Bulatlat.com’s editor Benjie Oliveros interviews Rey Claro Casambre, executive director of the Philippine Peace Center and one of the convenors of the Philippine Ecumenical Peace Platform regarding the controversies surrounding the peace talks.
On the 45th anniversary of the New People’s Army (NPA), revolutionary forces from the Southern Tagalog region hold a lighting rally in Manila to salute to all the communist guerrillas in the country. They also call for the immediate release of alleged top communist leaders Wilma Austria and Benito Tiamzon who were arrested last week.
Monique Wilson, a world class Filipino actress and global diretor for One Billion for Rising Justice campaign, takes up the cudgels for Hacienda Luisita women’s struggle for genuine land reform.
Hacienda Luisita farmers share how their huts were destroyed and how they were evicted from their farm lands last month by the security guards of the Tarlac Development Corporation, a firm owned by the family of President Benigno Simeon Cojuangco Aquino III.
On February 14, 2014, women’s rights advocates gathered to rise for One Billion Rising for Justice, a global movement to stop violence against women and children. In the Philippines, women’s group Gabriela and One Billion Rising global director Monique Wilson led the campaign. They slammed the Philippine government for its criminal neglect on the Filipino people.
A grandmother talks about losing her house to typhoon Yolanda and having to move her family far from their livelihood. Meanwhile, houses of other typhoon survivors were demolished to make way for the government’s relocation project.
At the height of supertyphoon Yolanda (international name:Haiyan) on November 8, a power barge operated by the Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management Corporation (PSALM) slammed against houses in Barangay Botongon, Estancia, Iloilo. This resulted in death, displacement and continuing endangerment to thousands of residents in the massive oil spill that followed.
Two months after, the government has still to finish the clean up.
Teachers and students at Botongon Elementary School continue to hold classes up to two hours a day in the midst of clean up operations in their school, exposing them to various health risks.
Bulatlat.com’s 2013 Yearender Multimedia report
At around 3 p.m., Dec. 21, policemen under the command of Tarlac City Philippine National Police (PNP) chief Bayani Razalan, Provincial Director Alex Sintin, chief of Great Star Security Agency, Mauro dela Cruz and Tarlac Development Corporation representative Villamor Lagunero arrested Hacienda Luisita farmers Vicente Sambo, Rod and his mother Eufemia Acosta, Ronald Sakay, husband and wife Jose and Elsa Baldiviano, and Manuel and Mamerto Mandigma. They are now detained at Camp Macabulos, headquarters of PNP-Tarlac. No charges have been filed against them as of Dec. 22.
In Leyte, survivors of Typhoon Yolanda decry the lack of assistance received from the government despite millions of donations, funds allocated for them.
On November 8, 2013, Typhoon Yolanda (international name Haiyan) hit the Philippines and left thousands dead and millions more homeless in its wake.