PRESS RELEASE For Immediate Release 26 May 2006 Contact: Dorotea Mendoza, Secretary General, GABRIELA Network USA [EMAIL PROTECTED], 1.212.592.3507
ALL-WOMEN HUMAN RIGHTS LEGAL TEAM TO THE PHILIPPINES NEW YORK, May 26 -- An all-women human rights team composed of legal luminaries left today for the Philippines to confer with the embattled organizations of the Left who have complained of the killing of over 500 activists, organizers, leaders and members of the opposition. Initiated by GABRIELA Network, in cooperation with the National Lawyers Guild, the Center for Constitutional Rights and the Vanguard Foundation, the members of the legal team are as follows: Jill Soffiyah Elijah, Deputy Director, Criminal Justice Institute, Harvard Law School. BA, Cornell University; Juris Doctorate, Wayne State University Law School. Ms. Elijah was in private practice for several years before joining Harvard. She specialized in criminal defense and family law. She has authored several articles and publications and has represented numerous political prisoners and social activists over the past 22 years. Rachel Lederman, National Lawyers Guild. Ms. Lederman is one of the authors of the NLG's Know Your Rights pamphlet. She won a million- dollar law suit against the city of San Francisco for unlawfully rounding up demonstrators protesting the Rodney King verdict in Los Angeles. Vanessa Lucas, National Lawyers Guild. Juris Doctorate and MA in International Business Administration, University of San Diego, CA. Ms. Lucas is in private practice, representing clients in cases that include employment, labor law and civil rights. Her interests include using international law in domestic practice and immigrant rights. Merrilyn Onisko, National Lawyers Guild, currently serves as co- chair of the NLG's Middle East Subcommittee; also on the NLG's Steering Committee of the International Committee and the United Nations Subcommittee. She is an alternate representative to the United Nations for the International Association of Democratic Lawyers (IADL). She recently returned from Bulgaria and Cuba where she presented reports on UN activities to the IADL Bureau. She speaks French, Spanish, Russian and conversational Mandarin. Tina Monshipour Foster, Esq, Center for Constitutional Rights. Juris Doctorate from the Cornell Law School where she was editor of the Cornell International Law Journal and President of the Cornell Law Students Association. Ms. Foster has been deeply engaged in the pursuit of the protection and observance of civil rights for detainees held in US detention facilities all over the world. Before joining CCR, Ms. Foster practiced law in New York, specializing in criminal defense and class action litigation. The team will be hosted in the Philippines by the GABRIELA National Alliance of Women and the Gabriela Women's Party. The organizations are led by Congresswoman Liza Maza and by GABRIELA Secretary-General Emmi de Jesus. Professor Annalisa Enrile, national chairperson, will represent GABRIELA Network, a US-Philippine women's mass solidarity organization. Serving as team advisers are Judith Mirkinson and Ninotchka Rosca, who have had extensive practice in human rights and women's rights. In a press statement, Ms. Enrile said that as women of Philippine ancestry, Filipina-Americans "know full well the role that organizing for one's collective interests plays in the pursuit of the optimal in working and living conditions." Citing how Filipino plantation workers and cannery workers in Hawaii, California and Alaska had to organize to break out of the "serf-conditions" of their lives in the United States in the 1930s-1940s, Ms. Enrile asked how migrant Filipinas could be expected to struggle for optimal work and living conditions "if their sisters are being murdered in the home country for doing exactly the same thing?" The team is expected to make a comprehensive report upon return to the United States and to assist GABRIELA Network in involving international agencies to ensure the end of the killing spree in the Philippines and the persecution of people's organizations, especially women's organizations. "The number of women activists and women leaders murdered with impunity makes the Philippines the top ranking `hotspot' as far as women's activism is concerned," said Ms. Enrile. "Considering that the country depends for its survival on the export of women, this is truly unconscionable." ### ------------- PRESS STATEMENT 26 May 2006 Issued by Annalisa Enrile, National Chairperson GABRIELA Network USA [EMAIL PROTECTED], (212) 592-3507 ALL-WOMEN HUMAN RIGHTS LEGAL TEAM TO THE PHILIPPINES We are pleased to announce the departure of an all-women human rights legal team from the United States to the Philippines. This all-women human rights legal team is a joint project of GABRIELA Network and the Vanguard Foundation, in cooperation with the National Lawyers Guild and the Center for Constitutional Rights. While in the Philippines, the team will be co-hosted by the GABRIELA National Alliance of Women and by the Gabriela Women's Party. The team will meet with the Batasan 6 and their legal defense team; listen to accounts and testimonies regarding the assassination of some 585 activists, organizers, unionists, communist and church leaders, but most of all, to accounts of the assassination of some 70 politically active women. GABRIELA Network initiated this project in the spirit of internationalism and global sisterhood. Alarmed by the continuing murder of both men and women actively engaged in the practice and pursuit of democratic rights, GABNet is seeking ways and means by which the human, civil and political rights of the people, as well as women's rights, be respected in the archipelago, in the face of governmental indifference to the Filipino people's right to be safe and secure in their homeland. As a women's organization, the persecution and murder of women activists, organizers and leaders, as well as of women's organizations, cut us to the bone. Our members who are of Philippine ancestry know full well the role that organizing for one's collective interests plays in the pursuit of the optimal in working and living conditions. The Filipino workers of the plantations of Hawaii and California, of the canneries of Alaska, broke out of their serf-like conditions in the 1930s only by organizing themselves and joining their brother workers in unions. Filipina nurses throughout the U.S. freed themselves from temporary worker visas in the 1980s by organizing for their right to permanent residency. GABNet began the agitation against the traffic of women and the mail-order bride system in the 1990s, work which bore fruit only in the last five years. In the face of repression, exploitation and injustice, history shows us that the only way to freedom is through sustained activism and perseverance in the defense and advancement of the people's democratic and human rights. But how can we expect the 700,000 women exported from the Philippines in 2005, as well as all migrant Filipinas who now comprise over 65% of overseas Filipinos, to seek just working and living conditions, to struggle against abuse and exploitation, to oppose traffickers, to fight against racial and gender discrimination, if their own sisters in the archipelago are being killed for doing exactly the same thing? ### In militant sisterhood... Maureen Ivy Quicho Sheri Ventanilla Coordinators, GABNet Los Angeles ======================================================= GABRIELA Network - Los Angeles Chapter A US-Philippine Women's Solidarity Mass Organization PO Box 3032 Cerritos, CA 90703-3032 email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] web: www.gabnet.org ======================================================= *** GABRIELA Network is a Philippine-US women's solidarity organization since 1989. GABNet provides the means by which Filipinas in the US can empower themselves, functions as training ground for women's leadership, and articulates the women's point of view. GABNet effects change through organizing, educating, fundraising, networking, and advocacy. GABRIELA stands for... General Assembly Binding women for Reform, Integrity, Equality, Leadership and Action It also commemorates Gabriela Silang, known as one of the first and fiercest women generals in the Philippines who led the longest series of successful revolts against 18th Century Spanish colonizers. GABNet-US is an all-volunteer organization of women with chapters in Chicago, Irvine, Los Angeles, New Jersey/New York, Portland, San Diego, San Francisco/Bay Area, Seattle and Washington D.C. *** ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Home is just a click away. 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