A YOUTH leader from Iligan City will bring to an international audience the spate of killings targeting lumad leaders and advocates working on land rights in Mindanao from November 4 to 6, in Ireland.
Vennel Francis Chenfoo, chairman of environmental youth group Panalipdan Mindanao Youth, will join the Eighth Dublin Platform for Human Rights Defenders organized by an Irish international foundation, Front Line Defenders.
Chenfoo journeyed around 1,000 kilometers with 700 lumads and advocates from Mindanao to the national capital for the recent protest caravan dubbed Manilakbayan ng Mindanao 2015. He is set to speak in one of the platform’s panel discussions entitled “Ultimate Failure: The Ongoing Killing of Human Rights Defenders.”
Established in 2002, the Front Line Defenders Dublin Platform for Human Rights Defenders “is a biannual event which provides a truly unique opportunity for human-rights defenders at risk, from every corner of the world, to come together to share experiences, learn from one another, discuss relevant issues and engage with decision-makers from governmental and intergovernmental bodies.”
The audience the platform gathers includes human-rights defenders, diplomats and representatives from the United Nations and other international organizations.
Chenfoo, however, said that more than the personal risks he faces as “a human-rights defender working in a climate of impunity,” he is more concerned about the safety and well-being of indigenous leaders and organized communities resisting extractive and destructive activities in Mindanao, the southern part of the Philippines. “Their communities are being subdued by recurring militarization to force them to submit to plunder projects against their will, and their leaders and defenders are being silenced by guns,” Chenfoo said, referring to the killing of indigenous leaders Bello Sinzo and Dionel Campus and Alcadev Executive Director Emerito Samarca on September 1 in Lianga, Surigao del Sur, and that of Frenie Landasan in Cabanglasan, Bukidnon, on March 28 this year.
In the compiled data of the Manilakbayan caravan, no less than 26 human-rights defenders have been killed in Mindanao this year alone.
High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein will welcome the participants to the platform via live link from Geneva. Irish Minister for Foreign Affairs Charlie Flannagan TD will formally open the platform and Stavros Lambrinidis, the European Union special representative for Human Rights, will follow with his address.
Chenfoo is a lumad youth advocate since 2010. He led youth delegates in fact-finding missions and campaigned for IP rights, mindless of the risks lumad advocates face daily. Currently, he is also the third nominee of the youth party-list group, Kabataan, which currently has one seat in the Philippine Congress.
His presence into the platform is upon the recommendation of the Rural Missionaries of the Philippines—Northern Mindanao Region, which has long been bringing to the international platforms the issues of human-rights defenders in Mindanao.
More of the ubiquitous Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) anti-Aquino/anti-government/anti-military propaganda activity.
ReplyDeleteThe Panalipdan Mindanao Youth organization is a CPP sectoral front for youth. And Vennel Francis Chenfoo, chairman of the group, is a CPP activist.
The linkage between Panalipdan, the Rural Missionaries of the Philippines (RMP), and other CPP fronts is well-established. RMP-Northern Mindanao Region sponsored a small delegation consisting of Sr. Ma. Famita N. Somogod, MSM and Vennel Francis Chenfoo to travel to the U.S. to attend the CPP-sponsored International Peoples’ Tribunal (IPT) that essentially condemned the U.S. for massive human rights violations in the Philippines. They linked up with several other CPP-associated personalities/organizations to include Amirah Ali Lidasan of the Initiatives for Peace in Mindanao and human rights lawyer Angela Librado-Trinidad of the Union of Peoples’ Lawyers in Mindanao. (See "RMP-NMR kicks off Mindanao US human rights mission" at http://www.rmp-nmr.org/articles/2015/07/15/rmp-nmr-kicks-mindanao-us-human-rights-mission)
Vennel Francis Chenfoo and Panalipdan are also linked to CPP political activity through Chenfoo's inclusion as the third nominee for the Kabataan party-list political party. Kabataan (Youth) is a CPP political front and is a member of the CPP-affiliated MAKABAYAN political coalition that is comprised of some twelve CPP-associated political parties to include Bayan Muna, Anakpawis, Gabriela, Kabataan, Courage, Migrante, ACT-Teachers, Katribu, Akap Bata, Piston, Kalikasan and Aking Bikolnon.