PinoyAbrod.net

By HANNAH SANTILLAN
National Council of Churches in the Philippines

July 5, 2020, 5th Sunday after Pentecost

Ps 145:1-2, 8-11, 13-14
Zechariah 9:9-10
Romans 8:9, 11-13
Matt 11:25-30

What is rest in this time of pandemic? What is rest for the jeepney drivers who can’t sleep because of hunger and that they can’t provide for the needs of their families? What is rest for the Overseas Filipino Workers who are stranded and are staying under a flyover bridge? What is rest for parents and students who are not able to afford online learning? What is rest for our frontliners when there are not enough PPEs to protect them? What does rest mean for people who are suffering under lockdown and a state-instigated terror?

Commonly, we interpret our text – Matthew 11:25-30, as to let God be “the answer” to all our woes, “Ipaubaya na natin sa Diyos.” (Let’s leave it to God.) or “Tiisin na lang hanggang sa maging maayos ang sitwasyon.” (Let’s endure our suffering and things will soon get better.) Yet Jesus has a very active invitation in this text rather than inaction or misaction to these sufferings. In verse 25, the “wise” refers to the experts of the law and leaders who displayed their self-centeredness and tyranny. Their refusal to listen have caused them to fail. The “infants” are the common people who are sick, persecuted, “sinners”, and marginalized people who came for healing and life-giving yoke. Jesus thanked God, for the wisdom belongs to common people, and not to the Pharisees and tyrant leaders. These “infants” see God’s grace, love and wisdom which the “wise” do not (or refused to) acknowledge. In verse 28, Jesus invites all heavily burdened and weary to rest. This is an invitation to the common people who suffer from heavy labor, and unjust practices of the law. It is not for the religious leaders in the book of Matthew which were complicit to the Roman rulers in maintaining the imperial system. People suffer from maintaining a system that doesn’t serve them. This invitation of rest is a life under God’s reign that the people is bringing into being.

July 3rd – the tragic day when the Anti-Terror Bill became a law. President Duterte signed this dangerous bill at the time when the Philippines set the highest single day increase in the new cases for Covid-19. The bill is terror itself to the people which gives absolute power to the executive branch to judge who the terrorist is and who is not, based from its vague and overbroad definition of terrorism. Anyone who is critical of the government can be tagged as a terrorist. Anyone who is airing their legitimate demands can be accused of doing acts of terrorism. This law does not only undermine our long history of stuggle for democracy, but also tramples upon our human rights and dignity as a people. President Duterte’s signing of this controversial bill only shows that he does not respect the wisdom of the common people. Guilty of so many transgression against the people, he weaponizes the law to curtail the exercise of people’s rights to demand transparency, social justice and the delivery of services to the people . He would never understand the danger of it because he never listens to the cries of his kababayans.

All of his CoVid-19 pandemic responses are miscued. To begin with there were no clear overall plan to manage the pandemic. The national government was just letting the LGU’s work with their own strategies. The militaristic display of power by arresting the common folk on “violation protocols” and doing humanitarian work, while having a boastful display of military tanks and high-powered guns in our streets will not kill the virus. This militarist approach does not solve our health crisis, but even more creates terror to our communities. We can imagine the several layers of suffering to the Filipino people yet the policies and military equipment cannot comprehend it. They will just identify the hungry people as “pasaway” with the authority’s insensitive comments like, “disiplina lang ‘yan”. With these mentally, emotionally draining scenarios for almost four months now, what does rest mean for the most of us?

Besides needed rest for us to function like sleep and food, to REST is also about raising our awareness, and crying out. Rest is also about releasing the heavy burden of yoke of slavery from unjust laws and practices. Rest is learning to set boundaries and saying “no” to any form of exploitation. For us today, rest is also about resistance. For jeepney drivers, rest would mean driving back to the streets, and gaining back their hanapbuhay. For OFWs, it could mean going home to their families and where employment is guaranteed. Rest for parents and students could mean freezing the school year and serve the mass-oriented, scientific and nationalist education. For our frontliners, it means sufficient amount of PPE’s and raising their salaries ample support from the government. Rest for all of us could be free mass testing and junking the Terror Law. Rest is not a luxurious self-care like how capitalism is capturing it. It is sensitive to the human need. It is not just an aid for a dysfunctional society. It is awareness and embodiment of our rights and God-given life.

The yoke Jesus offers is easy and light. It is not a life that is magically at ease. It is not an escape but engagement. It is full of struggle and challenges, not because of injustices but because we are working for freedom and justice. The yoke is a humble service instead of proving oneself and unending competition. The yoke is security in God and people’s love instead of illusionary power and wealth. The yoke is healing and intentional change instead of repeating the tyranny of the past. Practicing rest may be hard at first especially when exploitation conditions us to be busy. Practicing rest is engaging in the process of change. Change is engagement; it is not what politicians promise to us. Change is intentional and cultural consciousness. It is the work of everybody. Change is the creation of society that realizes the life which God had have given to us-the fullness of life. Rest gives us that energy that drives us for change, and changing the system, revolutionizes everything. To put rest to the perspective of the masang-api, and for the whole lot of us who are suffering, rest is about resistance.

May God give us the rest that we need, so that we may be able to push and assert for life for all, and to #JUNKTERRORLAW.

Balik-Tanaw is a group blog of Promotion of Church People’s Response. The Lectionary Gospel reflection is an invitation for meditation, contemplation, and action. As we nurture our faith by committing ourselves to journey with the people, we also wish to nourish the perspective coming from the point of view of hope and struggle of the people. It is our constant longing that even as crisis intensifies, the faithful will continue to strengthen their commitment to love God and our neighbor by being one with the people in their dreams and aspirations. The Title of the Lectionary Reflection would be Balik –Tanaw , isang PAGNINILAY . It is about looking back (balik) or revisiting the narratives and stories from the Biblical text and seeing ,reading, and reflecting on these with the current context (tanaw).

The post Balik-Tanaw | Come to Me, and I will Give You Rest appeared first on Bulatlat.

By JOSALEE DEINLA
Bulatlat.com

As I nurse my child to sleep, I think of first-time mother Reina “Ina” Nasino and her three day old baby girl. Ina told me that they are struggling with breastfeeding and that another mother at the Dr. Jose Fabella Memorial Hospital, where she gave birth, took pity on them and wet-nursed the baby. She is a low birth weight infant and is not feeding well.

Have they figured it out? Has baby learned to latch properly? Have Ina’s painful cracked nipples healed? Who will hold her hand when the baby blues come? Did she remember to do skin-to-skin? I worry.

Ina and her baby are now confined in a cell at the Manila City Jail where Ina is a person deprived of liberty. She was arrested on November 5, 2019 after the police planted firearms and explosives in her apartment. She is a Kadamay organizer, one of the scores of activists and dissenters relentlessly persecuted by government.

Do they have sufficient ventilation? Is their low mattress clean? Ina said she prefers not to sleep on the bed for fear of dropping the baby when she gets exhausted and falls asleep.

Ina is one of the 22 political prisoners who petitioned the Supreme Court to allow their temporarily release on humanitarian grounds, citing the grave dangers that the COVID-19 poses inside prisons to the vulnerable and at-risk. As of May 25, 2020, various facilities of the BJMP have reported 703 suspected COVID-19 cases and 86 probable cases of the viral disease. BJMP city jails are notoriously overcrowded with an average of 500 percent congestion rate.

Ina’s own cell is packed way beyond capacity. She said that at least 80 women are sharing a room that can only hold about 40. Because of her lack of mobility in such a cramped space, she suffered from edema days before the onset of labor. She was also not given prenatal care, which may explain her baby girl’s low birth weight.

Will the courts show compassion and grant Ina provisional liberty so she could care for and nurse her baby girl somewhere safe? Will they recognize Ina’s right to breastfeed her child who equally has the right to her breastmilk? Ina’s breastmilk is her baby girl’s natural immunization and best source of nourishment, especially at this time when her organs have not fully matured and there is a raging pandemic.

On Monday, the presiding judge hearing her case is set to rule on her Motion to Quash and Suppress Evidence. Did she see that the address in the search warrants implemented the night of Ina’s arrest is different from her actual residence, in violation of the clear dictates of the Constitution?

Thoughts of Ina and her baby girl deluge me with tender emotions, like the baby blues that visited soon after childbirth. But these blues are different; they feel like ancient memories passed on between mothers throughout generations. I know they will sink deep in the recesses of my heart and resurface the next time I weep with mothers like Ina.

It will only be a matter of time for Ina, if her case will not be dismissed, to be separated from her child. Her infant will be forcibly torn off her chest, weaned from her embrace and protection.

My child, also a baby girl, is still tethered to my breast, dreamfeeding. Someday I’ll tell her about this sorrowful night.

#FreeInaNasino #Breastfeedingisahumanright

*The author, a mother of two, is one of the lawyers of Reina Nasino. She is the spokesperson of the National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers (NUPL).

The post First Person | Baby blues appeared first on Bulatlat.

“Exactly 24 hours since Rodrigo Duterte affixed his signature on the draconian Terror Law, the first arrests were made on activists who held a peaceful protest against the dangerous law.”

By JUSTIN UMALI
Bulatlat.com

SANTA ROSA, Laguna – A day after President Duterte signed the Anti-Terrorism Act of 2020 into law, 11 activists holding a protest in barangay Pulo, Cabuyao, Laguna, were arrested, July 3 by combined elements of Cabuyao police and the Army’s 2nd Infantry Division.

The eleven activists were part of a larger delegation conducting a peaceful protest to condemn the passage of the Anti-Terrorism Bill, which they said “would lead to abuse and widespread arrest of activists.”

The eleven arrested were:

• Kyle Salgado – Karapatan ST spokesperson
• Casey Cruz – Bayan ST spokesperson
• Shirley Songalia Gabriela ST spokersperson
• Jemme Mia Antonio – Liga ng Manggagawa Para sa Regular na Hanapbuhay (LIGA-ST) spokesperson
• Miguel Portea – STARTER-PISTON spokersperson
• Marife Valdeavilla – Kabataan Partylist Laguna Secretary-General
• Helen Catahay – Gabriela ST
• Fatima Banjawan – Gabriela ST
• Emmanuel Numeron – Bayan Muna ST
• Sweden John Aberde – Pagkakaisa ng Manggagawa sa Timog Katagalugan (PAMANTIK KMU)
• Renero Maarat – PAMANTIK KMU

Human rights alliance Defend Southern Tagalog condemned both the violent dispersal and the detention, calling it the “height of irony.”

“Exactly 24 hours since Rodrigo Duterte affixed his signature on the draconian Terror Law, the first arrests were made on activists who held a peaceful protest against the dangerous law,” said Charmaine Maranan, spokesperson for DEFEND ST. “We now see where the fascist footprints of Duterte’s police and military are headed to in case the law finally takes effect.”

Maranan pointed out the incident was the exact opposite of what National Security Adviser Hermogenes Esperson promised when he stated that the Ani-Terror Bill would not be used to impinge on the rights to peaceful assembly and expression.

“Esperon is lying through his teeth when he said that peaceful protests will be protected under this law,” said Maranan. “In light of the arrests today in Cabuyao, that claim is now exposed as a brazen lie, and we all know that state forces are hell-bent in weaponizing the Terror Law to suppress the people’s growing dissent against State abuses.”

Other progressive groups also voiced their concerns. A statement released by Kabataan Partylist Laguna called the dispersal and detention “proof that [the Duterte] regime could not be trusted on issues of protecting people’s rights.”

Bagong Alyansang Makabayan Laguna (BAYAN Laguna) meanwhile contended that the arrests had no legal basis. “There is nothing illegal with being an activist,” said Jevi Quitain, spokesperson for BAYAN Laguna.“ and there is nothing wrong with expressing one’s right to dissent. What there is, however, is police brutality and impunity; the hallmarks of the fascist Duterte regime.”

According to firsthand accounts, the program began 5 p.m. After the program, state agents approached the protesters who were packing up and began to restrain them, leading to the 11 arrests.

The arrests were described as a “violent dispersal”; Miguel Portea, a former jeepney driver and a member of STARTER PISTON, suffered bruises and cuts on his arms and legs.

According to DEFEND ST, at around 4:30 p.m., a military truck belonging to the 2nd CMO Batallion of the 2nd Infantry Division, Philippine Army was parked near the barangay hall blaring out disinformation about progressive organizations, calling them “front organizations of the Communist Party of the Philippines-New People’s Army-National Democratic Front.”

This would not be the first time the military was engaged in black propaganda, attested KPL Laguna. According to the youth organization, police and military agents have been “hard at work attacking KPL and other progressive organizations” through its “Kabataan Kontra Droga at Terorismo” initiative, a series of forums aimed at schools and communities.

According to the group, evidence showed that the content of KKDT forums had speakers “blatantly terror-tag progressive organizations.”

Labor group Pagkakaisa ng Manggagawa sa Timog Katagalugan (PAMANTIK KMU) also attested to the fact. Last May 2020, the group received information that a letter coming from the 2ID’s Task Force Ugnay was sent to Cabuyao mayor Rommel Gecolea, calling barangay Pulo the “nerve center of militant, ergo, violent trade union movement in the region” as well as a “provincial youth recruitment center” in Calabarzon.

PAMANTIK KMU also reported that elements of the 202nd Infantry Brigade were terrorizing barangay officials in Pulo since at least June when they set up camp within the barangay hall. According to the labor group, the 202IB were looking for OLALIA national president Hermenegildo Marasigan as well as forcing barangay officials to renounce the usage of an office space adjacent to the barangay hall that was being used by Anakpawis Partylist.

As of press time, the 11 Cabuyao activists are still detained in the Cabuyao Municipal Police Station and are awaiting inquest. The police have not informed them of the charges against them.

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