Students held a rally at the University of the Philippines in Diliman last August 14 to condemn attempts by state security forces to place police and military forces in campuses. They were joined by other organizations from marginalized sectors.
Following Senator Ronald dela Rosa and interior secretary Eduardo Año’s demands that police and military presence be allowed in state universities and colleges to combat student activism, the students said such moves are in violation of their Constitutionally-guaranteed rights. (Video by Jek Alcaraz)
The member of the 18th Congress who probably has the
least formal education took to the floor of the House of Representatives last
Monday, July 29, visibly nervous but delivered the most powerful speech of the
night nonetheless.
Neophyte representative Eufemia Cullamat of Bayan Muna
delivered her first privileged speech, vowed to defend the Lumad schools that
are under attack by government forces, and called for the respect of the
indigenous peoples’ right to self-determination over their ancestral domains.
Cullamat apologized for what she feared may be
mispronounced words, but she soon hit her stride and passionately delivered her
seven-page speech.
“I admit I am one of the very few members in this
hall who may have only finished elementary education and finds it difficult to
understand English words or read them. I am living proof of the government’s
failure to provide education for everyone because the nearest school from where
I live is 20 kilometers away,” Cullamat said in Filipino.
A member of the Manobo tribe from the mountains of
Barangay Diatogon in Lianga, Surigao del Sur, Ka Femia railed against the
attacks on Lumad schools she helped build. She recalled how she witnessed the
murder of her cousin Dionel Campos, her uncle Datu Jovillo Sinzo, and
Alternative Learning Center for Agricultural and Livelihood Development’s
(Alcadev’s) executive director Emerito Samarca on September 1, 2015.
“I was shaking, prone on the ground, while the
soldiers and the paramilitary peppered us non-stop with bullets. I clearly saw
how Dionel was ordered to lie on the ground by a paramilitary. I clearly saw
how his brain splattered when he was shot,” Cullamat said.
“I embraced Dionel’s children as they wailed over
their father’s lifeless and violated body.
I saw one of our elders, Datu Bello, bludgeoned several times that
caused fractures on his legs and arms,” Cullamat added.
She also narrated how she saw Alcadev’s principal Samarca lying in one of the classrooms, his lifeless body bearing signs of torture. “His body was riddled with bullets, full of cigarette burns and his throat slashed,” she narrated.
Cullamat said the massacre was one incident that shows
how the government regards the Lumad’s struggle to establish indigenous
peoples’ schools.
“What pains me, Mr. Speaker, is that these
horrible attacks are still being perpetrated in our schools, against our
teachers, against our children. Not only do they destroy our schools, they file
trumped-up charges against our teachers and supporters; they also imprison
them,” she said.
“They disrespect, they burn the schools we
sacrifice so much to put up,” she added, her voice breaking in pent-up
rage.
Cullamat said that for many decades, the national
minority had been deprived of basic social services, including education. She
said they have been victimized by their lack of education, as well as the
difficulty in obtaining them on the flatlands.
But the massacre goes beyond the government’s false
accusations that the Lumad schools are disguised New People’s Army (NPA)
training and recruitment grounds, Ka Femia said.
“That massacre was clearly meant to intimidate us
into allowing coal mining in our ancestral lands. As a paramilitary trooper
once said, ‘it would not have happened if we allowed mining,'” she said.
But the Lumad of Diatogon have long decided to defend their land from
environmental plunder, a decision that has cost them many lives and the existence
of their beloved schools.
Cullamat said 15 coal mining, as well as palm oil
plantation companies, are salivating over 200,000 hectares inside Lumad-Manobo
communities in the Andap Valley Complex in Surigao del Sur.
Still, Cullamat said, they will fight for their
schools. She said they persevered in establishing them and succeeded through
blood, sweat, and tears and with the help of the church and non-government
organizations. The schools taught them to read, write, and count.
“Because of these schools, our children are being
educated in ways that are respectful of our traditions, culture, and our need
to improve our lives, especially through agriculture so that we may prosper
while we protect our ancestral domains for future generations,” she
explained.
Cullamat also cited that many graduates of their Lumad
schools have gone on to earn college degrees and have gone back to their
communities as teachers, agriculturists, health workers and organizers. They
have also become trusted advisers to their tribal leaders.
She added that her children studied in the Lumad
schools and taught her and other adults in their communities to read and
understand Filipino. “My dear colleagues, I now stand before you, speaking
in Filipino, because of these Lumad schools,” she said.
The success of the schools in educating the Lumad have
made them targets of harassments and attacks, the neophyte legislator said. She
cited the recent decision of the Department of Education to suspend the permits
of 55 Salugpongan Ta’tanu Igkanugon Learning Center schools in Davao upon the
prodding of national security adviser Hermogenes Esperon.
“Esperon accuses the Salugpungan schools of training Lumad children to become New People’s Army guerrillas and how to shoot or dismantle guns, as he accuses other schools run by the Clans (Center for Lumad Advocacy Networking and Services), Misfi (Mindanao Interfaith Services Foundation, Inc.), Trifpss (Tribal Filipino Program of Surigao del Sur), and Alcadev. All these are lies that are only meant to close down our schools and shut down our national minority organizations,” she cried, her voice rising in anger.
As an indigenous person member of Congress, Cullamat
said she must report to Congress that the attacks against the national minority
do not only happen in Mindanao. She said the Dumagats who oppose the mega-dam
projects in Quezon and the Igorots who with the Chico River Irrigation Pump
Project in the Cordilleras are also under attack.
“In spite of all these, the national minority would persevere in defense of our ancestral lands, the source of our life and livelihood,” she vowed.
“We will persevere in defending our schools for
the education of our children. We will persevere in our quest for justice for
the victims of human rights violations,” she added. # (Raymund B. Villanueva)
https://kodao.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/5.jpg375720Kodao Productionshttps://kodao.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/kodao.pngKodao Productions2019-08-01 17:08:192019-08-01 17:30:491st Manobo in Congress vows to defend Lumad schools, national minorities' rights over ancestral lands
Sumugod sa opisina ng Department of Education (DepEd) Central Office sa Pasig City noong Hulyo 17 ang mga progresibong grupo para batikusin ang desisyon ng ahensiya sa ginawa nitong suspensyon sa 55 kampus ng Salugpongan Ta’ Tanu Igkanogon Community Learning Schools sa Southern Mindanao.
Ayon sa Save Our Schools (SOS) Network, malinaw na hindi suspensyon ang layunin ng DepEd kundi tuluyang pagpapasara sa mga nasabing eskwelahan.
Mababaw umano ang basehan ni DepEd Secretary Leonor Briones na suspensyon at batay lamang sa salaysay ni National Security Adviser Hermogenes Esperon Jr.
Dagdag pa ng SOS Network, ginagawang lehitimo lamang ng DepEd ang walang humpay na pag-atake ng AFP sa mga eskwelahan ng Lumad.
Marami na anilang paaralang Lumad ang pwersahang ipinasara ng militar sa mahigit dalawang taon ng martial law sa Mindanao. (Music: News Background Bidyo ni: Joseph Cuevas/ Kodao)
https://kodao.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/lumad.jpg533800Kodao Productionshttps://kodao.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/kodao.pngKodao Productions2019-07-18 16:15:112019-07-18 16:15:12Pagpapasara sa 55 Lumad Schools, binatikos
Teaching is not about money but about public service, Education Secretary Leonor Briones told her constituents [at the start of the new school year last month].
She was right — at least about the public service part.
Teaching is also a job and not volunteer work. One has to have certain qualifications to teach, in exchange for which the successful applicant correctly expects to be justly compensated. Doing a public service job to get which one has to have a college degree and pass a government examination means getting paid for it. Briones and her fellow bureaucrats themselves are at the very least as much for the money as for the opportunity to serve the public, and it is simply not fair to expect teachers not to demand that they be paid fairly for the work they do.
Briones was nevertheless implying that teachers are in the profession only for the money. Adding insult to injury, she went on to say that the teachers of Bacoor High School’s converting a toilet rather than one of their laboratories into a faculty room was intended for “dramatic” effect. Their own principal disparaged those teachers by saying they don’t need a faculty room to rest in, in apparent ignorance of the fact that such facilities are not for rest, but for providing teachers the opportunity to discuss academic issues among themselves and to learn from each other.
Briones, whom one media report said has taken a “hands off” stance on the issue, was responding to questions on the demand of public school teachers for salary increases, which they’ve been asking for, and have been denied, for years. Numbering 800,000 nationally, public school teachers comprise the largest group of employees in government service. But even their number and the fact that by law, education gets the largest allocation in the budget annually, have not benefited them much.
Then President Benigno Aquino III did raise through Executive Order 201 the salaries of civilian and military government employees in 2016 before his term ended. But what teachers received was only a very small 11.9 percent of their then salaries compared to the 233 percent increase in the pay of the President of the Philippines. As most Filipinos know by now, the P20,500 per month most teachers are still getting today is barely enough to support their families because of the huge increases in the inflation rate since 2017. Despite the lip service politicians paid teachers during the last mid- term elections, education is not their first priority. Keeping themselves in power is — hence policemen and soldiers’ being paid twice the salaries teachers make.
Compared to 2016, the salaries teachers receive can purchase today even less of the goods and services they need to live with some dignity and freedom from worrying where to get the money for junior’s college tuition, or the hubby’s prostate operation. And yet as financially troubled as many are, some teachers provide out of their own shallow pockets the chalk, pencils, paper and other needs of their charges government cannot always provide, while they cope with the daily horrors of overcrowded classes, makeshift classrooms and even the lack of such basic instructional necessities. Some teach hundreds of students in as many as three shifts a day. Others even provide their poor students the nutritious food their parents can’t afford.
Teaching may be a public service, but the compensation teachers receive is hardly commensurate to the multiplicity of tasks they are called upon to perform. Those tasks include not only teaching a multitude of subjects and being at the forefront of the national imperative of making every Filipino at least literate and numerate. They also have to entertain their superiors when these visit their schools, perform election duties every three years, and be model citizens for the entire community.
But the most crucial teacher’s task of all is that of awakening the love of and respect for learning among the young, in preparation for their assuming the roles of leaders, citizens, professionals and productive members of society. But no administration seems to have recognized this enough to provide teachers, most of whom are surviving from pay check to pay check and are heavily indebted, the salaries that that mandate demands.
Then Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte did promise to raise teachers’ salaries in 2015 when he was thinking of running for President. He has since promised it eight more times since he came to power, but it hasn’t happened. Instead he’s raised the salaries of police and military personnel without any prodding, apparently because he thinks them the guarantors of his remaining in office until 2022 – or even beyond, should plans to trash the current Constitution and to replace it with one more to his and his accomplices’ liking materialize.
In addition to teachers’ being overworked and underpaid, the police and military establishments that Mr. Duterte so obviously favors have even red-baited the biggest teachers’ organization in the Philippines, the Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT). The Director General of the Philippine National Police himself challenged ACT members to prove they’re not in a Communist Party of the Philippines “front,” and even tried to prevent their serving as members of the Board of Election Inspectors during the last elections.
The inevitable conclusion one can draw from all these is that, focused as it is on the preservation of personal, familial and class interests, like its predecessors the current regime not only has education as a last priority. Although its bureaucrats can hardly articulate that thought, teaching is also thought to be a threat because teachers preside over the first encounter with learning and knowledge of the country’s young. In the minds of this benighted country’s ruling elite it can mean arming the next generations with such nonsense as the need for change and even revolution.
Not that that is an entirely mistaken view. As seemingly hackneyed as the cliches “Knowledge is Power” and “The Truth Shall Set You Free” are, they do say something that all human history and experience have demonstrated is true enough. Knowledge is indeed empowering: it provides people the understanding of their political, social and economic environments that can enable them to intelligently evaluate, and if necessary change them. By providing men and women the intellectual means to shape their own destiny and the society they live in, the truth liberates them from the vagaries of chance and the shackles of ignorance.
In the 1950s, in response to McCarthyite persecution of universities in the United States, rather than deny their commitment to change, progressive academics affirmed the imperative for true higher learning to question the political, economic and social structures of their time. The capacity to do that is ideally implanted in the brains of the very young when they enter the educational system, and through the teachers who first introduce them to the world of learning, whether the ABCs, arithmetic, literature, geography or any other field of knowledge.
In their heart of hearts the rulers of this sorry land know how dangerous to them —and to injustice, inequality, poverty and mass misery — true knowledge can be. Keeping teachers disadvantaged and indebted while pampering the police and military is only one of the ways through which they protect the unjust order that for far too long has kept them in riches and power.
“Ang wika ay isang simbolo ng iyong matayog na pinanggagalingan. Kung ito ay isantabi natin, malamang wala tayong patutunguhan bilang mamamayan. Ipagbunyi, mahalin, yakapin, pagyamanin ang sariling atin.”—Bayang Barrios, mang-aawit
https://kodao.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/bayang.jpg960960Kodao Productionshttps://kodao.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/kodao.pngKodao Productions2019-06-06 08:36:422019-06-06 08:37:33Kung isasantabi ang wika
“Sa wika at panitikang Filipino ay mas malayang naipapahayag natin ang ating mga puso at kaluluwa. Sa pagtanggal ng mga araling ito ay unti-unti nila tayong binubusalan.”—Ricky Lee, manunulat
https://kodao.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/rl.jpg960960Kodao Productionshttps://kodao.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/kodao.pngKodao Productions2019-06-05 17:04:112019-06-05 17:04:14'Unti-unti na tayong binubusalan'
“Kaya nakakadismaya ito sa ating mga Pilipino dahil imbes na tatagan ang ating pagkatao sa pamamagitan ng edukasyon at kulturang Pilipino ay inilalayo tayo sa posibilidad na higit nating makilala ang ating pagkatao.”—Dr. Roland Tolentino (guro, manunulat, kritiko)
https://kodao.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/roland.jpg960960Kodao Productionshttps://kodao.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/kodao.pngKodao Productions2019-06-04 10:21:522019-06-04 10:21:54Nakakadismayang desisyon ng CHED at Korte Suprema hinggil sa asignaturang Filipino at Panitikan
“Ang pagtanggal sa Filipino at Panitikan sa Kolehiyo ay isang palatandaan na nakakaligtaan nila na ang edukasyon ng mga Pilipino ay ibinatay sa edukasyon ng mga kolonyalistang Amerikano.”—Dr. Bienvenido Lumbera, chairperson emeritus, Concerned Artists of the Philippines/Pambansang Alagad ng Sining
https://kodao.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cap-1.jpg960960Kodao Productionshttps://kodao.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/kodao.pngKodao Productions2019-05-29 08:33:032019-05-29 08:33:06Hinggil sa pagtatanggal sa Filipino at Panitikan sa kolehiyo
NORWAY–The Arthur Svensson Prize for 2019 goes to Filipina teacher leader and ACT Teacher’s Party Representative France Castro for her many years of labor organizing and struggle for academic rights in the Philippines.
Castro won the award for her many years of struggle to organize teachers and fighting for basic workers rights in the Philippines, wrote the Svensson Foundation in a press statement.
Castro is invited to Oslo to receive the prize at Rockefeller on June 12.
The award goes with a cash prize worth half a million kroners or about three million pesos.
One of 10 worst countries
The Philippines, according to The International Trade Union Federation, is one of the 10 worst countries in the world for workers and union stewards.
According to the ITUC, the country does not respect basic labor rights such as the right to organize and collective bargaining, and child labor rights as well as against discrimination and forced labor.
The group also noted the prevalence of extreme state violence and oppression of civil rights.
Workers and union activists experience threats and persecution and have to fight for basic rights in order to organize and against persecution from the government and employers, the group noted.
Attack on trade unionists
In a press statement the Svensson Foundation said, “Despite threats and persecution, there are brave people who fight for trade union rights. The regime has attacked trade union activists among teachers and journalists. Some have been killed and many had been imprisoned. Death threats are not unusual. Police officers had also launched an organized campaign that publicly vilified unionized teachers.”
The group added Castro works for democracy and human rights and has worked as a teacher and took initiatives to start a union in Quezon City.
After a few years, she became the secretary general for the Alliance for Concerned Teachers (ACT) and organized the teachers under a common union, it added.
The first CBA
ACT under Castro´s leadership grew in a very short time to become one of the country´s biggest unions in the Philippines.
The alliance signed its first collective bargaining agreement (CBA) in 2016 for teachers in Philippine public schools, an agreement that recognizes the right to strike.
She has also been elected to the Philippine Congress where she has, among others, worked for the expansion of maternity leave to 105 days.
“As a representative of teachers, she has fought against neo-liberal reforms in the education sector and better work environment for teachers. She has also engaged in the fight against lowering age of criminal responsibility for children, and the abolition of obligatory military training in schools and against the killing of thousands of youths under Duterte´s anti-drug war,” the foundation noted.
In Congress
It noted that Castro, in connection with her and her union´s advocacy for indigenous peoples rights to education, has been arrested by the paramilitary and arrested in November 2018 during a solidarity visit of the indigenous groups under attack in Mindanao.
“Both in and out of Congress, she has all the time fought for the poor, workers and human rights against powerful opponents,” the Foundation wrote.
Awarding on 12 June
The Svensson prize is given to a person or organization that worked to promote trade union rights and or strengthen union organizing in the world.
The award is an international prize started by Industri Energi and awarded annually by the Committee for Arthur Svensson International Prize for Trade Rights.
The prize is at 500,000 Norwegian kroner. Half of the amount will be given to the prize winner and a certain amount will be set aside for follow up work connected to the prize winner or similar projects.
The prize is named after the former leader of the Chemical Union Arthur Svensson who was known for his international advocacy. #
https://kodao.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/18.jpg639960Kodao Productionshttps://kodao.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/kodao.pngKodao Productions2019-04-15 21:50:242019-04-15 22:49:27ACT Rep. France Castro wins Norwegian prize for work on trade union rights
Sa kauna-unahang pagkakataon, isang Moving Up Ceremony ng Lumad Bakwit School ang ginanap sa University of the Philippines Integrated School Auditorium noong Marso 29, 2019.
Ang natatanging seremonya ay may temang “Lumad Bakwit: Patatagin ang Hanay, Mag-aral at Sumulong, Ipaglaban ang Lupa at Kinabukasan”. Umabot sa 70 estudyanteng Lumad ang pinarangalan kung saan 30 dito ay nagtapos ng junior high school.
Ipinakita nila na purisgido silang makatapos ng pag-aaral at ipaglaban ang kanilang karapatan, lalo na sa pagtatanggol ang kanilang lupang ninuno.
Pinasalamatan nila ang iba’t-ibang mga institusyon, simbahan, unibersidad at paaralan na tumulong sa kanila sa Metro Manila at karatig-probinsya na tumulong upang matagumpay nilang maitawid ang isang academic school year .
Sa kabila ito nang matinding atake sa kanilang paaralan kung saan 85 paaralang Lumad na may halos 3,000 mag-aaral, guro at mga magulang sa iba’t-ibang bahagi ng Mindanao ang pwersahang pinasara ng mga militar at paramilitar dahil sa walang tigil na militarisasyon.
Tumitindi din ang paglabag sa karapatang pantao katulad nang paghuli sa kanilang mga guro, pagpatay sa kanilang mga lider-katutubo at umiiral na Martial Law sa Mindanao. (Bidyo nila: Joseph Cuevas at Maricon Montajes)
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