On June 11 to 12, Elmer Labog, KMU (Kilusang Mayo Uno/May First Movement) national chairperson, was in Toronto to meet with Filipino migrant workers, Canadian trade unionists and other friends and supporters. Starting in Winnipeg, Toronto is the second leg of his Canada-wide tour. In a community forum that was held on Sunday the 11th, he talked about the current state of affairs in the Philippines. The audience heard first hand about “undeclared martial law”, including the blatant use of death squads against the striking workers. “People are being killed on a daily basis”, “Just after I left the Philippines the other day two more activist were shot to death”, Elmer said. He continues on how the killings were intensified in the last 5 months.
According to KARAPATAN, the Philippine-based Alliance for the Advancement of Human Rights, there have been 607 victims of extrajudicial killings from January 2001 to May 30, 2006. From January to May of this year alone, 75 have already been killed. “It is now beyond question that there is indeed a trend in the killing of activists in the Philippines,” KARAPATAN Secretary-General Marie Hilao-Enriquez points out. “Of the 607 victims of extra-judicial killings, 257 have been identified as activist leaders, members and supporters of cause-oriented groups.”
Extra-judicial killings are politically-motivated killings perpetrated by state agents without the sanction of any law or court. These include summary executions, assassinations, deaths due to strafing or indiscriminate firing and massacre. The victims are civilians, unarmed, who had either pursued or supported political causes. Many are ordinary people - workers, farmers, lawyers, teachers, students, pastors, priests and even human rights advocates. The U.S. Sate Department report for the Philippines says journalists were also targets for murder. In the year 2005, 10 journalists were killed, 8 of them in work-related slayings. There have been approximately 38 killings of journalists since 1999.
Another panellist that spoke that evening, Illiam Burbano, from the Columbian Action Solidarity Alliance (CASA) talked about the political killings and human rights violations in Columbia. With startling similarity, he showed how the Columbian trade union leaders were summarily executed just like the union leaders and activists in the Philippines.
The event was well attended. The hall of the Canadian Auto Workers Union (CAW) Local 40 was packed. Petitions for the campaign to release progressive parliamentarian Crispin “Ka Bel” Beltran also circulated the room. Former KMU chair Beltran remains under military custody following his arrest last February in conjunction with the Macapagal-Arroyo government’s Presidential Proclamation 1017 declaring a state of national emergency.
The next day, June 12, Elmer Labog visited the Ontario Federation of Labour office in North York. He had a meeting with prominent union leaders during lunch and discussed how they can forge international solidarity among them. “With the WTO pushing its way through liberalization of trade, privatization of public services and de-regulation unions need to build a strong global resistance” Said Labog. He stressed the need to build strong and militant international solidarity among trade unions.
Elmer Labog’s next stops will be in Ottawa and then Montreal. He will be attending the “Towards a Just and Lasting Peace” conference in Vancouver to cap off his Canada-wide tour.
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