NEWS RELEASE

May 27, 2007

Activist pastor abducted in front of Laguna church after Sunday service

Suspected soldiers abducted an activist pastor just outside a local
United Church of Christ of the Philippines chapel in Binan, Laguna
where he participated in a Sunday worship service.

UCCP Pastor Berlin Guerrero, who is based at the Union Theological
Seminary in Cavite and is active in the ecumenical movement, has yet
to be surfaced by his abductors as of press time.

Members of the UCCP and ecumenical friends in the National Council of
Churches of the Philippines have called for a noise barrage at 12:00
noon tomorrow to denounce Guerrero's abduction.

Guerrero's abduction happened exactly a year after another UCCP
member, Bayan Muna regional projects officer Noli Capulong, was gunned
down in Calamba, Laguna on May 27, 2006.

House Deputy Minority Leader and Bayan Muna Rep. Satur Ocampo, author
of a proposed law banning enforced disappearances, called on the
Arroyo government to "immediately surface Berlin, and turn him over to
his family, ministry and colleagues."

"The Arroyo government must protect all citizens, regardless of
political beliefs. Its security forces must not harm or kill its
perceived political opponents," said Ocampo. "President Arroyo is duty
bound to order the AFP and the PNP to do everything so that Berlin and
other desaparecidos are found alive, and see to it that the abductors
are punished."

According to Bayan Muna Secretary-General Nathanael Santiago, one of
Berlin's contemporaries in the student movement and in Bayan, "no
reason is sufficient to warrant Berlin's abduction. He is a people's
pastor, an activist who worked legally and peacefully."

Santiago, also a UCCP pastor, said "Berlin's abduction will revive and
expand the global uproar of Christian churches and denominations which
have earlier denounced the Arroyo government's human rights record."

Guerrero is a founding member of Bayan Muna and was among its initial
leaders in Southern Tagalog.

Guerrero is a former secretary-general of the Bagong Alyansang
Makabayan-Southern Tagalog and at the same time member of Bayan's
national council, the second-highest governing body of the
multisectoral alliance.

In the late 1970s, Guerrero was elected the founding chair of the
College Editors Guild of the Philippines- Southern Tagalog, leading the
campus-based "mosquito press" that exposed the excesses of the Marcos
dictatorship. ###

-- 
The Lord enters into judgment with the elders and princes of his people: It is you who have devoured the vineyard; the spoil of the poor is in your houses. What do you mean by crushing my people, by grinding the face of the poor? says the Lord God of hosts. 

- Isaiah 3:14-15