Mission & Justice

14/5/08

Every Friday, Clarita Alia takes time off from selling vegetables to pray and light candles at a public cemetery. She visits the graves of her three sons, all stabbed to death in separate incidents between July 2001 and November 2002. “I am still hurting,” the mother told UCA News on May 11. “I have hatred in my heart,” she admitted, adding that she wants justice for her sons. Police reports say the three brothers were allegedly killed by members of a vigilante group after being involved in several pickpocket incidents in the city. A case has not been filed against the suspects, however, because of “uncooperative witnesses,” Alberto Sipaco of the regional Commission on Human Rights told UCA News. “They do not want to testify because of fear,” the lawyer explained. Alia, 56, runs a vegetable stall with her five remaining children at the biggest public market in Davao City, 965 kilometers southeast of Manila. She is also a member of Stop Summary Executions, an advocacy group composed of mothers whose children were victims of extrajudicial killings in the southern Philippines.

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29/4/08

Pending visa applications, a central Philippine diocese tentatively plans to send five priests, five lay youths and 13 seminarians to Australia for the World Youth Day (WYD) celebration in July. Father Glenn Magpusao told UCA News on April 15 that Kalibo diocese made sure students from its Santo Nino Seminary were included in the WYD selection process as part of its program to let seminarians “immerse in youth activities.” The seminary is for high school and philosophy studies, prior to theology. Diocesan priests will serve as “guides,” Father Magpusao added. The priest, director of the Diocesan Secretariat for the Youth Apostolate, reported they are currently preparing the official list of delegates and only those willing to “spend out of their own pockets” would be included.

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1/5/08

The Philippines is banning kidney transplants for foreigners from next month as part of a crackdown on a growing but illicit trade in human organs bought from the poor. Foreigners who violate it, as well as the middlemen, can be jailed for up to 20 years and fined two million pesos ($51,000), the Health Secretary, Francisco Duque III, said on Tuesday. Foreigners related to Filipino citizens by blood are exempted from the ban, Mr Duque said.

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20/4/08

The Israeli government has announced plans to build 100 new homes in two settlements in the occupied West Bank. An Israeli housing ministry advertisement, published on Friday, offered tenders for 48 homes in the settlement of Ariel and 52 homes in the smaller enclave of Alkana, despite strong protests from the Palestinians. srael confirmed the plans in a written statement to Al Jazeera. In the statement, the housing ministry said the “52 housing units in Alkana substitute old housing units, which were built when the settlement was created 25 years ago”.”The 48 housing units in Ariel were approved by the ministry of defence many months ago, and they are inside an existing neighbourhood,” the statement said.The 2003 “road map”, reaffirmed by Israeli and Palestinian leaders at a conference hosted by George Bush, the US president, in November last year, requires a halt to all settlement activity on occupied land where Palestinians seek statehood.

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Ghazanfar Ali Khan & Gloria Esguerra Melencio; 17/4/08

Philippine Consul General Ezzedin Tago confirmed yesterday that a Filipino worker died inside a crowded deportation cell in Jeddah on April 6. The man reportedly posed as a pilgrim who had lost his identification and turned himself in to expedite his deportation. Arman Navarro, a Filipino who was deported to Manila this week, identified the fatality as Ryan Castillo, a 30-year-old from Batangas City. The cause of death is unconfirmed, but Navarro claims Castillo contracted a disease inside the prison cell where he was brought by the Saudi immigration authorities and later succumbed to a heart attack. “The death of the OFW (Overseas Filipino Worker) indeed raises many questions,” said a statement from Connie Bragas-Regalado, the head of Migrante International, a Manila-based human rights group that advocates for Filipinos working in the Gulf. “

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14/4/08

A Filipina housemaid has been sentenced to death after she was convicted of murdering her employer’s daughter, according to her lawyer. Jakatia Pawa will appeal the ruling and denies stabbing to death 21-year-old Dala Al Naqi as she slept. According to the lawyer, Pawa had worked for her employer for five years and had no motive to kill the woman. Two other Filipina maids have recently been sentenced to death for murder in Kuwait.

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Gloria Esguerra Melencio; 3/4/06

The Philippines has oversupply of nurses this year as “world-class schools” continue to graduate thousands of nurses and some diploma mill schools churn out countless of practical nurses. University of the Philippines College of Nursing Dean Dr. Josefina Tuazon and Philippine Nurses Association National President Leah Paquiz, disclosed that the oversupply of nurses is fast becoming the country’s problem even as deployment abroad may be the “first choice” for these graduates. Tuazon explained that due to the numerous nursing graduates this year at 67, 728, hospitals have to get volunteer nurses — a lot better because they are not paid — to accommodate the fresh graduates.

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Rasheed Abou-Alsamh; 28/3/07

The uproar in the Philippines by the militant workers’ group Migrante over the 117 overseas Filipino workers who recently ran away from their employers and ended up living under a bridge in the Kandara district of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, is a case of misplaced anger. This anger comes from the frustration of the runaway workers at the slowness of the deportation process from Saudi Arabia, and from the misplaced notion in the Philippines that runaway workers can just board a plane in Saudi and end up in Manila. It’s not that easy. All foreigners in the kingdom need a work visa to enter the country and they also need exit visas every time they leave the country. The Philippine Consulate in Jeddah does not have a magic wand which it can use to get the Saudi authorities to allow the en-masse departure of 117 runaway workers just like that.

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10/3/08

Leonora Somera, the 66-year-old Filipino woman who had been stranded in the Kingdom for 20 years, is back in the Philippines at last. Somera left Jeddah on board an Emirates Airlines flight on Thursday night and arrived in Manila the next day, the Philippine Consulate in Jeddah has said. Consulate officials gave no other details. In a telephone interview yesterday, she said that she was made to stay at a center maintained by the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA) in Pasay City for debriefing.

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25/2/08

Three Indian doctors and nine nurses working at Dr. Siddiqa Hospital in Bani Malik have lodged a complaint at the Indian Consulate that the hospital has not paid their salaries for seven months, a consulate official told Arab News. The official, who requested anonymity, said Consul General Dr. Ausaf Sayeed was following the case with keen interest. “We hope that a settlement could be reached by the end of this week,” he added.However, the official warned that if the hospital authorities further delayed the payment of the 12 Indian workers the consulate would advise the workers to approach the Labor Court to obtain their rights, including release to work for other institutions.

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