Home 2017 (Page 13)

Year: 2017

Bayan… Nasadlak sa Dusa: Binigkas na Salita ng Isang Kabataan

Magandang araw sa inyong lahat
nakaaliw kayong tingnan
nakagayak ng makabayang kasuotan
narito kaming muli sa inyong harapan
upang magpahayag ng aming kamalayan
# hindi po ito pirated
walang bahid ng internet
promise!

Ang pamagat ng tulang ito ay
BAYAN… NASADLAK SA DUSA

Isang mapagpalayang araw sa inyong lahat
Ang tulang ito ay inaalay namin
Sa aming mga kapwa kabataan
Mga kabataan na pag-asa ng bayan
Mga kabataan na pag-asa ng tunay na pagbabago
At tunay na kapayapaan

Mga kabataan, sino tayo?
Ako, ikaw, tayo
Meron ka bang narinig sa panahong kasalukuyan?

Nahagip ba ng iyong kamalayan
Ang nangyayari sa ating bayan?
Ano ang iyong narinig?

Ano ang iyong nakita?
Ano ang iyong naramdaman?

Mula sa kanluran
Patungong timog ng ating bayan
Kaydami nang pinaslang|
Libu-libo ..
kahit inosente
Namamatay
Pati mga kabataan!

Sino ang may pakana?
Sino ang dapat sisihin?
Sino ang kawawa?

Ang sabi ng ating lider
Pagbabago .. kapayapaan
Ngunit.. kaninong pagbabago?
Kaninong kapayapaan?

Halang ang mga kaluluwa
Sino ang tunay na may sala?

Sino ang inosente?
Sino ang kawawa?

Mga kabataan
Dapat mapagmasid
Dapat mapagmatyag

Nasaan ang hustisya?
Nakapiring pa rin ba?
O dilat na ang mga mata?

Para sa mayayaman lang ba?
Habang nawawalan ng halaga
Ang mga nasadlak sa dusa..

Bakit di na tayo marunong umunawa?
Bakit di na tayo marunong umiyak?
Bakit wala na tayong awa?
Bakit kay bilis nating humusga?
Bakit wala tayong pakialam?
Bakit nakalimutan na natin kung ano ang tama?

Ang buhay natin ay pansamantala lamang
Kayong nasa kapangyahiran
‘Wag sanang malasing sa inyong kagalingan
‘Wag sanang palamon sa inyong kamangmangan

Nakamasid ang langit
Sa lahat ng kaganapan
Kailanma’y hindi maaaring isawalang bahala
Ang lahat ng patayan

May hustisya sa lupa
May hustisya sa langit
Kayo ang pipili
Saan nyo gustong manatili?

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Clerical abuse of children has to be addressed

Monsignor Arnel Lagarejos, a Filipino priest, has been arrested by authorities for allegedly escorting a minor to a hotel in a suburb of Manila. (Photo by Noli Yamsuan)

Arrest of priest shows everyone has to answer for their behavior no matter what station they hold in life

Father Shay Cullen, Manila, Philippines

August 24, 2017 

The arrest of a Filipino Catholic priest accused of trafficking a 13-year-old minor is highly unusual.

He has been charged with violating the Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act of the Philippines.

Most cases of alleged clerical child abuse go unreported or are covered up in the Philippines. In other countries, the scandal of clerical child abuse has left thousands of child victims without redress, help, therapy, or a chance for justice.

The Philippines’ Child Protection Law has a provision that is designed to criminalize such an act where a child is taken to a secluded place — say a vehicle or motel — by an adult not her relative for the purpose of sexual abuse. This provision of the law aims to prevent any act of rape and to bring the suspect to justice.

The institutional church, that is, the hierarchy in many countries, has been shown to have failed in its obligation and duty to protect children and actively pursue clerical child abusers when the evidence was strong and clear.

In the past, church institutions in various countries even facilitated payoffs to parents of child victims and tried to use its influence to have authorities drop charges against priests and religious. Other clergy were moved to other parishes when child abuse complaints were made.

In many cases, there was no action by church officials to protect the child and report the alleged abuser to authorities for the alleged crimes. There have been big changes in church procedures in dealing with child abuse cases by clergy nowadays, and a zero tolerance policy is in place, thanks to Pope Francis.

Cardinal George Pell of Australia, the highest Vatican official to have been charged, is facing complaints of having allegedly covered up similar cases. While we must respect the principle that everyone is considered innocent until proven guilty and not to be falsely accused, when the evidence is clear, then each person has a case to answer.

The case of the Filipino monsignor is serious as he was apprehended in his vehicle on the way to a motel with the 13-year-old child. The mother reported the incident to the police, so it is presumed that she knows the age of her child. The priest allegedly had a gun. The girl previously told social workers that the man took her to the motel in June and warned her “at gunpoint” not to allow other customers to “book” her.

Everyone has to answer for their behavior no matter what station they hold in life. The higher their ascendancy and position, the greater their responsibility to answer the charges, and all are to be dealt with equally before the law. No privilege or power ought to excuse anyone from facing the truth.

In our experience of helping victim-survivors of child sexual abuse and seeking justice for them, we have found that the majority of abusers are in fact neighbors or so-called friends of the family. The worst offenders are stepfathers, the mother’s live-in partners and the biological father.

This indicates how vulnerable children are to the crimes of adults. The youngest child in our Preda Foundation home for abused girls is 6 years old. The average age of victim-survivors is 14 years old. The fact that there have been no child abuse cases brought out in public against the clergy is very significant, and it can be presumed that they are being protected.

We have had legal successes every year with brave and courageous children who are empowered to testify in court and speak without fear about the abuse they suffered. We win an average of four convictions a year.

This year, we succeeded in having three cases of child sexual abuse and multiple rape elevated to the regional trial courts. We hope for another three cases we filed to go to trial this year. The prosecutors, now mostly female, are dedicated and are people of integrity.

With constant care, gathering and presentation of evidence that is done for all victim-survivors, we can pursue justice no matter how difficult it is. We receive challenges and counter-charges against us but our staff are resilient and knowledgeable and can answer the counter-charges and win.

We have to take a stand and fight on for justice with and for the children. We hope that everybody will support victim-survivors so that justice, elusive as it maybe, will prevail.

Irish Father Shay Cullen, SSC, established the Preda Foundation in Olongapo City in 1974 to promote human rights and the rights of children, especially victims of sex abuse.

Mother fears 10-year-old son fighting in Marawi

The Moro Islamic Liberation Front, the largest Philippine separatist group, has released more than 800 child soldiers over the years as part of its work with the United Nations. (Photo by Mark Navales)

Woman calls for troops to spare children fighting alongside militants after seeing picture of boy resembling kidnapped son

Divina M. Suson, Iligan City  Philippines

August 29, 2017

A mother whose three year-old child was abducted in 2010 from their Manila home begged military officials Aug. 27 to spare children fighting for an Islamic State-inspired rebel group in the southern island of Mindanao, saying she believed one of them could be her long-lost son.

Rowhanisa Abdul Jabar, a resident of Dagupan, Tondo, Manila, made her appeal after seeing social media posts of child fighters in Marawi.

Media reports have identified children — anyone under the 18 year Philippine recruitment age — as young as 10 fighting in the country’s south.

One of them bore a striking similarity to her son, Azramie Magondacan also known as Ram-Ram, she told ucanews.com.

Jabar said a servant abducted Azramie while she was working in her shop. The servant was later arrested, but Jabar’s son and the servant’s accomplices were never found.

“I’ve had a hard time moving on,” Jabar said. “Then I saw these child fighters. One of them looks like my son.”

“Sometimes, I pray it’s not him. It is too painful to think of a son who has become a fighter for the IS,” Jabar said in a phone interview.

She appealed to soldiers in Marawi to ensure the safety of child fighters.

“I hope they do not kill them. If that is really my son, I hope he survives the fighting. I would like a DNA test to know the truth,” Jabar said.

Col. Romeo Brawner, deputy commander of government forces fighting in Marawi, has confirmed the media reports that children have been spotted fighting alongside the Muslim rebel groups.

“Our soldiers have a soft spot for young fighters but they are forced to shoot them if they get too threatening,” Brawner told reporters.

“Once time, they saw a boy running. He was not carrying a gun so they did not shoot. But the next day, the same child was firing at them, so they did not have a choice,” said Brawner.

Col. Edgar Arevalo, Armed Forces public affairs chief, said rescued civilians also confirmed that children are among the enemy fighters.

The U.S. State Department reported that separatist groups in the southern island of Mindanao released last year more than 170 child members.

The Moro Islamic Liberation Front, the country’s biggest separatist group, said it had released 800 child soldiers over eight years as part of a United Nations effort.

But breakaway groups of the MILF were also reported recruiting children these past two years. The Abu Sayyaf, a smaller, extremist organization, is believed to have scores of children fighting or serving in a supporting role.

UCAN News

Sangguniang Laiko Statement on House Bill 6027 “An Act Providing for Grounds for The Dissolution of a Marriage”

 

House Bill 6027 proposes to make legal the dissolution of marriage on two grounds: irreconcilable differences and chronic unhappiness.

Before we entertain the dissolution proposition it is imperative to examine the institution of marriage itself, and how it is viewed in the predominantly Catholic Philippine society.

Catholics and Christians in general reject the idea of dissolution of marriage or divorce. This is because Christian doctrine asserts that marriage is a Divine Institution that God himself gave to man as a gift after God created man and made him in His own image. Jesus Christ himself elevated marriage to the dignity of a sacrament.

Thus to a Catholic Christian, marriage is a covenant- a special contract between two baptized persons, a male and a female, where the terms of the contract do not simply involve exchange of services or goods, but the exchange of the persons executing the contract themselves.The contract is in effect as long as both are alive, and is terminated only by the death of one of the parties.

Catholics believe that a Catholic marriage is valid and sacramental at the same time when all the requirements are fulfilled.

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Professors for Peace Statement

Photo credit: The Summit Express

Statement Calling for a Senate Investigation Into the Death of Kian Loyd Delos Santos and Overhaul of the Government’s Anti-Drugs Campaign

We, the undersigned academics, teachers, analysts and researchers are issuing this joint statement to call on the Senate to open an investigation into the death of seventeen-year-old Grade 11 student Kian Loyd Delos Santos.

Kian Loyd is among a growing number of children and youth who have been killed as a result of the government’s anti-drugs campaign. The long and still growing list includes 4-year-old Althea Barbon of Negros Occidental, and two 5-year-old children–Danica May Garcia, an honor student from Pangasinan, as well as Francisco Manosca, who was gunned down with his father in Pasay City.

Whether killed by police, or murdered, allegedly, by unknown assailants, the senseless deaths of so many of our youth and thousands of our citizens are a signal of the worsening environment of violence and lawlessness that now threatens the very communities that the anti-drugs campaign was supposed to protect.

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Statement from the Redemptorist Missionaries of the Philippines

Stop Killing the Poor!

Remember, O Lord, what has befallen us;  look, and see our disgrace!
(Lamentations, 5: 1)

We, the Redemptorists of the Philippines composed of the Vice-Province Manila and Province of Cebu, express our outrage for the recent spate of killings in line with the government’s war on drugs. As missionaries dedicated to serving the poor and the most abandoned, we condemn the war on drugs as a war on the poor. Most of the victims of extra-judicial killings are poor people. The police have become more relentless as the President himself had on many occasions incited the police to carry out a murderous war on the poor and admitted that the target of his war on drugs is the poor.

On the other hand, rich drug lords and politicians coddlers of drug suppliers are given the full extent of the due process of law. 6.4 billion pesos worth of shabu freely entered the country due to the connections of the rich drug lords to politicians and Custom officials. In all of these, there was no howl from the President and other high ranking government officials.

As Christians, we are appalled by the utter loss of respect for the dignity of life and human rights of the police operations. We are utterly distressed that in a Christian country like ours, the killings is tolerated, even supported. We dread the reality that a split-level kind of faith exists among our people. Such faith sees no connection between the gospel values and the wellspring of Christian faith and the suffering and killings of the people.

As Filipinos we are gravely concerned with the kind of society we have become. What kind of people have we become? After more than a year of the war on drugs, our country has turned into a big killing field. Death is the order of the day. A culture of killing with impunity is the new normality.  On the other hand, a culture of silence and a climate of fear prevail. In the midst of the daily killings, many people go on with their lives, show no empathy to the victims and accept the government war on drugs as necessary evil.

Condemning the war on drugs does not undermine our stance against drug. Even before the Duterte government, we have denounced the menace of drug addictions in our proclamations and programs. We did not just denounce, however; we also organized programs and services to victims of drug addiction like counselling, livelihood projects and community support mechanisms.

We call on the government to respect the law and uphold life. We call on the government to stop the killings. The “war on drugs” which in reality is a war on the poor has to end. Now!  Continue reading

Keeping Vigil Over Our Nation’s Future

A Call to Radical Mourning For the Loss of Our Vision

21 August 2017

Dear Lasallians,

I am inviting you to raise our voices in silent protest over the deaths that have gone unmourned since our government undertook its efforts to eradicate the menace of illegal drugs from our communities.

We mourn for those who have lost their lives on mere suspicion of being drug addicts and drug pushers.  We mourn for those who, because they are too poor and too afraid, cannot fight for their right to life and due process. We mourn for those whose lives have been reduced to statistics and who are now mere proofs to demonstrate the power of those in authority to procure for us, through whatever means, their twisted vision of an orderly society.

We mourn for the loss of our rights when we allow the police to enter our homes without warrants of arrest.  We are slowly witnessing an order where we are being seduced to secede to those in authority our basic rights and freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution. The promise of peace and order and well-being is a sham for what this usurpation of our rights has obtained for us is nothing but fear.

We mourn for ourselves, when we allow our vision for our nation to grow dim.  When, because of our exasperation with the long march to authentic freedom, have allowed ourselves to be seduced by quick results.  Authentic transformation cannot be the result of handing over to one entity, our responsibility to create the kinds of communities we long to see.  If we truly desire peace and well-being in our communities, we must see ourselves as its principal authors.   Let us, in our mourning, re-affirm our right and our responsibility to be the agents of the change we want to see.

I enjoin you all to keep vigil then over our nation’s future.  Let us offer a minute of silence every 8:24 pm (or 8:24 am during school days) in our communities as we mourn the many deaths that have befallen our nation.  In our communities, let us create a wave of awareness over the need to guard our basic rights and freedoms.

Let us courageously re-affirm our conviction in our identity as a people of power – as a people who can create and will what is good for our country. Let us stand side-by-side again so that we will not have to live in fear.  Let us refuse to bequeath to our children a nation deprived of a vision of its better self.

Fraternally,

(Sgd.)
Br. Jose Mari Jimenez FSC
Auxiliary Visitor, LEAD

Seventeen.  Kian was just seventeen. 

Posted on August 20, 2017      by Joel Tabora, S.J.

I was seventeen when I decided to join the Jesuits.  Some today may think that that was much too early to make a radical life decision, that there were too many other possibilities in life that I ought first to have explored before deciding for a life involving the evangelical counsels, poverty, chastity and obedience.

For a while, my father felt that way too.  I’d actually wanted to become a priest very early on, when serving Masses regularly in our parish church at 8 years of age introduced me to a love for the altar and a youthful admiration for the diocesan priests of the parish.  When I got to the Ateneo de Manila High School, my class moderator in first year, Fr. Ernesto Javier, noted my desire.  He told me to join Challenge House, which I did.  For two years, during my second and third year high school days, I’d left home to explore the challenge now of becoming a Jesuit priest.  It was a good experience. But I left Challenge House because my father felt it was unhealthy for me to be thinking only about the priesthood at that age.  He wanted me to get out, explore the world, interact more with other-thinking people, and “get a girlfriend.”  So that’s what I did.  But after a retreat under Fr. Raymund Gough during my first year of college, I discerned the call to the priesthood undeniable.  Fr. Horacio de la Costa, then Provincial of the Jesuits in the Philippines, concurred.  On July 16, 1965, I entered Sacred Heart Novitiate.

I have since lived more than three times those seventeen years as a Jesuit in the Philippines.  After my ordination to the priesthood in 1983, I began my priestly service in the Resettlement Area of San Pedro, Laguna.  Yesterday, I returned there for the first time in some forty years to preside over the renewal of marriage vows of a couple, Jojo Eduque and Sonny Castro, whose marriage I’d witnessed in that church 40 years ago yesterday.  Jojo and Sonny remembered the dirt floor and the few rough wooden benches that were part of the luxurious setting of their marriage.  The church I’d built in 1988 had meanwhile been totally replaced.  But the kamagong crucifix was still there.  Happily, there were some elderly women who peered into my face and remembered a youthful priest forty years and forty kilos earlier who’d served the urban poor community of San Pedro Resettlement.  One declared that she was part of a livelihood project called “Lovers’ Own” which my father in Beautifont had helped me run for the people.  Awesome.

So much has unfolded in my life because of a decision I made when I was seventeen.  Or, from a possibly more accurate perspective, so much has happened because of a decision God made manifest to me when I was seventeen.  I was only in first year college, but life had already unfolded so richly, and in its further unfolding would take me to doctoral studies in Germany and Austria, teaching at Ateneo de Manila, service of the urban poor community of Kristong Hari, Commonwealth, the rectorship of San Jose Seminary, the presidency of Loyola School of Theology, Ateneo de Naga University, and currently Ateneo de Davao University.

So for me, it is a very personal thing.  At seventeen I was still in first year college.  That today is the equivalent of eleventh grade.  At seventeen, when I was pondering the differences between marriage and the priesthood, between management engineering and joining the Society of Jesus, I was the age of Kian de los Santos on the same academic level as he. That Kian was framed, shot and killed in a police action gone rogue, at a time when his life was yet unfolding, is a matter of deep personal pain for me.  It could have been me at seventeen.  It could have ended all.   In the case of Kian, it did end all.

It has been stated that this is an isolated case.  But even if it were isolated, it is one case too many.  The President has just signed the Universal Access to Tertiary Education Act into law providing real hope for quality education to all Filipino learners such as Kian.  But where are we if the State on the one hand undertakes to promote their welfare through higher education, but on the other hand kills them in senior high?  Where are we if the State on the one hand undertakes at great material and human expense to fight a war against drugs for their sake, but on the other hand kills them.  When a life is taken, describing it as an isolated case rings hollow, if not cynical.   When a life is taken even as genuine collateral damage in a police operation nothing can replace that life.  When a life is taken through abominable police action that frames an innocent person as a criminal and shoots him to increase the statistics of “progress” in the war against drugs, this is a crime that cries to the heavens for justice.

The war on drugs must be fought.  The drug menace is international evil, driven by powerful forces of evil.  This is still the case.  It has for too long victimized our people with impunity.

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