Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU) participates

in the global day of action against trade union repression

 

November 17, 2008

 

 

   
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Photos courtesy of Kilusang Mayo Uno
           

 

KMU alarms public over wave of criminal charging, gestapo arrests and detention of labor lawyer and leaders
Global Day of Action against Trade Union Repression today

In several parts of the world today, workers will unite against renewed and escalated repressions to the labor movement amid the panic of the capitalists due to the financial crisis.

In our country, a top labor lawyer, and a growing number of union leaders are slapped with trumped up criminal charges, arrested gestapo-like, and detained in prisons. The security of every worker is now under threat.

Today, KMU will alarm the public on this pressing threat to their life and liberties, and will bring the issue at the foot of Malacanang, to the chief labor persecutor herself --- Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

According to Wilson Baldonaza, Kilusang Mayo Uno’s Secretary General, workers are more determined and pledged to struggle more amidst escalating trade union and political persecutions against them and the Filipino people in general.

“ Actually, we have experienced the worst during martial law when all our political and trade union rights were trampled but we persevered to smash the terror of the darkest days in our nation’s history. While many are saying that the repressions we are in to now are worse during Marcos dictatorship, we will not be cowed. We will fight back and justice will be served to us the soonest possible,” Baldonaza said.

Baldonaza also scoffed at the so called “ST 72 List”, wherein 13 KMU leaders were tagged as New People’s Army members and were hunted for arrest. Included in the list and were accosted by police and military elements recently are KMU chief legal counsel Atty. Remigio Saladero Jr. , worker organizer Arnaldo Seminiano and other labor advocates.

“ If the ongoing crackdown in the Southern Tagalog (ST) region displays the complicity among government forces, vicious capitalists and corrupt judges, then we have no recourse but to unite with the people who have the power to thwart their malevolence and injustices. We still believe that a people united will never be defeated. If they are out to suppress and exploit their wealth creator in any means, they cannot decimate us easily. They will be defeated in the end,” he said.

The labor leader also registered that all the blood debts of the Macapagal-Arroyo regime, including the Hacienda Luisita Massacre that was brutally perpetrated by labor officials, military and police in 2004, will never be unpunished.###
 
     
     
           
           
           

 

KMU condemns unabated extra-judicial killings spree

The militant Kilusang Mayo Uno condemns the killing of Rolando Antolihao, the cluster coordinator of Bayan Muna in Kapalong town, Davao del Norte and a laborer of Global Fruits Corporation, a banana plantation. Rolando Antolihao was shot seven times in his home in Gabuyan village at around 6 p.m. November 10, said Kelly Delgado, secretary general of Karapatan (Alliance for the Advancement of People’s Rights) in southern Mindanao.

"The assassins in civilian clothes knocked at the victim's house, and when he opened the door, he was shot several times," Delgado said.

Antolihao's death came just four days after Danilo Qualbar, a Bayan Muna coordinator and farmers' association president in Compostela town, Compostela Valley, Mindanao was gunned down by motorcycle-riding gunmen. Delgado said Antolihao was the fifth victim of extrajudicial killings in southern Mindanao region and the third Bayan Muna leader killed this year.

Meanwhile, a labor leader from Laguna province was almost killed Thursday night (November 6) when armed men, suspected as government agents, shot him.

In a statement, the Center for Trade Union and Human Rights identified the victim as Arnold C. Cerdo, vice-president of Sensuous Union Labor Organization-IND. Cerdo is also working as a staff member of the Cabuyao Workers Alliance.

The statement said that Cerdo was talking with his brother-in-law Juanito Dacillo at the terrace of his house at Riverside, Calamba City, when two men wearing bonnets and fatigue jackets arrived at around 9:30 pm and fired at them.

Elmer Labog, KMU Chair, said,”in this ruthless government to be a activist peasant or a worker organizer rates, at the minimum, a fabricated murder charge and incarceration. But to be an organizer and at the same time be an active party-list leader warrants an automatic merciless death sentence or salvaging”.

Lately, Atty. Remigio Saladero Jr., Chief Legal Counsel of KMU, and Arnaldo Seminiano, a labor organizer in Laguna and member of Ilaw at Buklod ng Manggagawa-KMU, were arrested on trumped-up multiple murder charges and are presently detained in Calapan, Mindoro.

“The Kilusang Mayo Uno is alarmed with the unabated extra-judicial killings and undeniable rising incidents of illegal arrests and arbitrary detention. Unmistakably, the motive of this regime is to decimate the struggle for labor rights and demolish the militant labor movement,” added Labog.

The government’s legal offensive cases portray and subsequently accuse legal activists to be members of the New People’s Army, the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines. But instead of simply filing rebellion cases against them, they are instead charged with common crimes such as murder and arson. # # #

 
     
     
           
 
           

 

 
 

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