Dear Dagmar, Dieter and friends from GFF,
Warm solidarity greetings!
We've learned from Tita Medy of Kapatiran/GFF that your group just launched
several actions regarding the recent laying off of workers in your place.
She shared your story when we visited the jail last week. We are in deep
solidarity in those campaigns and actions. Just let us know if there are
any upcoming activities so that we could help disseminate the information
even just on the social media.
We, here in the Philippines, aside from our year(s)-long campaign for
decent jobs, homes and justice, have been busy recently on the campaign
against political persecution. As you can remember, April last year, when
you were visiting in the Philippines, Renante/Nante was illegaly arrested.
Until now, he's imprisoned in Camp Crame, together with political prisoners
Eduardo Serrano and Eduardo Sarmiento. Nine months had passed since his
arrest but no court proceedings had happened. We petitioned for the
transfer of his case from that far-away province of Mauban, Quezon to the
city, however, the Supreme Court has not released any resolution about it
yet.
By the way, he wants to extend his thanks for the harmonica that you guys
gave him. We sent their letter tru the postal service in our place last
October but according to Tita Medy, you haven't received it yet. So I was
worried with what happened to the letter. Last month, it was delivered to
our home address. It turned out that there was something wrong with the
address code when I counter-checked it with Tita Medy and it was not even
processed. Anyway, he sends his BIG THANKS!! He already made some harmonica
adlibs to the songs composed by Ed Sarmiento. Last December 26, we joined
Karapatan and SELDA (human rights advocates organizations) in their jail
visit and the three political prisoners in Camp Crame prepared a number of
cultural performances including the songs they made, poems read with guitar
and harmonica background and more. We are actually thinking of a way to
record their songs so that we could help spread those meaningful songs,
maybe by then, we could also send copies of them to you.
We've also just launched the stop political persecution campaign
encompassing the increasing number of political prisoners and activists
filed with trumped-up charges like Roy and Amy. We are deeply alarmed with
these schemes of our government because many activists nationwide are
becoming victims of these. Only in December, there were 28 individuals
arrested for trumped up criminal charges. With these, we feel that we must
escalate our efforts to gather more public attention and exert greater
pressure to the institutions that can help stop these. Hopefully, we'll be
successful in our motion to dismiss those cases and in the overall
campaign. And you guys achieve greater victories in your campaigns and
fights. Of course, spreading the word and our firm solidarity in our fights
are the keys to it!
Thank you! Best regards to all,
Niki Gamara (daughter of Nante and Amy)
I'm also now a full-time volunteer of Defend Job :)
