Echoing their Plea: A call to protect and promote Filipino migrants' human rights

Privilege Speech of Gabriela Women's Party Rep. Luzviminda C. Ilagan on 29 September 2008.

Mr. Speaker, dear colleagues, good evening.

This coming October 29 and 30, around 192 United Nations-member states will be attending the second Global Forum on Migration and Development, "an informal multilateral and state-led multi-stakeholder process". With the theme "Protecting and Empowering Migrants for Development," this year's forum purportedly aims "to identify practical and feasible ways to strengthen the mutually beneficial relationship between migration and development."

Mr. Speaker, Gabriela Women's Party is doubtful of the motive of the GFMD, most especially of the fact that the Philippines was chosen to be its host, allegedly because of the country's "success" in developing the export of labor as an industry. It is far from being a "model", as the Arroyo government claims, of development, and this is proven by the national situation of the Filipino masses.

The country's current unemployment rate is pegged at 7.4 percent, which means that around 7 million Filipinos are without jobs. Those with jobs mostly are underpaid and do not receive social security benefits. This, along with the crises that keep basic commodities and services away from people's reach, has left many Filipinos with no choice but to find good paying jobs abroad.

There are around 9.4 million overseas Filipino workers scattered around the globe, more than half of them work as domestic workers and laborers in the Middle East, North America and Europe. Like other foreign migrant workers, they are vulnerable to egregious forms of discrimination and abuses, with little or no hope of redress. These include contract substitution, non-payment of salaries, forced confinement, food deprivation, excessive workload, and instances of severe psychological, physical, and sexual abuse.

Human Rights Watch documented dozens of cases where the combination of these conditions amounted to forced labor, trafficking, or slavery-like conditions. In defense of themselves, many OFWs have run away from their employers, are languishing in jails, in death row, or worse, have already been executed. In these cases, all our government could do is to plead insanity of the accused each time an OFW gets convicted.

Things are much worse for Filipinos who left the country without proper documents. In addition to the already mentioned difficulties, undocumented migrants also face constant threats of detention and deportation, especially with the tough immigration laws recently ratified and implemented in different countries around the world.

For the third time in six years, Malaysia has begun yet another massive operation to flush out illegal immigrants mainly in Sabah. Over 200,000 undocumented Filipinos are being trageted for deportation this year. In the past six months, 35,000 have already been sent back to the Philippines, most of them my fellow Mindanaoans who fled from war-torn areas and have lived in the contested State already for more than three decades. They take on jobs that even poor Malaysians normally shun because of low pay- construction and factory work, hotel and restaurant service, public transportation, domestic and entertainment work.

International and local news reports exposed that the same human rights violations in the 2002 and 2005 crackdowns are again being inflicted upon our helpless kababayans. Al Jazeerah, a news and current affairs channel, was able to video-document the Filipinos' experience in Sabah:

The "RELAS", armed civilians given police power by the Malaysian government to arrest suspected "illegal" migrants, forcibly enter houses in the middle of the night, when the unsuspected occupants are at sleep. If unable to show proper documents, a person, no matter in what health condition or of what age he or she is, will be arrested and cramped together with around 150 to 250 people in deplorable detention cell that does not have windows. The arrested is made to sleep on the cold cement floor and is fed spoiled food, if at all.

In the Al Jazeera documentary, a Filipino, whose working papers have already expired, was arrested during a raid. Being a single parent, his five very young children were also taken to jail with him.

In another raid, four children, who were left in the care of their grandmother after their parents had been taken away from them months ago, were saved only by the fact that Al Jazeera cameras had been present.

Men, women and children are detained for weeks before they are deported back to their countries of origin. Sabah newspapers confirmed the Malaysian authorities' cruelties – beatings and manhandling of men, children and even pregnant women. Many women had been sexually harassed, one of them an under-aged girl. Countless people, especially children, fell physically, emotionally and psychologically ill. Many died due to dehydration, starvation and diseases.

What is the Philippine government doing to help the Filipino victims of the Sabah crackdown?

Aside from the lack of assistance for the detainees, Migrante International witnessed firsthand the unpreparedness of the Philippine government in providing relief goods and services to deportees during its Fact Finding, Medical and Relief Operation to Tawi-Tawi and Sulu in 2005:

After enduring brutal and inhumane conditions in Malaysian detention camps and after experiencing days without food or water for those who hid or paddled back to Tawi-Tawi on rowboats – many arrived in gross ill health. Among the last batch of deported refugees, 84 were diagnosed to be ill. Only around 10 were confined to the provincial hospital, with many being discharged after only two or three days, even if they were still sick.

For many, government assistance lasted only for three days after their return to Tawi-Tawi, Sulu, Basilan or Zamboanga City, while for refugees from Barangay Anuling, Patikul, Jolo and Barangays Panglima Alari and Datu Puti in Sitangkai, Tawi-Tawi, there had been none.

In Barangay Datu Puti, about 17 refugee families were homeless. They ate and slept in an open space by a courtyard atop bamboo or wooden slats precariously positioned on top of the water. Those from Luzon, Visayas and other parts of Mindanao were merely dropped off at Zamboanga City and were left on their own.

Mr. Speaker, dear colleagues, the situation of Filipino migrants, especially of those languishing in detention cells in Malaysia and in "Silungan" centers in Zamboanga, strongly calls for our prompt attention and action.

Let us ensure the implementation of the following measures that the RP-Malaysia Working Group on Migrant Workers has come up with to avert the crisis in Sabah:

1. in cooperation with the Malaysian government, minimization of the health hazards in the deportation;
2. reiteration of the need to ensure that conditions in detention centers remain safe and sensitive to the special needs of women and children;
3. stepping up of efforts to regularize eligible migrants;
4. turning over of children unaccompanied by parents to the care of appropriate authorities;
5. deportation only of those medically fit, and;
6. facilitation of travel documentation of deportees

Let us extend assistance to the victims of the Malaysian crackdown and support Fact Finding Missions, such as the one to be initiated by the Gabriela Women's Party and Migrante International in Kota Kinabalu this October.

In the light of continuous crackdown on undocumented migrants in many other countries such as Korea, Japan, the United States, and in fifteen months time, in 27 European Union member states, Gabriela Women's Party urges the members of the Lower House, through the Committees on Overseas Workers Affairs and Foreign Affairs, to work towards the formulation of a comprehensive program of action for the undocumented under the global crackdown phenomenon.

This representation also challenges this Congress and the government as a whole, to work for the creation of secure jobs, legislation of living wages, curbing of unfair labor practices and development of our local industries, to prevent massive migration – legal or otherwise – of Filipinos to other countries. Let us genuinely improve the local working and overall living conditions of the people, by allocating a major part of the National Budget to social and economic services. Let us stop exploiting the prevailing chronic poverty to export more and more Filipinos and instead work towards honest-to-goodness long term solutions to the problem.

Let us rethink the purpose of the Global Forum for Migration and Development. Migration will not bring about our sought-after development, contrary to what GFMD claims. Migration can never be a long-term solution to the poverty and hunger in the Philippines.

From October 28 to 30, a parallel forum will be held through the collaborative effort of the International Migrant Alliance and Migrante International. The International Assembly of Migrants and Refugees, in its genuine desire to promote and protect migrant's and refugee's rights, aims to:

1. analyze critical issues surrounding the GFMD agenda;
2. critically discuss and analyze the impact of neoliberal globalization and its devices, strategies and policies on the lives of migrants, refugees and their families;
3. build the process of attaining the migrant consensus as the legitimate and genuine platform of migrants to the GFMD, and;
4. help strengthen the unity and solidarity among migrants, refugees and advocates.

Mr. Speaker, dear colleagues, let us support this genuine assembly of migrants. Let us stop forced migration. Let us ensure jobs at home and end poverty. Let us uphold and protect the rights of migrants and refugees. #