***Four
Stories***
STORY
NO. 1
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Camille
P. Balagtas
People's
TONIGHT
August
8, 2002
Deportees
will worsen RP unemployment, housing shortage
=======================================================
The Philippine government should not watch
idly by Malaysia employs "Abu Sayyaf-like tactics in deporting an
estimated 500,000 Filipino illegal in that country.
While Malaysia has the right to deport
illegal aliens from their land, the manner by which this should be carried out
should not be reminiscent of the "Nazi" pogrom against the Jews,'
Senator Ralph Recto said.
Just the same, the country's concern over
the round-up of Filipinos in Sabah should be "conveyed" to Kuala
Lumpur in a manner forceful enough to be understood but not to the extent of
rupturing RP-Malaysia ties."
While we can raise a howl on the way our
countrymen are deported, what we should be worried about is how to provide
jobs, housing and health care to the deportees, Recto said.
The
main issue here is not about "immigration niceties" but how to
provide jobs to the returning refugees, Recto said.
"Granting that half of the 500,000
Filipino illegal in Malaysia are of working age, how are we going to create
jobs for them here?" Recto said.
Recto said the whole of Philippine
agriculture managed to produced a 'measly' 110,000 jobs from April 2001 to
April 2002.
The manufacturing sector churned out only
54,000 new jobs during the same period, he said, in stressing the bleak
employment picture" in the country.
There is also the question of shelter, he
said. "The influx of balikbayans from Sabah would aggravate the 3.2
million-unit housing shortage.
For the schooling of the children of
deportees, we may have to build 1,000 classrooms, he added.
Recto said; "Even if due to our
representation what will emerge is a kinder and gentler Malaysia" the
question remains: What jobs are in store for those coming home from Sabah? What
is the fate that awaits them in their homeland?"///camille p. balagtas
STORY
NO. 2
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Camille
P. Balagtas
People's
TONIGHT
Aug. 8,
2002
Absentee
Voting safeguards
==========================
Insisting that Filipinos overseas should be
allowed to witness the counting and tabulation of their votes right there in
their respective host countries, Senator Aquilino Pimentel jr. said he will
bloc any move to dilute the safeguard against electoral fraud in the bill
granting abseen voting rights for overseas Filipinos.
Pimentel expressed alarm over a reported
move in the House of Representatives for the votes cast by qualified overseas
Filipinos to be counted at the Commission on Elections main office in Manila
and not in the Philippine embassies and consulates in the various countries or
on site where the votes are cast.
Pimentel said this move was denounced by a
group of overseas Filipino workers when they met with him at the Manila Yacht
Club Tuesday night.
He said the House scheme to count the
absentee votes in Manila contradicts the Senate's version that counting of
votes should be done at the various embassies/ consulates and other designated
voting centers in states or cities where there is a large concentration of
OFWs.
"This was adopted by the Senate in
response to the insistence of the overseas Filipinos that they should be
allowed to witness the counting and tabulation of votes right there in their
respective host countries," the lawmaker from Mindanao said.
He said the overseas Filipino believe that
any attempt to tamper with their votes will be easily foiled if they will
personally witness the counting of votes in the polling centers. They also want
to know instantly the results of the voting in their respective host cities or
states, he said.
Pimentel said it would be a big mistake if
the House will decide to have the counting of the absentee votes done in Manila
since this will be contrary to the overwhelming stand of the overseas Filipinos
expressed in the series of consultation conducted by the Senate committee on
constitutional amendments and electoral reforms in selected countries and
provide an opportunity for widespread "dagdag-bawas."
"This will render useless the
consultations that we conducted with the oversead workers and render nugatory
the intent to guard the vote to Filipinos abroad," he said.
The opposition lawmaker also frowned on the
supposed House's stand to treat absentee voting in 2004 elections as merely
"experimental" instead of a permanent political exercise envisioned
under the 1987 Constitution in recognition of the invaluable sacrifices of the
overseas Filipino workers and their invaluable contributions to the national economy.
"It would be a mistake to treat
absentee voting as an experimental exercise which can be discontinued or
withdrawn according to the decision of policy-makers. Instead, it should be
regarded as a right that overseas Filipino richly deserves," Pimentel
said.///camille p. balagtas
STORY
NO. 3
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Camille
P. Balagtas
People's
TONIGHT
August
8, 2002
LOREN
SEEKS SENATE PROBE OF SEXUAL SLAVERY OF PINAYS IN SOKOR
Trafficked
Filipinas forced into prositution in US military camp towns
=====================================================
Senate Majority Leader Loren Legarda has
urged the appropriate Senate committees to investigate an international
magazine report claiming that hundreds of Filipina are being illegally
trafficked in South Korea and sold into sexual slavery in a remote US military
camptown near Tongduchon.
Legarda was reacting to a TIME magazine
investigative report alleging that thousands of Filipinas and Russians have
been forced into prostitution in a nightclub strip that caters exclusively to
US servicemen based in Camp Casey, some 20 kilometers from the demilitarized
zone separating South and North Korea.
The women were reportedly granted
"entertainement" visas and lured by false promises that they would be
employed merely as bar waitresses and customer relation officers.
According to the TIME report, "at
least 16 Filipinas have escaped from bars near Tongduchon since June, bringing
with them horror stories."
One of the Filipinas featured in the report
to have been illegally recruited and forced into prostitution was identified as
19-year -old Rosie Danan.
Danan claimed that she started working with
other Filipinas in a camptown club near in late 1999, at the age of 16.
She told TIME that a recruitment agency in
Manila had promised her a job that would require her merely to serve drinks and
chat with customers.
However, upon her arrival in Korea on a
false passport, Danan said her papers were confiscated by the club manager.
Danan said she was eventually forced to have sex with customers in the club's
VIP rooms.
"There could be dozens if not hundred
of Filipinas like Danan who want to get out of their slave-like conditions
there, but have no one to turn to," Legarda said.
"We would like to find out what steps,
if any, are being taken by Philippine diplomatic and labor officials in Seoul
to address the plight of these Filipinas," Legarda said.
"We cannot just turn a blind eye to
the sexual bondage and exploitation of these young women," Legarda added.
Danan said she was allowed to get out of
the club for only three minutes a day to make a phone call.
Danan escaped from the club last year with
the help of a Filipino priest. She is now living in a shelter in Seoul.
The trafficking and prostitution of
Filipinas and other foreign women in Tongduchon has drawn the attention of
members of the US Congress.
A US Senator and 12 Congressmen recently
demanded that the Pentagon investigate the trafficking allegations in the
Tongduchon and other US military camptowns in South Korea.
The US servicemen in Camp Casey are there
to protect the South from alleged aggression from the North.
Last year alone, "more than 8500
foreign women, mostly Filipinas and Russians, entered (South) Korea on
entertainment visas," according to the TIME report.
"The women don't know they are going
to be locked up and forced into prostitution as soon as they get to the
clubs," a spokesman for the International Organization for Migration told
TIME. ///camille p. balagtas
STORY
NO. 4
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Camille
P. Balagtas
People's
TONIGHT
August
8, 2002
PIMENTEL
SAYS SC's DECISION TO SPARE 107 CONVICTS BOLSTERS REPEAL OF DEATH PENALTY
==================================================================================
Senate Minority Leader Aquilino Q.
Pimentel, Jr. (PDP-Laban) today said the Supreme Court's decision commuting the
death sentence of 107 convicts to life imprisonment bolsters the argument for
the repeal of the death penalty.
Pimentel said the verdict exposes the high
risk of committing errors in executing convicted criminals due to the
misjudgment of court officials and other weaknesses of the criminal justice
system.
"It is conceivable that there are many
other convicts similarly situated who could have been unjustly sentenced to
death," he said.
He said the scandalously huge number of
commutation ordered by the high tribunal indicates the high degree of faulty
decisions made by the lower court judges to the detriment of the convicted
felons.
"Ultimately, what is laid bare in the
Supreme Court decision is the dager of executing convicts who deserve a lesser
punishment. Worse, somebody who has been executed may turn out to be
innocent," Pimentel said.
Pimentel said the unprecedented SC verdict
should prod Congress into abolishing the death penalty.
"The decision should remove the doubts
in the minds of our lawmakers about the necessity of erasing the death penalty
in our statute books. It substantiates our claim that the death penalty should
be repealed for being inhuman and constitutional impermissible," he said.
Under Senate Bill 2060 filed by Pimentel
and co-authored by 14 other senators, persons convicted for crimes like murder,
rape, kidnapping and drug trafficking will be slapped a maximum penalty of life
imprisonment without the benefit of parole. Once enacted into law, the death
sentence of more than 1,200 death convicts will be automatically commuted to
life imprisonment.
Pimentel maintained that the penalty of
life imprisonment with no possibility of parole is a "worse punishment
than death."
He also said that the death penalty does
not conform with the modern concept of penology which gives convicts the
opportunity to reform and become productive citizens anew. ///camille p.
balagtas