DAVAO CITY (Mindanao Examiner / Dec. 9, 2011) – In time for the commemoration of the International Day of Human Rights, militant youth groups on Friday led by Anakbayan went to communities in Davao City to creatively impart knowledge on the comprehensive nature of human rights via its version of ‘harana.
As in the tradition of ‘harana,’ the groups serenaded communities with songs about human rights and also distributed leaflets, and discussed about social realities during their house-to-house campaign.
Anakbayan said human rights are comprehensive in nature. “Human rights ensure the dignity of persons. This encompass not just civil and political rights but also economic rights – having own land to till for farmers, access to education for the Filipino youth, compensation and benefits for workers, housing for urban informal settlers,” Cherry Orendain, Regional Spokesperson of Anakbayan, said in a statement sent to the Mindanao Examiner.
“However, the actualization of these rights is a painstaking process of struggle for the poor and the marginalized against those who hold power in society. This is the main reason why localized peace talks will never work in attaining genuine peace. So long as the national government implements anti-people policies and perpetuates the oppression of the landlords, capitalists, and the ruling class against the people, the people will always find resistance as key to their freedom,” she said.
The group also lambasted “Oplan Bayanihan,” saying the counter-insurgency program of the state which claims to advocate human rights but only propagate a shallow understanding of rights and even suppress it.
“It is clear then that the state and the AFP cannot live-up to the ideals of human rights and cannot even articulate it. Oplan Bayanihan is just a propaganda tool which abuse the concept of human rights in its plan to suppress the people’s movement. The constitution and the international laws state that people have the right to live with dignity. How can this be true? 4.5 million of the country’s labor force remain to be unemployed, more than 6 million of the youth are uneducated, and the long list killed activist who are defending human rights is unimaginable” Orendain said.
She said it is no surprise that all-over the country, human rights violations continue and even intensify to include human rights defenders themselves. She also cited the killing of Italian missionary Fr. Fausto Tentorio, who defended the right of peasants and indigenous peoples of Arakan in North Cotabato province, was assassinated October 17.
Karapatan, a human rights group, documented seven cases of extrajudicial killings from August to October, including the killing of the missionary and villager Ramon Batoy in October and the seven year-old girl Sunshine Jabinez in Compostela Valley in September. Karapatan documented a total of 64 victims of extrajudicial killings under the Aquino administration’s Oplan Bayanihan.
“Human rights, therefore must primarily be accorded, protected and upheld by the state to its people – a condition denied in our times. We, are thus, called to educate the people of their rights and to encourage them to fight in defense of these [rights]” Orendain said.
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