationed at all paths leading to Mendiola . The state, indeed, was so afraid of the campout.

Around a thousand youth and teachers marched from their respective schools to the Morayta-Recto intersection yesterday at around 2 PM. At the intersection, policemen blocked the protesters and hit them with water cannons and truncheons.

“It was a peaceful protest, a legitimate form of action to articulate the people’s demands. Why, then, did these policemen, the pawns of the state, responded with violence?” said Vencer Crisostomo, national chairperson of Anakbayan. “It is because violence is the government’s classic response to people’s demands, no matter how legitimate, especially when it could not address the dilemmas that were raised,” he added.

“The government itself is part of the problem,” said Crisostomo.

The protesters marched to Plaza Miranda at 5:30 PM and set up their tents as the cultural night started. Today, at around 1 PM, they will converge with around 1,500 protesters from the workers and OFWs and march to Mendiola Bridge to set the Occupy Mendiola camp.

The Occupy Mendiola is the Philippines’ own version of the global Occupy movement, which is grounded on the “people’s struggle against the economic monopoly of the few elite and the domination of foreign interests,” said Crisostomo.

Earlier today, at 6 AM, the protesters conducted a morning exercise routine with calls to “invert the triangle structure of society.” Organizations also held socio-political discussions.

“The Occupation of Mendiola is a form of action that registers the people’s rage over cuts on the budget for social services, human rights violations, landlessness in the countryside and other forms of assault on our basic rights,” said Crisostomo.

“The policemen and the government they serve should remember that Mendiola is historical because it is a site of the people’s resistance against a fascist regime. Chino Roces, whose statue is a landmark in Mendiola, was in fact a figure of the resistance. And this occupation will be done under the same premise. This premise they must respect and they must step aside for the occupation,” said Crisostomo.

Reference:
VANESSA FAYE BOLIBOL, Campout PH media officer
09261703655

Photos courtesy of Strike Lead

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For press releases, media advisories, schedule of activities, analysis, factsheets and backgrounders, you may contact Strike Lead, the information desk of the youth strike. Strike Lead was organized by the College Editors Guild of the Philippines, the widest and longest-running alliance of student publications in the country.

We are also accepting reports, media advisories and other notices from organizations that engage in the fight for quality and accessible basic services. If you want to be part of Strike Lead, you can volunteer as a correspondent/photographer/artist for the desk. For inquiries, contact Gidget Estella, CEGP national deputy secretary general, at 0915.335.2021.

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For immediate release
News Release
December 6, 2011


Human rights group condemns violent dispersal
"The people have all the right to occupy Mendiola” - Karapatan


Karapatan condemned the violent dispersal of more than 1,500 protesters who marched towards Mendiola this afternoon.

Today is the first day of the Mendiola camp-out, mainly led by students from different colleges and universities, which will commence on December 10, International Human Rights.

However, at 5:30 PM, protesting students, teachers, health workers and government employees were blocked by elements of the PNP at Morayta corner Recto Avenue.

Accounts from the protesters said they were water cannoned by the police and some were also hit by nightsticks.

As of this writing, the protesters will proceed to Plaza Miranda to continue with their assembly tonight. They are still deciding whether to push through with marching to Mendiola tomorrow.

Karapatan was likewise barred from setting foot at Mendiola this morning, in another rally organized with urban poor organizations to condemn the continuous threats of demolition, price hikes and lack of basic social services.

Parading pushcarts or the Filipino kariton, they marched through the interior streets of Sampaloc and held a program near Bustillos church, where they were blocked by the police and were not allowed to proceed to Mendiola.

“The people have all the right to Mendiola. These are legitimate protests against violations to our right for jobs, education and livelihood. We have all the right to protest if the government is not doing any good for the people,” said Loi Villarias, Karapatan-NCR spokesperson.

The human rights group lambasted Pres. Noynoy Aquino for turning a deaf ear on the people’s plight for change.

“More than a year in office, PNoy and his spin doctors have done thing but to keep him out of controversies and issues, to protect his image. But the people know better. The price hikes, demolitions in the communities, budget cuts to social services, killings and human rights violations, all these are proof that there is no change under PNoy,” said Villarias.

Karapatan asked whether Aquino is following the footsteps of his predecessor Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. It can be remembered that Arroyo has issued an executive order prohibiting rallies near Mendiola at the height of controversies under her presidency.

Karapatan also said that this dispersal shall add up to the already growing human rights violations under PNOy.

The group has documented 64 cases of extrajudicial killings, nine enforced disappearances and thousands of victims of forced evacuation and militarization in communities who are protesting against anti-people policies like mining and land grabbing.

“These numbers does not yet include dispersal of peaceful assemblies such as what the police did this afternoon,” Villarias said.

The "Occupy Mendiola" camp-out is inspired by the Occupy Wall Street's protests in the US since last month, which has grown enormously as a movement against the world financial crisis. ###


Reference:
Loi Villarias, Karapatan-NCR spokersperson, 0905-3276119
Cristina Guevarra, Human Rights Week 2011 media liaison officer, 0949-1772928

WE WILL NOT BOW DOWN TO AQUINO’s REPRESSION! CAMP-OUT IN MENDIOLA AGAINST REPRESSION, INJUSTICE AND EXPLOITATION
UP KILOS NA
December 6, 2011

The planned three-day protest, Kampuhan sa Mendiola Kontra Kaltas, Krisis at Kahirapan (Camp out in Mendiola against Cuts, Crisis and Poverty) from December 6 to 8 led by youth and student organizations was not a secret.

Timed several days before December 10, International Human Rights Day, the protest is intended to highlight the people’s impatience and exasperation (sawang-sawa na!) over the Aquino’s government’s continuing attack against education and health as reflected in the cuts to SUCs and public hospitals in the 2012 budget and link this with the pervasive poverty in the country and the social injustice against farmers such as the Hda. Luisita farm workers whose right to the land continues to be violated and Filipino workers whose demand for P125 wage increase remains unheeded.
These social issues have underlying historical and structural roots –a country which remains a neo-colony, where high government officials and crucial policies are subservient to foreign masters and dictates; a country where feudalism, of almost a similar type exposed by Jose Rizal over 100 years ago, enslaves majority of our rural population.

What better place to hold the camp-out than historic Mendiola—witness to the unstoppable protests of the people through several regimes ! Mendiola, witness to the killing of four students on January 30, 1970 in the Battle of Mendiola which was part of the First Quarter Storm. Mendiola, witness to the anti-dictatorship movement participated in by Chino Roces whose monument is in the center of Mendiola. Mendiola, witness to the massacre of peasants in the 1987 Mendiola massacre during the time of Corazon Aquino. Mendiola, witness to the determination of the anti-Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo movement to challenge and resist the prohibition of holding rallies in Mendiola in 2006!

But today, December 6, 2011, that sorry excuse of a President pretending to be a pro-people one, has shown that protests in Mendiola under his term will be treated no differently from his immediate predecessor, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. A phalanx of policemen and several fire trucks were used to prevent the protestors from proceeding to Mendiola. State violence once more was used to suppress legitimate dissent. The slogan shouted by the students this afternoon, “Walang pagbabago sa ilalim ni Aquino “rings truer than ever.

But the history of Mendiola and the history of the occupants of that palace close to Mendiola bring home the lesson that tyranny has a short shelf-life in the face of a united and determined people. The text on the T-shirt of one of the protestors in today’s rally sums it very well: “We will not bow down to repression. We will not bow down to injustice. We will not bow down to exploitation. We’re gonna stand up!”

Now standing up means joining our youth and our people in the camp-out in Mendiola against repression, against injustice, against exploitation!

Every day, we win (and why sedition charges will fail)
by Krissy Conti

December 7, 2011
 

The Aquino administration swept away the Mendiola campers with sheer alacrity and water quantity that could have drowned Navotas. We suspect key politicians are hoping that if the rains could not finish the job, then a swift offensive would.

Charging protesters with inciting to sedition or to rebellion, or with the definite crimes of sedition or rebellion would then be part of a grand plan to squelch the demonstrations. This is as if the threat of prosecution or a criminal record will prevent any of us from coming back to Mendiola, or finding someplace else.

Sedition is a crime that punishes public criticism of the people and practices in government, and government itself. There are three elements:

Public and tumultuous uprising;

Use of force, intimidation, or other means outside of legal methods;
 

Specific purpose
- to prevent the promulgation or execution of any law or the holding of any popular election;
to prevent the national government or any provincial or municipal government, or any public officer from exercising its or his functions or prevent the execution of an administrative order;
- to inflict any act of hate or revenge upon the person or property of any public officer or employee;
- to commit, for any political or social end, any act of hate or revenge against private persons or any social classes;
- to despoil for any political or social end, any person, municipality or province, or the national government of all its property or any part thereof.
 

Rebellion is one notch up. The people at the public uprising must have taken up of arms, and bent on overthrowing the duly constituted government.

In court, by definition, any of these charges against the Mendiola campers would fail. The complaint would be legally, and quite frankly, politically indefensible. Lawyers would be gleefully lining to help us, if only to expose this administration’s immaturity and inner niño malcriado.

But imagine what a challenge it would be if we were truly seditious – if we had brought guns and bats instead of placards and tents, if we instructed chemistry students to make molotovs, if we hated Aquino only because he was bald and love-less, if we had invited everyone to march into Malacañang instead of to a concert along Mendiola.
Sedition laws were originally crafted by colonizers to silence dissenters who dared to resist what they believed a government foisted upon them. Imbibed by local elites, sedition was used to punish those who refused to cooperate with the ruling class. In effect, sedition kills the best among us. Andres Bonifacio, perhaps the first Filipino to envision Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao genuinely united and free, was executed in 1897 by the government of Emilio Aguinaldo for committing sedition and treason.

Elsewhere, sedition has been repealed or ignored by states liberated by their political experience. Sedition laws tend to stifle freedom of speech, inhibit constructive changes, and degenerate society. Roilo Golez, Marcos’ postmaster general and Arroyo’s national security adviser, has a proposal in congress to repeal Sections 139, 140, 141 and 142 of the Revised Penal Code, which penalize sedition. In the bill’s explanatory note, he says these are “essentially contrary to the underlying principles of our modern democracy as expressed in the Bill of Rights, and therefore, anachronistic.”

Sedition has no place in the Philippines because as is apparent, not everyone is committed to the very concept of nation. Territorialism, regionalism, secessionism have deep roots in social inequity and economic injustice. These conflict with democratic ideals installed in our political structures, and oh how ironically, in our legal history.

Ours is a country where probably, no one would be truly satisfied within a system that is inherently flawed, a government that is philosophically undernourished, and officials that are socio-economically removed from the people. So whilst the protesters carry legitimate grievance, claims, and demands, they will always find a way to tell the world. In turn, the public should decide whether to listen or not listen, and to believe or not believe.

The campout in Mendiola is but one of many mobilizations that will mark people’s discontent not only with the president, but with the system. Every generation has changed the world in part: the Mandela-generation killed apartheid, the hippies won clearer anti-war policies, and in the Philippines, the Marcos babies successfully annulled subversion laws.

We realize so many things today that make us consider alternatives, and not simply go with the mainstream. Every day out in the streets is incentive and inspiration for our struggle against the system. Every day that we are together, we win.

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KARAPATAN – SOUTHERN TAGALOG
PRESS RELEASE
07 December 2011

Reference: Glen Malabanan
Secretary General, KARAPATAN-ST
Contact no.: 09185682090
Email: karapatan.st@gmail.com


Brutal dispersal of protesters in “Occupy Mendiola” during HR week:
Exposes Aquino’s state fascism to the people’s just demands


Human rights advocates in Southern Tagalog (ST) headed by Karapatan-ST expressed condemnation to what has happened yesterday when police forces brutally dispersed mostly youth protesters geared for “Occupy Mendiola”.

“It is ironic for such a clear-cut violation of human rights to happen exactly during the Human Rights week and days before our commemoration of United Nation’s International Declaration of Human Rights,” Glen Malabanan, deputy secretary general of Karapatan-ST stressed. She said that this only shows how the Aquino government blatantly disrespects the people’s just demands and is no different from the previous Arroyo administration’s use of state fascism as the only answer to the people’s grievances.

Karapatan-ST together with Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (BAYAN) –ST and other militant groups in the region are currently in their 3rd day of the Human Rights Cultural Caravan. The caravan has arrived two days ago in the provinces of Quezon, Batangas and Cavite and will now proceed to Laguna and Rizal. On Dec. 9, the caravan is to set-foot and culminate in Mendiola to expose the human rights violations of Aquino’s Oplan Bayanihan counter-insurgency program.

“We are doing our part here to educate and uplift the political consciousness of the people with regards to upholding their basic human rights and yet we see that Aquino and his state forces themselves are ignorant to such rights,” Malabanan added.

Meanwhile, Leo “XL” Fuentes, secretary general of BAYAN-ST expressed similar sentiments to what had happened in Morayta yesterday, saying that the 1987 Philippine Constitution clearly states that the people have the right to air their grievances to the government whenever they deem that it is no longer able to address societal concerns.

“What should Aquino expect from the people when just less than 2 years into office, we have already seen the biggest cuts in budget for social services - such as education and health – in Philippine history?” he asked.

Fuentes narrated the various human rights violations in Southern Tagalog on different sectors which includes land-grabbing and land-use conversion in rural areas; union-busting, low wages and contractualization among workers. The region has also experienced 13 political killings under the Aquino regime which includes Celito Baccay, union leader of the Solidarity of Cavite Workers, Kenneth Reyes, baranggay captain in Lemery and Chairperson of BAYAN-Batangas, Caloy Rodriguez, union leader of Calamba Water District and even a youth-leader, Lester Barrientos from the Southern Tagalog Cultural Network.

“If Aquino will continue with this character of violence to those who are yearning for genuine change, it won’t be long before the people will wish him behind bars –just like Arroyo- for perpetuating this culture of impunity,” Fuentes stressed.

Simultaneous with the cultural caravan is the 5th day of the hunger strike of political prisoners in Camp Bagong Diwa, Bicutan and Batangas City Provincial Jail. The hunger strike aims to press Aquino’s government to drop all fabricated charges and free the all political prisoners in the country 51 of which are from the Southern Tagalog region. ###

contact 09213068744 or 09164530622

ANAKBAYAN Zamboanga slams police violence over ‘Occupy Mendiola’ movement
by Anakbayan Zamboanga

December 7, 2011
 

Zamboanga City – The city chapter of the comprehensive nationalist youth organization ANAKBAYAN here slams the Aquino administration after the violent dispersal by the police towards youth protesters yesterday who are about to hold a camp-out at Mendiola.

As they were heading their way to Mendiola, the police barricaded the road along Recto Avenue. The groups were violently dispersed when they insisted to stay.

“This incident was very saddening. We are about to celebrate the 63rd Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights this December 10 but it seems the government is ignorant of what human rights mean,” said James Saguino, spokesperson of ANAKBAYAN Zamboanga.

The youth leader also slammed the order declaring Mendiola as a ‘protest-free zone’. “Mendiola has been a historical place of peoples’ struggles since the Marcos regime. It was during the Arroyo administration that such same policy was also implemented. Why is the Aquino administration also prohibiting activities like this to be held in Mendiola?” Saguino exclaimed.

“No change under the Aquino administration!” said the youth leader. He cited many policies – like the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program, Automatic Appropriation on Debt Services, budget cuts on social services, the counterinsurgency program Oplan Bayanihan and All-out Justice – which are mere carbon copy of the Arroyo policies.

Saguino described the violent dispersal as a blatant disrespect of the state for human rights.

“The protesters are about to hold a peaceful assembly in the form of camping at the Mendiola but they were met stopped. The youth called for additional budget for education and health services, but they were responded by water cannons by the government.”

The youth leader added, “Repression and fascism still reign today in the new administration, which has been claiming to be pro-people. The state is still the top violator of human rights despite that it signed such universal declaration which is supposed to promote and protect human rights.”

ANAKBAYAN together with other organizations from different sectors shall hold a “Unity March for Human Rights” this December 10 from Western Mindanao State University to Plaza Pershing.

“We vow to protect and promote peoples’ rights and interest, even if the government cannot and will not,” Saguino said.#


For reference:

James Saguino
Spokesperson
ANAKBAYAN Zamboanga
abzambo.media@gmail.com
09352438082