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15 Pinoy seamen detained in France seek gov’t help

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15 Pinoy seamen detained in France seek gov’t help

Philippine Daily Inquirer / January 09, 2022

A party list lawmaker has urged the government to help 15 Filipino seafarers detained in France after more than a ton of cocaine was found in their vessel in October last year. Marino Rep. Sandro Gonzalez separately wrote to Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III and Foreign Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. to seek help in behalf of the families of the detained seafarers. French authorities intercepted the Liberian registered bulker, MV Trudy near the French port of Dunkirk. Over a ton of cocaine was recovered from the vessel, which was bound for Antwerp to unload a cargo of chalk. —Julie M. Aurelio

Maelstrom over the Killing Fields: Interventions in the Project Of National-Democratic Liberation By E. San Juan, Jr.

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Maelstrom over the Killing Fields: Interventions in the Project Of National-Democratic Liberation By E. San Juan, Jr.

A Book Review

[Published by Pantas Press, 2021, distributed by Popular Book Store, Quezon City]

By Paulino Lim, Jr.
Emeritus Professor of English California State University, Long Beach 

______

From one who has written innumerable books, this volume may be viewed as an “anthology of San Juan’s best essays.” It has a powerful voice that stirs the maelstrom over “the killing fields,” a metaphor that came out of the Vietnam War (1955-1975), and most apt for the Philippines, where the first killing fields took place when the U.S. military fought and conquered the insurgents and proceeded to colonize the country (1899-1912). 

The anthology presents an “agenda for change and social transformation.” It focuses on particular themes, situations and personages, e.g. the diaspora, pandemic, Jose Rizal and Nick Joaquin. (Was Rizal gay? How do you account for Joaquin’s “tragic-comic consciousness?) In each essay San Juan goes deep into the subject, deploying various analytical tools drawn from history, philosophy and literary criticism, and synthesizes the findings into a coherent “knowledge” or information about the subject. The new information may add, amplify, or revise previously known “facts,” but does it constitute Truth? Is the latest interpretation analogous to the self-portraits that the artist paints in the course of his life? It is up to the reader to decide. 

A critical tool that San Juan includes in the analysis is the “structure of feeling” that informs not only the interpretation or criticism itself but also the attitude of the critic himself–a technique he adopted from Charles Sanders Peirce credited in the. Acknowledgements. In fiction, laying the feelings of a narrative is the equivalent ofs scoring a film with music. 

A simple exercise is to define the feeling of some elements of the Preface. San Juan calls in awe the pandemic as a “planetary upheaval”; condemns the exploitation by “rapacious” capitalists–with the aid of Karl Marx. (i) He mourns the death in 2020 of 67 Filipino nurses ministering to Covid-19 patients. He recalls with 

muted pride the militant Filipino presence in the U.S. that marked the four-day riots in Watsonville, California, in December 1929. The event prefigured the violence against Asians, Filipinos included, being blamed for importing the virus from Wu Han. 

What convinces the reader as in the case of Rizal and Joaquin, for instance, , is San Juan’s close reading of the author’s works (poems, essays and novels) and tracing the development of his “sensibility” reflected in the work. San Juan’s final word on Rizal is that he was “not a messiah, only a prophetic intellectual of colonized peoples “ San Juan recalls James Michener’s remark that Rizal’s novels were “directly responsible for the author’s death.” San Juan sums up Rizal’s challenge for Filipinos to “fight and win their independence by their own sacrifices.” The essay ends with a passage from “Mi Ultimo Adios.” 

I die when I see the dawn break,
Through the gloom of night, to herald the day;o And if color is lacking my blood thou shalt take Pour’d out at need for thy dear sake,
To dye with its crimson the waking ray. (89) 

What entertains the reader are the human-interest and gossipy details, embellished by San Juan’s often sardonic comments. Rizal’s Austrian correspondent Ferdinand Blumentritt tries to console him: “. . . but you are one of the heroes who conquer pain from a wound inflicted by women. (64) He met in 1888 a 22-year-old O-Sei-San, a samurai’s daughter, “may have experienced carnal bliss.” (65) The historian Ambeth Ocampo has interpreted the recurrence of snakes as phallic symbols in Rizal’s dreams, suggesting that Rizal may have been a closet gay. (66) Rizal performed a common-law marriage ceremony with the “wandering swallow” Josephine Bracken by holding hands together and marrying themselves. The Catholic priest Father Obach refused to marry them. (67) 

Of particular interest to me is the discourse on the Filipino diaspora. I write as an OFW (overseas Filipino worker/writer), the largest segment of the Filipino diaspora. (The discourse provides a prospectus for M.A. and Ph.D., defining six “theses” to pursue.) I am glad I am not writing in Myanmar (I am three-fourths Malayan) or in Hong Kong (one-fourth Chinese). I read Maelstrom during Advent anticipating the birth of Christ. What we got instead was the “second coming” of Covid-19. Nonetheless, I took Communion to celebrate the presence, and the 

booster shot to ward off the pandemic. The pandemic has introduced new modes of learning, done away with SAT and college entrance exams, re-examined Ethnic and Women’s Studies, as Delia V. Aguilar explores in the Afterword. (201) 

San Juan’s review of the colonization and decolonization of the Philippines has been a welcomed corrective to my naive reading of the country’s history. The structure of my feelings was centered on gratitude. Gratitude to Spain for bringing the Roman alphabet and the Catholic Religion; to America for introducing democracy, public education, and English–the lingua franca of the world and the Internet; and to Japan, after repulsion by the atrocities the military inflicted in the Bataan Death March, for Buddhism, calligraphy, and the films of Ozu and Kurosawa. 

In San Juan’s capsule review, “The history of the Philippines may be read asseculaone long chronicle of the people’s struggle against colonialism and imperialism for the sake of affirming human dignity and universal justice. 

Gratitude still centers my feelings toward the U.S., despite the white supremacy movement and the “Big Lie” of the 2020 Presidential Elections being. Stolen. UCLA exempted me from paying the $600 out-of-state tuition fee; now it runs to about $32,000. San Juan earned his bachelor’s degree in English at the secular University of the Philippines, modeled after the U.S. state university system. I attended the Dominican University of Santo Tomas, Manila, with its compulsory Scholastic curriculum requiring courses in Ethics, Cosmology, . And two semesters of Logic. This prepared me for writing term papers in my UCLA graduate courses in Linguistics, Drama, and American, Romantic and Victorian Literatures. (I did my Ph.D. dissertation on Byron). 

Teaching at California State University, Long Beach, gave me time to research and write. I wrote four interrelated novels dealing with the Marcos Dictatorship that I call, perhaps inordinately, “The Philippine Quartet.” It is an homage to Lawrence Durrell whose Alexandria Quartette fascinated me as an undergraduate. In the first novel Tiger Orchids on Mount Mayon, the protagonist Mark is a surrogate for Marx. Mark studied at U.P., joined the teach-ins conducted by the Marxist professor Saldivar and read Mao Tse Tung’s
Red Book. 

In Maelstrom over the Killing Fields, San Juan persuades Filipinos in the homeland and in the diaspora to act on an agenda for change and social transformation. No other Filipino approaches his scholarly output and world-wide 

stature as an intellectual. I honor him, as I do the journalist Maria Ressa–the first Filipino to win a Nobel Peace Prize. There is so much love in what he writes, so much light in what he says —###

Heightened DDoS attacks target critical media

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Heightened DDoS attacks target critical media

DEC 24, 2021, GEMMA B. MENDOZA

Patterns indicate that the ones behind the attack probably hired a black market service that was involved in, or had access to, infrastructure used in black hat SEO techniques

MANILA, Philippines – The cyberattacks against the websites of newsgroups ABS-CBN News, Rappler, and Vera Files may have been initiated by the same groups because they bore the same “distinctive” attack signatures.

The three news websites all experienced Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks during the second week of December. DDoS is a malicious attempt to bring down a website by flooding it with an overwhelming amount of simulated traffic.

It is also a form of system interference that has been illegal here since the enactment of the E-Commerce law in 2000. The Philippines is one of the first countries to punish DDoS attacks, according to internet law expert JJ Disini. The offense carries with it penalties that include a minimum of P100,000 in fines and mandatory imprisonment ranging from six months to three years.

First to be attacked was ABS-CBN News on Saturday, December 11. This was followed by the attack on Rappler’s website on Wednesday, December 15. The last to be attacked that week was Vera Files, which was hit the following day on Thursday, December 16. 

Patterns derived from a comparative analysis of attack logs sourced from the servers of the three news websites indicated that the ones behind the attack probably hired a black market service that was involved in, or had access to, infrastructure used in black hat SEO techniques.

“It appears that in this case, someone repurposed infra used in SEO for this purpose,” said Tord Lundström, technical director at Sweden-based digital forensics nonprofit Qurium Media.

Attacks evolving, ramping up

The attacks appear to be part of a ramp-up activity. On Thursday, December 23, less than a week after the attacks against the three media groups, Rappler was once again subjected to another, more intense DDoS attack. Earlier, on the same day, the website of ABS-CBN News also went down. While the media giant did not confirm the reason for the outage, chatter in online hacker communities insinuated that it was also a DDoS attack.

There have been similar attacks in recent months against alternative media outlets but this is the first time that several major Philippine media outlets have been attacked in succeeding days.

ABS-CBN is the largest media network in the Philippines. While it lost its broadcast franchise in 2020, its digital media assets have a significant online footprint. Rappler is the top digital native news organization in the country. Vera Files has a smaller following compared to other two media outlets.

The three media organizations are all known for critical reporting that has angered the Duterte administration. Both Vera Files and Rappler are third-party fact check partners of Facebook.

All three organizations have been subjected to tremendous attacks on social media by pro-administration social media influencers and social media propaganda channels.

Change in strategy?

Qurium Media also previously analyzed the DDoS attacks on the websites of human rights group Karapatan and the Altermidya group. They were able to trace the attacks on Karapatan and Altermidya to the Philippine government, particularly the Department of Science and Technology and the military. 

Lundström, however, said “these attacks (on the three newsgroups) are different from the other attacks (like those on Karapatan).” There is no direct link between government forces and those who recently targeted the three news websites.

“This could be a change of strategy,” said Lundström. He pointed to the experience in Myanmar where government agents infiltrated hacker groups that were eventually weaponized against enemies of the state.

One attack signature used in the attacks against the three media groups – the use of CC attack (challenge collapsar) python code – was also seen in other attacks against Philippine targets, such as Karapatan.

Interestingly, a number of local hacker groups online have published posts indicating knowledge of the cyberattacks on the media groups. For the past two years, Lundström said, most of these groups had been posting about purely technology-type of hacking.

Recently, however, these local hacker groups have been seen to be posting more political content. “Even if there is no direct connection, somebody is trying to weaponize them,” Lundström said.

It is unclear if these groups are involved in the attacks against the newsgroups. Some pages belonging to these groups were observed to have posted anti-media and anti-communist propaganda days before the attack. This is being investigated further.

DDoS-for-hire services?

By examining referral links shown in the logs collected from the three websites, digital forensic analysts found that the attacks used techniques similar to those used by blackhat search engine optimization (SEO) practitioners to funnel fake traffic to websites.

Further analysis of the logs of the three news websites during the period of the attacks showed that the botnet used to launch the attacks utilized several thousands of domains classified as “referrer spam” in the floods. These domains have been reported by users to the referrer spam list of Matomo, for having been used for SEO spam referral operations, according to Lundström. Matomo is an analytics company similar to Google Analytics.

More than 2,500 of these “spam referrer” domains were found in the logs of the attacks against the Rappler website.

This technique, according to Lundström, is often used by marketers who want to simulate traffic and sell marketing sites to advertisers. “There is a lot of money in that. This is used for scamming advertisers,” Lundström said.

Spammy links are what SEO practitioners often refer to as “bad neighborhood” sites. These are typically used by unethical SEO practitioners because having more sites linking back to a website could be one measure of a website’s importance.

This practice is discouraged by search engine platforms like Google as an SEO strategy. A website that is getting numerous referrals from these poor-quality websites could be demoted by the algorithm in search results pages, indicating another potential motive for choosing this attack technique against critical media.

Lundström also said this indicates that the ones behind the attack probably hired one of existing black market operations that has access to this other type of business. “This is a very specific signature. You do not normally see this in typical denial of service attacks. You need many IP addresses and many URLs to create this type of traffic.” 

Only very sophisticated actors will build their own infrastructure of this scale, according to Lundström. “They often sell these.” Transactions, he said, typically use bitcoin.

More attack signatures

After analyzing around 8 terabytes of logs from the attack against Rappler, Qurium identified close to 14,000 IP addresses flooding the website. The majority of the IP addresses were open proxies in the US, China, Germany, Indonesia, Russia, and Vietnam.

An open proxy is a proxy server that is accessible to any internet user. Typical proxy servers are usually used by companies to store and forward information such as web pages accessed within the network to control the amount of bandwidth used. Open proxies, on the other hand, are typically used by those looking for online anonymity and privacy to hide an IP address from web servers that the users visit.

Lundström compared a small sample of 2.5 million log lines from the attack against Rappler with data from the attacks against Vera Files and ABS-CBN and found similar referrer links.

They also compared the patterns from the Vera Files and Rappler attacks against 250,000 events recorded by the firewall of ABS-CBN. The patterns detected in the logs indicated the use of the DAVOSET, a tool for conducting DDoS attacks on websites by abusing other websites to make them the source of the attack. Similar patterns were found in the Rappler logs. – Rappler.com

Vile as sewage

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Vile as sewage

Editorial, Philippine Daily Inquirer /December 22, 2021

The Marcos loyalist Larry Gadon has again shown the stuff of which he is made through a video selfie so astoundingly vulgar that his own mother, wife, and other women in his family must surely cringe at it. They have every reason to be abashed and humiliated. Gadon filmed himself swearing and spewing obscenities at journalist Raissa Robles for her tweet about Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s conviction of tax evasion, and the vile closeup video has spread online like sewage. It must be his idea of a campaign video for his third stab at a Senate seat, which shows exactly what he thinks of voters.

Gadon must be dealt with as severely as his unacceptable behavior requires. Being an officer of the court by virtue of his being a lawyer, he is expected to comport himself in the manner of one who has an “obligation to promote justice and uphold the law.” As made clear by his latest stunt, he has learned nothing from the three-month suspension slapped on him by the Supreme Court in 2019 for “abusive” and “offensive” language. Surely a heavier penalty is fitting for a repeat offender.

No rebuke has yet been heard from the presidential candidate Marcos Jr., as though indicating that he is quite fine with the idea that an unrepentant and unreconstructed foulmouth is part of his senatorial slate, which, according to his “manang,” Sen. Imee Marcos, certain candidates are dying—“Nagpapakamatay”—to get into. Surely she is indignant that such a specimen of manly virulence is riding on the coattails of the late dictator’s son and namesake. But then maybe not. Her own silence suggests an absence of discomfort over the man’s shameful notoriety.

Gadon’s bad rep is immortalized in, among others, a television interview during the 2016 election campaign in which he claimed that the “only solution” to the continuing conflict in Mindanao was to bring in the troops and kill every man, woman, and child in a purposeful effort to wipe the race off the face of the earth. “Burahin ang lahi” was the phrase he used to preclude any possibility of misinterpretation and to drive his point home. That no wholesale condemnation met his straight-faced declaration, leaving him free to once more mount an election campaign, remains a point for bewilderment—unless the general public has become so accustomed to verbal violence as well as “jokes” and “hyperbole” in official communications that it now fails to recognize reprehensible language or behavior when they hear or see it.

The rights group Karapatan has called for Gadon’s disbarment for his verbal assault on Robles, a correspondent of the South China Morning Post. (A petition for his disbarment—for claiming that former president Benigno Aquino III died of HIV—is reportedly pending.) Karapatan correctly painted the general picture when it said that Gadon’s assault on Robles and the recent cyberattacks on online news sites Rappler and Vera Files “portray the increasingly hostile and violent online environment threatening press freedom on all fronts in the country, on top of the deadly challenges and threats and the culture of impunity that [journalists] face on the ground for their work.”

Robles’ tweet on Marcos Jr.’s tax conviction is the subject of a number of petitions filed at the Commission on Elections against his presidential candidacy. While Gadon is within bounds to question Robles’ tweet, he cannot be so privileged, so above the law, as to do so in a manner that so grossly insults her and violates not only her rights but also public sensibilities.

It is thus of utmost importance that Gadon be called out loudly and forcefully, and that the Supreme Court and the Integrated Bar of the Philippines mete out the highest sanctions for his “atrocious, beastly behavior,” as the Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines has correctly termed it. He has imposed himself and his objectionable views and actions on the public consciousness in many instances, including when, in April 2018, he in effect admitted to the House of Representatives committee on justice that mere hearsay was the basis for then Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno’s alleged acts of favoritism and manipulation, as contained in the impeachment complaint that he had filed against her. (Inexplicably, the committee members let his admission pass.) Or when he flipped the finger at Sereno supporters.

Gadon and his ilk make it their style to shock and awe, banking on the civility of others to not match vileness with more of the same. It would be folly to let them get away with it. They are a clear and present danger to a civilized and just society.

Looking for funds for Odette response? Gordon tells Duterte: Part of that is in Pharmally

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Looking for funds for Odette response? Gordon tells Duterte: Part of that is in Pharmally

By: Gabriel Pabico Lalu – Reporter / INQUIRER.net /December 21, 2021

MANILA, Philippines — President Rodrigo Duterte was reminded by Senator Richard Gordon that if the former is looking to fund the government’s response to the disaster caused by Typhoon Odette, he can look at the allegedly anomalous transactions done by Pharmally Pharmaceutical Corp.

Gordon during the hearing of the Senate blue ribbon committee on Tuesday told Duterte, who last Friday said that he is still looking for funds for the calamity response, that the money allegedly wasted by purchasing pandemic goods from Pharmally and the unpaid taxes could have saved money for the government.

“Kita niyo, sasabihin niyo pa […] ‘naubos talaga ‘yong pera natin’. Eh nakadagdag po dyan ‘yong nawalang pera dito sa Pharmally. Nakadagdag din ‘yong perang nawawala sa pangungulimbat at ang yumayaman lang ay ‘yong ilang mga tauhan ninyo,” he said at the beginning of the hearing.

(Look at you, you will now say: our funds have really run out. But that also includes money lost due to the Pharmally transactions. The money lost due to corruption also contributed to that, the corruption which only allowed people close to you to get rich.)

The Senator also accused Duterte of continuing to defend Chinese businessman Michael Yang, the President’s former economic adviser. According to Gordon, what Duterte did — hire Yang, a foreign national as an adviser — was really wrong.

Aside from that, he insisted that Yang and other individuals and companies linked to Pharmally did not pay their taxes.

“Sana tigilan niyo na at tulungan niyo na lang ang bayan natin imbes na pinagtatanggol ninyo si Michael Yang na isang banyaga na in-appoint niyo pa bilang economic adviser. Sorry Mr. President, minura niyo ako? Uulit-ulitin ko lang ‘yong ginawa niyo na hindi tama: hindi tayo nag-aappoint ng foreign economic adviser lalo na at may problema tayo sa China,” Gordon said.

(I hope that you help us, instead of just defending individuals like Michael Yang, a foreigner you appointed as economic adviser. Sorry Mr. President, you cursed me? But I will just repeat what I told you before: it is not correct to appoint a foreign economic adviser, especially that we have a problem with China.)

“Di ako nagtataka kaya maaaring pumihit kayo dahil na-impluwensyahan kayo naging malapit kayo, naging tuta kayo ng China, Mr. President — hindi ng tao ng China, ngunit ‘yong mga pinuno ng China,” he added.

(I wouldn’t be surprised why you shifted your stance, maybe because you were influenced, you were close, and you followed orders from China, Mr. President — not the people of China, but its leaders.)

(Look at you, you will now say: our funds have really run out. But that also includes money lost due to the Pharmally transactions. The money lost due to corruption also contributed to that, the corruption which only allowed people close to you to get rich.)

The Senator also accused Duterte of continuing to defend Chinese businessman Michael Yang, the President’s former economic adviser. According to Gordon, what Duterte did — hire Yang, a foreign national as an adviser — was really wrong.

Aside from that, he insisted that Yang and other individuals and companies linked to Pharmally did not pay their taxes.

During a briefing last Friday, Duterte said that he was late to a briefing because he talked with the finance cluster on where to source funds because the COVID-19 pandemic has dried up the government’s coffers.

“We are trying to raise the money, I was also late because I was talking with the budget, alam mo depleted ‘yong budget natin immensely because of the COVID, naubos talaga ‘yong pera natin,” he said.

(We are trying to raise the money, I was also late because I was talking with the budget, you know our budget has been depleted immensely because of the COVID, we really spent our money.)

“Itong COVID, naubos ang pera natin. So we’re trying to screen how much we can raise so that we can marshal it to the areas affected,” he added.

(This COVID really emptied our coffers. So we’re trying to screen how much we can raise so that we can marshal it to the areas affected.)

READ: Duterte says looking for money for typhoon victims as funds ‘depleted’ due to COVID-19

During the Senate blue ribbon committee’s hearing last October 28, it was revealed that certain individuals like Yang, former Procurement Service-Department of Budget and Management (PS-DBM) head Lloyd Christopher Lao, and Pharmally officials Mohit and Twinkle Dargani may have not paid the right amount of taxes.

READ: Yang, Lao, firms linked to Pharmally didn’t file ITRs for several years — Drilon

This is aside from allegations that Pharmally benefitted from the deals with the government, after the Commission on Audit (COA) spotted deficiencies in the Department of Health (DOH) COVID-19 funds worth P67.32 billion.

Of this P67.32 billion, DOH transferred over P42 billion to procuring agencies like the PS-DBM.

PS-DBM, headed then by Lao, approved contracts worth around P8.6 billion for Pharmally, despite the company having a small paid-up capital of P625,000.

There are also accusations that Pharmally’s equipment were overpriced, like in the case of face masks sold at over P27 per piece in April 2020, when other companies offered a price of P13 per piece.

READ: P8.7-B med supply deals went to tiny company

#ReliefPH: Help communities affected by Typhoon Odette

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#ReliefPH: Help communities affected by Typhoon Odette

Dec 17, 2021, Rappler.com

Thousands of Filipinos are in need of help and relief following the massive devastation caused by Typhoon Odette (Rai).

The typhoon made landfall at least nine times from December 16 to 17, triggering forced evacuations and leaving swaths of destruction in parts of the Visayas and Mindanao. It also affected power lines, causing blackouts in several areas.

In Western Visayas, four deaths in Iloilo and Guimaras were caused by trees that toppled over and crushed homes during the height of the typhoon. 

Several organizations are leading donation drives and relief efforts to respond to the needs of affected communities, especially those in Surigao.

This is a running list of verified initiatives that you can check out to help survivors of Typhoon Odette. For easier reference, we arranged them according to their target recipients – affected communities in general, specific Visayas provinces, and specific Mindanao provinces.

Please click on the link below for the initial list of groups involved in relief:

#ReliefPH: Help communities affected by Typhoon Odette

Typhoon Odette leaves at least 208 dead – PNP

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Typhoon Odette leaves at least 208 dead – PNP

Dec 20, 2021 Jairo Bolledo

MANILA, Philippines – Typhoon Odette, which devastated the Visayas and Mindanao, has left at least 208 people dead, according to the tally of the Philippine National Police (PNP). 

On Monday, December 20, PNP spokesperson Colonel Roderick Augustus Alba shared the consolidated data of the national police. Based on the tally, Central Visayas recorded the highest number of deaths with 129, as of 6 am on December 20. 

Caraga followed with 41 total deaths. Meanwhile, Western Visayas recorded 24 deaths, Northern Mindanao had seven, Eastern Visayas had six, and Zamboanga Peninsula recorded one death.

The breakdown of missing and injured are as follows: 

Missing
  • 43 – Central Visayas
  • 8 – Caraga
  • 1 – Eastern Visayas
Injured
  • 118 – Caraga
  • 103 – Central Visayas
  • 15 – Eastern Visayas
  • 3 – Northern Mindanao

Since the typhoon hit between December 14 to 17, the PNP has been monitoring Typhoon Odette through its regional and local police units. 

On December 18, the typhoon exited the Philippine Area of Responsibility.

Typhoon Odette, the 15th tropical cyclone in the Philippines for 2021, made at least nine landfalls in the country. – Rappler.com 

Jersey City Municipal Council Unanimously Passes Resolution to Provide Sanctuary to Human Rights Defenders for the Philippines and Endorse the Philippine Human Rights Act

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Jersey City Municipal Council Unanimously Passes Resolution to Provide Sanctuary to Human Rights Defenders for the Philippines and Endorse the Philippine Human Rights Act

December 17, 2021

Jersey City—On the evening of Wednesday, December 15, Jersey City’s Municipal Council unanimously passed the Resolution Protecting Jersey City Human Rights Defenders for the Philippines and Endorsing the Philippine Human Rights Act (Resolution 21-866). Jersey City is now the first city on the East Coast to have endorsed the Philippine Human Rights Act and the first in the country to extend protections for human rights defenders who may be targeted by the Philippine government. 

The municipal council resolution was the initiative of the New Jersey for the Philippine Human Rights Act Coalition (NJ4PHRA) which includes Anakbayan NJ, GABRIELA NJ, Malaya Movement NJ chapter, ICHRP, and Migrante NJ, as well as other allies and community leaders in Jersey City. The resolution was introduced by Councilman-at-Large Rolando Lavarro. 

The Philippine Anti-Terrorism Act was signed into law on July 3, 2020 by the Philippines President Duterte; has vague definitions of terrorism; effectively criminalizes dissent against the Philippine government; and authorizes the government to conduct arrests without warrants, surveil suspects for up to 90 days, and detain suspects for up to 24 days. The extraterritorial applications of this law has implications for Filipinos and non-Filipinos both inside and outside the Philippines.

Jessamyn Bonafe, a local organizer and member of Anakbayan North Jersey, a grassroots Filipino youth organization, shared her experience of being red-tagged, or labeled as a terrorist, by the Philippine government. “Organizations like Anakbayan have been integrated within this community for over 10 years. We have had various campaigns that served the Jersey City community.  Even as COVID hit, we helped to address the needs of the people through a food distribution program called Peace Land and Bread. Jersey City community members have also supported our cause and refuted these claims of us being terrorists.”

Kristianne (Kate) Molina, artist at Mana Contemporary, member of GABRIELA NJ and NJ4PHRA emphasized, “the resolution is to de-escalate confrontations between opposing groups claiming activists as terrorists and work on making an equitable, healthy, and safe city while keeping our political liberties intact for critics of the Philippine War on Drugs and the government’s delay in COVID-19 aid”.

Bernadette Patino, a leader in the Malaya Movement New Jersey Chapter, said that local activists are targeted by the Philippine government, “My fellow organizers are being targeted by the highest levels of government in the Philippines, being called ‘extremists’ simply for advocating for our U.S. tax dollars to be spent on our communities here and not go into the hands of a murderous dictator in the Philippines.”

Councilman at-large Rolando Lavarro said the “extraterritorial implications of the Anti Terror Law is real, and as a country we should protect U.S. citizens whether here or travelling abroad and ensure that their rights protected and that they are not subject to human rights violations.” Lavarro led the introduction of the resolution in the Municipal Council.

Ward E Councilman James Solomon expressed his support, “Thank you to all the activists who spoke so movingly and powerfully on the authoritarian regime targeting free expression and political actions.” Ward D Councilman Yousef Saleh shared, “I commend the community members that bring this forward and there are a lot of community members we need to protect.”

Members of Our Revolution and Democratic Socialists of America, who were calling in to support the Medicare for All Resolution, also extended their support. Joel Brooks, a member of Democratic Socialists of America, said, “Hundreds of Filipino Healthcare workers have been frontline caregivers sacrificing their bodies during this pandemic and we need our tax dollars to stay in the United States and not fund repressive anti-human rights governments.”

In passing the Resolution, the city council also endorsed the Philippine Human Rights Act, which will suspend assistance to the police or military of the Philippines until its human rights abuses cease and the perpetrators are held accountable. The bill currently has the support of 28 US representatives, none of whom are from New Jersey. Community members hope that passage of this resolution will help convince NJ legislators, such as Representative Albio Sires, Representative Tom Malinowski, Representative Andy Kim, and Representative Chris Smith, to cosponsor the bill. 

Organizing locally can affect governments internationally and it takes twice the collective effort to organize under a pandemic. The Resolution Protecting Jersey City Human Rights Defenders for the Philippines and Endorsing the Philippine Human Rights Act (Resolution 21-866) was a collective effort and is a testament to the diverse solidarity within the Jersey City community.

For reference: Kristianne Molina & Bernadette Patino, New Jersey for the Philippine Human Rights Act (NJ4PHRA) Coalition  nj4phra@gmail.com 

NJ4PHRA is a coalition of organizations and individuals based in New Jersey organizing to defend human rights in the Philippines by passing the Philippine Human Rights Act in the US Congress. @nj4phra

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