Political prisoners, OFWs cry for justice

AT GROUND LEVEL

Political prisoners, OFWs cry for justice

By Satur C. Ocampo

“Namulat ako sa panggigipit ng makapangyarihan… saksi ako sa pagdurusa ng marami sa diktadura… Dito napanday ang aking prinsipyo: kung may inaagrabyado, ninanakawan ng karapatan, siya ang kakampihan ko. Kung may abusadong mapang-api, siya ang lalabanan ko.” — President Benigno S. Aquino III

A week before President Aquino uttered these words in his third state-of-the-nation address last July 23, most of the 385 political prisoners in 10 detention centers — 107 of them arrested under his watch — began a seven-day protest fast.

They called P-Noy’s attention to the violations of their human rights and asked that they be freed as an act of justice.

Then on July 19, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, 182 Filipino OFWs started their hunger strike to call P-Noy’s attention to 14 counts of abuses they’ve endured, as well as the “neglect of the Philippine government.”

On July 22 members of the OFWs’ families held a “solidarity fast” in front of the Department of Labor office to press government action on their complaints.

Sad to note, in both cases, President Aquino didn’t say a word during his 90-minute SONA. Nor has he ordered any official or agency of government to act on the complaints.

Let’s look deeper into these cases, and see whether P-Noy’s inattention and inaction can be explained away.

The political prisoners protest that they were arrested and detained “based mostly on trumped-up charges,” similarly both under the Arroyo government’s “Oplan Bantay Laya” and Aquino’s “Oplan Bayanihan” counter-insurgency programs.

The filing of trumped-up charges was part of the “legal offensive” initiated by Gloria Arroyo through an Inter-Agency Legal Action Group she created in 2006. In his report to the UN after conducting an investigation here in 2007, Special Rapporteur Philip Alston strongly recommended IALAG’s abolition for going after the victims, not the perpetrators, of human rights violations.

Arroyo did abolish IALAG sometime later. But the questionable “legal offensive” practice continued till her term ended, and even after P-Noy took over the presidency.

Karapatan, the National Union of People’s Lawyers, and church-based human rights groups have urged the Justice Department to review the political prisoners’ cases and drop all trumped-up charges. Till now no positive response has come.

On the other hand, the OFWs say that they filed complaints, both at the Saudi Ministry of Labor and the Philippine embassy in Riyadh, citing the following cases of abuse allegedly committed by government-licensed recruitment agencies, but got no response:

Illegal recruitment; labor contract violations; overcharging placement fees; contract substitution; collecting fees without official receipts; collecting excessive fees; imposing high interest on loans; poor working accommodations; illegal salary deductions; non-issuance of IQMA working permits; non-payment of salaries for 10 months to over a year; no overtime pay; underpayment of salaries; and non-renewal of expired contracts, residence permits and medical insurance.

The hunger-striking OFWs are working with these firms: 98 with Al-Swayeh Co., 48 with Al-Zahran, 19 with Al-Sabillah Construction, and 17 with Al-Naseeb.

They attribute the abuses to these recruitment-placement agencies: Saveway International Man Power, Osims Oriental Skills Int’l Manpower, RPF Business Management Consul-tancy Inc., Irsal Employment Services Inc., GBMLT Manpower Services Inc., Nawras Manpower Services Inc., Al-Assal Manpower Inc., Matawi, and 4 Brothers.

Coming to the succor of the OFWs is the Asia-Pacific Mission for Migrants, organized and managed by OFWs with headquarters in Hong Kong. The APMM has appealed to President Aquino, the Departments of Foreign Affairs, Labor, and Justice, and to the POEA and the OWWA, to take these immediate steps:

1. Attend to their complaints;

2. Provide safe repatriation to those who wish to go home; and

3. Investigate and, once warranted, suspend and impose sanctions on the agencies against which the OFWs have filed complaints.

We should add, justifiably, that the government must provide jobs to those who would be repatriated.

Through the decades, complaints over the abuses by recruitment-placement agencies — often in cahoots with the hiring firms — have been reported widely in the foreign and local media. Time and again, investigations and crackdowns have been promised by the government agencies concerned.

Yet the abuses continue, victimizing millions of OFWs, who persist on leaving because they can’t find satisfactory employment here.

Credit must be given to the 182 workers who, obviously no longer able to bear with these abuses, risk losing their jobs and suffering other forms of reprisals from the recruitment agencies and probably even their employers by filing formal complaints and dramatizing their plight through a hunger strike.

Their families, too, ought to be commended for standing by their abused kin. Their solidarity action before the DOLE office spoke loudly of their disappointment over government neglect of the OFWs.

This is ironical, to say the least, since former President Ramos lauded the OFWs as the country’s “modern-day heroes” for keeping the economy afloat with their remittances. They have largely built up the country’s gross international reserves to $72 billion.

When P-Noy bragged in his SONA, “Kung dati tayo ang nangungutang, ngayon hindi po birong tayo na ang nagpapautang!” didn’t he, perchance, think of thanking the OFWs?

Not that he told the whole truth. We now owe $63 B, and we’re still borrowing.