Phillipines activist meets ex-POWs
A prisoners' rights activist from the Phillipines spent two hours
with republican ex-prisoners in Teach Tar Anall in Belfast on
Tuesday 3 June, and exchanged information on the work prisoners
welfare groups carry out in Ireland and the Philippines.
Doctor Aurora Parong, executive director of the Task Force
Detainees of the Philippines (TFDP), was on a visit to Ireland
sponsored by the Filipino-Irish group, the Irish Missionary Union
and the Columban Sisters.
TFDP has been working throughout the Philippines since 1974 for
the promotion and protection of human rights. Originally
established by the Association of Major Religious Superiors, the
organisation has chronicled human rights abuses in order to
provide reliable statistics of killings, tortures,
disappearances, mass evacuations, arrests and the numbers of
political prisoners in detention.
During her discussions in Tar Anall Dr Parong explained that
while most people throughout the world felt that conditions had
changed in the Philippines since the late President Marcos was
deposed, the reality was that ``human rights abuses have not
ended''.
Indeed human rights abuses under the present regime headed by
General Ramos have increased as the government drives to rapid
industrialisation. Dwellings in poor urban communities have been
demolished, peasants evicted from their farms and indigenous
people pushed off their ancestral lands, she said.
Ramos was a senior military adviser for the Marcos regime and
Minister for Defence in the Aquino government and it is his
``total war policy'' that underlies the government's thinking in
the country.
``So many prisoners and their families need emotional and
psychological support,'' said Parong as she explained that
prisoners and their families are marginalised by the Filipino
government, a theme picked up by the republicans who are only too
well aware of how the British government, and other
anti-republican elements have discriminated against them over the
years.
![[An Phoblacht]](http://republican-news.org/graphics/title_gifs/aprn.gif)