• The practice of zoombombing, or trolls hijacking Zoom conferences, is just among the increasing vulnerabilities of women and children as they turn to online apps to contact friends, colleagues, and to work from home.

• Offline violence, too, may increase as both the lockdown and global recessions may increase the levels of family stress, which puts women and children at risk to domestic violence and abuse.

• The United Nations said the reduced household income will force poor families to cut back on health and food expenses, which will particularly affect children, pregnant women, and lactating mothers.

By JANESS ANN J. ELLAO
Bulatlat.com

MANILA – Various groups have warned of possible increase of online violence against women and children amid the extended lockdown against the COVID-19 pandemic.

Just yesterday, April 17, trolls hijacked a webinar on violence against women and children, showing doodles of penis and playing an audio from what appeared to be from a pornographic video. The webinar was conducted via teleconferencing app Zoom.

Human rights lawyer and women’s rights advocate Minerva Lopez, in a Facebook post, described it as yet another “act of cowardice.” Lopez, counsel of Gabriela, said “the perpetrators of this cyber attack only exposed how low, desperate and deplorable they have become.”

Lopez was among the participants in the said Zoom webinar.

The practice of zoombombing, or trolls hijacking Zoom conferences, is just among the increasing vulnerabilities of women and children as they turn to online apps to contact friends, colleagues, and to work from home.

The United Nations, in its earlier statement, said children are particularly vulnerable if there is “increased and unstructured time online” which may expose them to “potentially harmful and violent content as well as greater risk of cyberbullying.”

“Governments must uphold the human rights of women and children and come up with urgent measures to the victims of such violence,” Bishop Reuel Marigza, general secretary of the National Council of Churches in the Philippines (NCCP), said.

The UN urged governments, parents, and social media companies to protect the children. Guterres said leaders must “cushion the impact of the pandemic” especially on children.

“What started as a public health emergency has snowballed into a formidable test for the global promise to leave no one behind,” he added.

Domestic violence, too, may increase

Offline violence, too, may increase as both the lockdown and global recessions may increase the levels of family stress, which puts women and children at risk to domestic violence and abuse, according to United Nations Secretary General António Guterres.

“With schools closed, an important early warning mechanism is missing,” he said.

Read: Observe child protection laws during quarantine – rights groups

NCCP Vice Chairperson Gay Manodon, for her part, said a home “can be a place of abuse and danger especially in cases of isolation.”

In a statement, the NCCP said they are receiving reports of gender-based violence, with testimonies of women who have been “harassed by men in uniform in checkpoints.” Members of LGBT group were also forced to kiss each other and perform a “sexy dance” as a form of punishment for supposedly breaking the curfew hours, the NCCP added.

Children’s health and welfare

Other forms of human rights violations – particularly of their social and economic rights – must also be looked into. The United Nations said the reduced household income will force poor families to cut back on health and food expenses, which will particularly affect children, pregnant women, and lactating mothers.

Child rights group Salinlahi said the prolonged lockdown exacerbates the already poverty-stricken conditions of many Filipino children, adding that they find it disappointing that they have yet to see “any substantial progress” a month after the implementation of the enchanced community quarantine in Metro Manila and the whole of Luzon.

Children’s lives are also upended, especially since millions are currently out of school, said the United Nations. While some are offering distance learning, the UN said those in countries with slow and expensive internet services are “severely disadvantaged.”

Guterres also expressed concerns on the suspension of polio and measles vaccination campaigns globally. In the Philippines, where a measles outbreak took place around the same time last year, the health department said immunization campaign is still on despite the COVID-19 pandemic.

Meanwhile, the global non-profit Save the Children urged governments, charitable institutions, and individuals to stop the distribution of infant formula milk as the pandemic rages on.

Read: Children’s health at risk with low breastfeeding practice

Breastfeeding, the group said, must be encouraged during a pandemic as it strengthens the immune system of babies, protect children from respiratory and gastrointestinal illnesses, prevent malnutrition, and ensure bonding between the mother and her baby.

Recommendations

With risks of increased domestic and gender-based violence among women and children, Guterres said in a separate statement that judicial systems against abusers must still be in place amid a pandemic.

Shelters, too, must be provided to victims of abuses, he added.

As such, Guterres said the are recommending that governments must prioritize education for all children and the provision of economic assistance to low-income families. In the Philippines, social amelioration programs are not just slow but also way below the number of families who should be able to receive due financial assistance.

Read: Social amelioration program, inadequate, slow

Guterres also reiterated the UN’s urgent appeal, “let us protect our children and safeguard their well-being.”

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“Government is contented with the limited food aid that they have given us, without even thinking that it would only last for a day or two, what would happen after that? And then there are the other needs of our family like medicine, where would we get that?”

By RITCHE T. SALGADO
Bulatlat.com

MANILA — Raffy Jarcia could barely sleep these days.

At 53, Raffy, a former construction worker, is the sole breadwinner of his family and the family of his daughter. On top of that, his wife haS been sick since November and his only source of income that’s been providing the family and the medication for his wife has been denied of him since the enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) was imposed all over Luzon more than a month ago.

“I go to bed late in the evening but I could barely sleep thinking what I should do the next day so that I would be able to earn some money,” Raffy said. “We still have rice because we try to make do with the rice given to us by the church and the barangay, but when it comes to the viand and the medicine of my wife or for our other expenses, it is really difficult if you don’t have an income.”

Since the lockdown, Raffy said life has been difficult. “We did not receive any assistance until the second week of the lockdown and the assistance was simply two kilos of rice and a couple of cans of sardines,” he said. After that, it took more than a week for the next relief pack from the government to arrive, and still barely enough to feed seven family members. Realizing that he could not rely on the promise of the government to address the needs of the poor who have lost their means of income, he decided to start selling fish, borrowing capital from his neighbor who was fortunate enough to have saved some money before the lockdown.

He could not wait for government assistance, which may not even reach him. “My family is getting hungry and my wife needs her medicine,” he said.

This concern confirms an online study conducted by the Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) which revealed that government has been slack in the delivery of services – social and medical – to the communities.

“The survey results reflect the lack of preparedness and suddenness of the ECQ imposition,” a press release from ACT noted.

“Without adequate and comprehensive planning, the government grappled into the first weeks of the quarantine to the detriment of the population who were made to stay home without sufficient support,” it continued.

Raffy said, however, that assistance received from the government is limited. In his case, it was merely the limited food aid that would last for a day or two and that his family did not get any of the so-called assistance that the government has been brandishing like those coming from the Department of Labor and Employment, the Department of Social Welfare and Development, and the Department of Transportation.

“We were asked to write down our names in a form, which they said we would be given jobs for ten days, but that did not happen and until now those jobs are nonexistent,” he said.

At the moment, Raffy is concerned with the threat of the declaration of President Rodrigo Duterte of a much stricter quarantine implementation, encouraging the military and the police of “martial-law like” execution of the order.

“I think it would even be harder for us to earn an income,” he said.

In a televised address, Duterte said that he is now ordering the military and the police to get ready to take over the policing of the different localities in order to effectively implement the quarantine. “It will be like martial law,” he said.

But even without the so-called martial law-like implementation of the quarantine, small time vendors are already feeling the crunch of the strict quarantine implementation.

“A few days ago, we have been limited by the barangay in displaying our products by the street, so I started going around within our area, but not many are buying because they also don’t have the money to buy,” he said.

This is also the problem that Ronilo Tabian, 36, and Elorde Bañes, 55, are facing.

Both were pedicab (bicycle taxi) drivers, but with the ECQ, forbidden to take passengers, they decided to sell fruits and vegetables on consignment. Most of the time, they are unable to sell all of the produce because people are not buying and many have started selling produce or fish and meat products to address their needs as well.

“Even if we are not able to sell everything, we still need to pay for all of the fruits and vegetables that we got from our supplier, which makes it very hard. And now, since they are already restricting us from displaying our items on the streets to avoid people from gathering, we are forced to find other means just to sell our vegetables, like taking it to other areas,” said Ronilo.

With the threat of a total lockdown and of martial law-like implementation of the quarantine, Raffy, Ronilo, and Elorde are fearful that their families may not be able to survive this crisis.

“We would die not of COVID-19, but from hunger,” Elorde said.

“Government is contented with the limited food aid that they have given us, without even thinking that it would only last for a day or two, what would happen after that? And then there are the other needs of our family like medicine, where would we get that?” Raffy said.

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“We (IPs) protect the ancestral lands against mining and plantation companies because we ourselves are dependent on those lands for food security.”

By AARON MACARAEG
Bulatlat.com

MANILA — Bayan Muna Representative Eufemia Cullamat slammed on Thursday the proposed plan of the Department of Agriculture (DA) to convert the indigenous peoples’ lands to food production lands.

Cullamat, a Lumad leader, berated Agriculture Secretary William Dar for saying that ancestral lands “are idle lands.” Dar called on indigenous peoples to transform their lands into vegetable or high-value crops farms.

Cullamat argued that the ancestral lands are being productively utilized and preserved by the indigenous peoples themselves and that while most of it are forests, they are vital in maintaining the ecological balance in nature.

“It is very clear that the government is being opportunistic in using the COVID-19 pandemic as an excuse to grab land from IPs,” Cullamat said.

DA’s move is part of the Duterte administration’s P31-billion (approximately US$600 million) Plant, Plant, Plant Program ,which “among other projects, intensifies the promotion of urban and community agriculture as one of the interventions to help ensure availability of and access to food nationwide.”

“We (IPs) protect the ancestral lands against mining and plantation companies because we ourselves are dependent on those lands for food security,” said Cullamat.

Farmers and IPs need aid

In a separate statement, Sandugo-Movement of Moro and Indigenous Peoples for Self-Determination, meanwhile, branded the DA’s call as an opportunist move.

Sandugo urged the agency to channel aid and support to the existing food security frontliners, the farmers with lands to till but currently in hunger due to lockdown.

The group pointed out the lack of initiative of the DA in providing access for farmers in transporting their produce.

“We have been planting for centuries. Innovations like rice terraces and upland farming show that unlike big haciendas and corporate plantations, we know how to feed our communities while sustaining the health of our people as well as the environment. You need not tell us to “plant, plant, plant,” Sandugo said.

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President Rodrigo Duterte and Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III want to make us believe that getting loans and selling the country’s assets are the most viable solutions to fund the government’s COVID-19 response.

As of 2019, our external debt stands at US$83.62 billion. Given a P7.7-trillion debt, each Filipino owes P70,000 to foreign creditors.

We have not even paid in full the debts incurred by the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos, which, to quote Bayan Muna, “mostly went to the pockets of the Marcos family.”

Dominguez said the government is asking for additional loans of US$5.6 billion from the Asian Development Bank and World Bank.  Duterte also said the government is willing to all of its assets, including the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) and the Philippine International Convention Center (PICC) allegedly to augment cash aid for Filipino families affected by the lockdown.

Instead of a moratorium on debt payments, the Duterte administration wants the country to sink deeper in debt. It is shamelessly taking advantage of the pandemic to push for the interest of his foreign masters.

Duterte wants us to believe that the allotted P270-billion emergency subsidy is not enough. But there is available money. It is just a problem of looking at the wrong direction.

Instead of strangling us further in this time of emergency, the Duterte administration should have waived the P451-billion budget for the interest payments of the country’s debts under the General Appropriations Act of 2020. Better yet, the P582 billion allotted for the principal amortization should also be rechanneled for COVID-19 response. The multilateral agencies are clearly in a better position to “make sacrifices” than the ordinary Filipinos still waiting for enough government aid. Even the International Monetary Fund (IMF) decided to provide immediate debt service relief to 25 countries to cushion the impacts of COVID-19.

The P1.033 trillion which could be saved from moratorium on debt payments could be used for providing the much-needed social protection of the poorest and most vulnerable.

If this is still not enough, Duterte should be the first to let go of his P4.5-billion confidential and intelligence funds  and reallocate the remaining P9.6-billion intelligence and confidential funds in the 2020 national budget.

Several senators also pointed out that the government could tap the unused appropriations of several agencies from the 2019 General Appropriations Act, which is estimated at P600 billion.

In this context, it becomes even more appalling how this administration justifies the sale of government assets even as “the last resort.”

“If we really run out of money, I will sell all the property of the government,” Duterte said in a televised speech.

Again, there is money. The problem really is that billions of pesos are not being used for appropriate solutions to the pandemic and for responding to the needs of our kababayan, especially those who do not know where to get their next meal.

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