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Month: December 2020

Lakbayan para sa Buhay, Pamilya at Birheng Maria

Update on Lakbayan Para sa Buhay, Pamilya at Birheng Maria
Route of Lakbayan (motorcade Dec. 8, 2020 Tuesday):
(Start of motorcade) Manila Cathedral- Gen. Luna St. – Manila City Hall – Jones Bridge – right to Escolta – Sta. Cruz Church – left to Rizal Ave. – right to Recto Ave. – left to Legarda – straight to Magsaysay Blvd. – straight to Aurora blvd. – right to Gilmore st. – left to N. Domingo St. – right to Hemady St. – left to 5th st. – Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Church – left to 4th st. – right to Balete Drive – left to Lantana – right to Boston – Immaculate Conception Cathedral Cubao – left to Lantana – left to Boston – left to Aurora Blvd. – passing through Cubao – left to A. Bonifacio St. Maŕikina – right to JP Rizal st. – Our Lady of the Abandoned Marikina (end of motorcade).

The Empowerment of Women

Shay Cullen
4 December 2020

The empowerment of women and girls is a most urgent need in today’s world where discrimination, violence and exploitation of women and girls, especially in the developing world, is tearing the heart out of society and family life causing human suffering, exclusion, sickness and death.

Education is the key to empowering women and girls and building equality in society by defeating the superior and dominant attitude of many men. Some wrongly believe they are entitled to treat women as inferior and unworthy of leadership roles in society, business and family.

At every level of social status, rich, middle class, poor, besides formal education, there has to be additional human rights training for boys and girls from the earliest age in human dignity and equality. Women have to be empowered economically by having skilled training and small business opportunities and thus take control over their lives. The economic power of women is essential for changing the inequality and the injustice in societies where women are treated unfairly and regulated to some lower status than males. Money talks and in community-based Grameen-loaning schemes, it is the women who are mostly given the loans. They are considered stronger, more reliable to pay back and wiser in using the loans and more caring of the needs of the children. Having money empowers the women and gives them status and respect in the community and in their families.

The education of boys and men in values to respect girls and women is vital. They must be taught that their own value and dignity as a human being and role in family and society is rooted in the respect for the dignity of females. The powerful machismo male, self-image that looks on females as objects of sexual gratification has to be replaced with one of respect, self-discipline and equal partnership, gender equality and complementary roles.

Without empowered, self-reliant and resilient women there is a greater danger of violence against women and children. The 2017 National Demographic and Health Survey conducted by the Philippine Statistics Authority says that one in every four Filipino women and children age 15-49 has experienced physical, emotional or sexual violence by their abusers or husband or partner. Female victims of child sexual abuse left untreated leaves the child traumatized, to grow up in fear of rape and sexual abuse. They can get help and fight back but some may be rendered fearful and submissive to the violence of the abusive male in later life. That is why intervention, protection, healing and empowerment therapy is so important. The UN Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women says it is “any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public and private life. Gender-based violence is any violence inflicted on women because of their sex.”

Domestic violence against women is predominantly linked to failed intimate relationships. In many cases, these are shallow and short-lived, most are based on sexual encounters and most are loveless relationships. The woman is treated, not as a loving friend and equal partner and respected mother of the children, but as an object of sexual gratification and a servant housekeeper and cook. The dominated woman is dependent on the man as the provider for her and the children. Many beaten women endure physical abuse because of fear and dependency.

The children in a family are greatly affected by the violent rages of the man against their mother. They, too, can grow up with the notion that violence is a normal part of relationships and be violent themselves. Children can suffer violent sexual assault by the mother’s partner. Sometimes the overpowered mother will allow the man to do it as a way to sexually satisfy him and calm his violent behavior against her. About 80 percent or 32 million children suffer from violence. Seven million of these children are between the ages of 10 to 18 and are sexually abused every year.Twenty percent or 1.4 million are under six years old.

Domestic violence is physical and sometimes psychological. Arguments and verbal abuse break out constantly, leading to a broken home and child abuse. One of many examples is the family of five-year old Vangie and eight-year old Maria (not real names). Their parents had severe disagreements and violence occurred. Their mother left the children with their paternal grandmother and the father. She found another partner. After only a few months, the two small girls were set upon by the biological father and he constantly sexually abused them and raped them both. They were rescued by the Preda Foundation senior staff and social worker and are recovering in the Preda home. He will stand trial. The children will testify.

Human trafficking is another form of violence against women. Young women and minors are “captured” by false promises, lured to fake employment and end up in brothels as sex slaves to powerful men. Many endure physical and psychological violence and “rough sex.” They are victims of “debt bondage” threatened by pimps and traffickers to pay their debts to them or they will be jailed.

That is the case of some of the 18 young girls, four of them minors, that were lured and pressured to join a party where they were to be sexually sold to foreign sex tourists in a hotel in Baloy Beach, Olongapo City, last November 2020. But the plan leaked, and they were all rescued by the National Bureau of Investigation and city social workers and Preda Foundation social workers. The minors are recovering at the Preda home. The adult women are being helped by the government social workers.

There has to be a major change in the culture of male abuse and violence against women and an end to the political tolerance that allows it. The rule of law must prevail, respect for the well-being of every woman and child has to be upheld and we are challenged to stand with them for their rights and dignity.

View New Life at Preda: Resilience and Hope at https://youtu.be/G0fFNmHSYic

www.preda.org

IFI Obispo Maximo’s Statement of Concern

One Faith, One Nation, One Voice

Obispo Maximo’s Statement of Concern On another case of Red-Tagging against IFI Clergy

1. We are alarmed with the new case of vilification and red-tagging reaching to our office against another clergy of the Iglesia Fipina Independiente (IFI). We received the report yesterday that The Revd Arvin P. Mangrubang, our priest in the Diocese of Laoag, serving as the Rector of the Parish of Lipay which covers five churches and congregations all in Vintar, Ilocos Norte, is being maliciously and irresponsibly tagged and accused as “communist member and NPA recruiter” by the NTF-ELCAC and propagated by the military. Obviously the red-tagging has connection with the continuing efforts of the AFP, PNP, and NTF-ELCAC in the area, particularly around Surrong Valley, to malign and vilify legal people’s organizations and churches like the IFI.

2. On October 29, 2020, The Revd Arvin P. Mangrubang, in response to an invitation, attended the Farmers’ Leaders Forum held in Brgy. Dagupan, Vintar, Ilocos Norte, and took part in the blessing of farm materials to be distributed by the Redemptorist Church to the local farmers. An otherwise solemn religious gathering was disturbed by the arrival of uniformed military soldiers in full battle gear who immediately barricaded the venue and started to take pictures on the activity and on the participants. On October 31, 2020, his spouse received a call enquiring if indeed The Revd Arvin P. Mangrubang attended in the said farmers’ activity.

3. He was surprised to know that on November 1, 2020, in a forum conducted by the NTF-ELCAC with the local PNP personnel in Vintar, Ilocos Norte, the pictures taken from the October 29, 2020 activity of the Farmers’ Leaders Forum were shown and described as a front activity for the CPA-NPA-NDFP. His pictures, together with that of other leaders, were highlighted with accompanying commentary that the activity was the start of the recruitment process to become NPA members since the leaders are members of the CPP. He was further alarmed because on November 30, 2020 a friend of his called up and advised him to be extra-careful because he is one among those who were placed under surveillance by military elements allegedly connected with the 21st IB and 50th IB of the Philippine Army for recruiting local farmers to join with NPA. This was bolstered by the information shared by a church member during the church council meeting on December 1, 2020 that The Revd Arvin P. Mangrubang was being talked about as NPA recruiter in Surrong Valley in a meeting of barangay captains of Vintar town. To validate about this information, he called up the barangay captain of Brgy. Lipay, Vintar the following day, December 2, 2020, to enquire if there were people looking for him and was told by the barangay captain that the military intelligence officers asked the barangay captain to beware of his presence and movements as recruiting the barangay constituents for NPA activities.

4. We view his case and the circumstances around it as of the same pattern with other red-tagging incidences against the IFI clergy. The state security officers, such as the AFP and PNP with the particular government agency NTF-ELCAC, tend to treat and misconstrue the ministry of our clergy around the country working along with legal people’s organizations of the workers, farmers, fisherfolks, urban poor and lumad communities as something subversive and fronting for the NPA-CPP-NDFP, like the ministry of The Revd Arvin P. Mangrubang who is only serving with the farmers, many are church members, being the dominant sector within his parochial jurisdiction in Vintar, Ilocos Norte. Due to the obsession of these state security officers to quash the insurgency movement according to its self-imposed timetable, they could only see red in everything and in everybody like the proverbial mad bull in the ring. These officers cannot anymore see that IFI clergy are only working out with their ministries to serve the Lord Jesus as mandated to them by their ordination and as pursued in the corporate mission of the IFI. The charism and heritage of the IFI – being a Church born out from the womb of the people’s revolution in 1896 for national independence, identity and integrity and for the reign of justice, peace and freedom in Filipino society as desired by the God of history – is to serve the Lord and his people. Since its formation in 1902 this has been the distinctive mark of the IFI’s mission and ministry and the spirit behind its prophetic witness, social advocacy, and pastoral care.

5. We protest the continuing practice of this dispensation, through the AFP, PNP and government agency like NTF-ELCAC, to accuse and red-tag the IFI and its clergy as fronting for and recruiting members to the CPP-NPA-NDFP. The truth of the matter is that the IFI is only exercising its own brand of mission and ministry compelled by faith-imperative and history-mandate, long before these so-called underground organizations came to being that the government, past and present, is trying hard to associate or identify the IFI with. The plain truth is that it is not the churches like the IFI which are being red-tagged as recruiters for the CPP-NPA-NDFP but the government itself with its anti-poor, anti-people, anti-Filipino and anti-policies; it is the AFP, PNP and government agencies themselves with their unrelenting abuse, corruption, negligence and indifference to people’s rights, public welfare, national well-being, and human dignity; it is the unjust structures, systemic violence and widening social disparity being perpetuated by those who wield power in our local and national governance.

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