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Moros demand probe of cases of Muslim fall guys

Families and friends of Muslim detainees held at Bagong Diwa, Bicutan Metro Manila asked the Department of Justice (DoJ) Dec. 8 to investigate cases against all Muslims who were used as fall guys in the government’s crackdown on “terrorists.”

Meanwhile, Amirah Ali Lidasan, secretary-general of the Moro-Christian People’s Alliance (MCPA), said that kidnapping cases against some 100 detainees arrested from Basilan, Zamboanga and Sulu after President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s declaration of State of Lawlessness in Basilan should be fast-tracked.

The MCPA listed 124 Muslim detainees in Camp Bagong Diwa suspected of being Abu Sayyaf members, two Maguindanoan men accused as members of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front’s (MILF) bombing squad, and unaccounted number of Moros charged in connection with the Davao International airport and the Sasa wharf bombings early this year.

Lidasan also expressed alarm over the rate of Imams (Muslim clerics) being killed and abducted. Recent cases of killing and abduction took place in Zamboanga and Palawan this month.

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ST workers assail labor department for sell-out of cases  

“This is the season for sell-out of worker’s cases,” said Pagkakaisa ng Manggagawa sa Timog Katagalugan (Pamantik) in a Dec. 5 statement referring to Labor Secretary Patricia Sto. Tomas’ “selling out of workers’ struggle” in favor of capitalist interests.

Pamantik led the protest of on-strike workers from RFM-Swift, Nissan Motors Phils., Nestle Phils., Inc. and various unions at the DoLE office in Manila last Dec. 3 to denounce the “unconcealed connivance between Department of Labor and Employment (DoLE) and capitalists in repressing trade unionism” in Southern Tagalog.

The group said that this connivance serves as “extension of workers repression” even outside their respective factories. 

In Southern Tagalog, strikes at RFM-SFI, NPI, NMPI, Jac Liner Transit and St. Rose Transit remain unresolved from two to five years, the statement said. 

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Anakpawis lauds NDFP’s ceasefire declaration

The Anakpawis national political party has lauded the National Democratic Front of the Philippines' (NDFP) declaration of ceasefire with the Macapagal-Arroyo administration from Dec. 20-Jan. 4.

Crispin Beltran, the party’s chairman for electoral concerns, last week said the declaration of ceasefire “was a gesture of sincerity on the part of the revolutionary organization and its armed forces to meet the government halfway” while the latter “violates its own ceasefire declarations and launch attacks against the New People's Army (NPA) and civilians in the provinces right during the period of declared ceasefires.”

Beltran added that the Macapagal-Arroyo administration is “no different from her predecessors when it came to human rights” since the Philippine National Police (PNP) and the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) remain “the biggest human rights violators.” 

Bulatlat.com

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