American Rights Lawyer
Deported by Philippine Airport Authorities
Blacklist
of foreign lawyers and priests confirmed
BY BULATLAT
BLACKLISTED: Human rights lawyer Brian
Campbell with other activists in one of the international fact-fnding
missions to the Philippines
PHOTO
COURTESY OF KILUSANG MAYO UNO |
Philippine immigration authorities denied the travel rights of an American
human rights lawyer by deporting him immediately back to the United States
upon arrival at the international on Dec. 6.
A news dispatch sent from Washington, DC by Rachel Lovis of the
International Labor Rights Fund (ILRC) to Bulatlat said Brian Campbell,
staff attorney for ILRC, was detained at the Ninoy Aquino International
Airport (NAIA) and denied access to the country “because of his support
for Filipino human rights activists.”
After showing his
passport to airport officials, Campbell was questioned about his past
trips to the country on fact-finding missions.
|
The American lawyer
had traveled to the Philippines in April on an International Solidarity
Mission sponsored by the Center for Trade Union and Human Rights and the
Ecumenical Institute of Labor Education and Research where he met several
families of victims of political killings including Luz Fortuna, the wife
of Diosdado “Ka Fort” Fortuna, a murdered union organizer.
An airport security
officer showed Campbell a list of names of international human rights
advocates who would not be allowed to enter the country. Also on the list
were members of the U.S.-based National Lawyers Guild who recently
published an article about the Philippines as well as a number of
priests.
The existence of the
blacklist has been confirmed by Immigration Commissioner Alipio Fernandez
and Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez in an Associated Press article
published on December 7.
To
silence critics
Campbell was
traveling to the Philippines at the invitation of several Filipino human
rights organizations to gather further information about the situation in
the Philippines.
Campbell said, “You
can rest assure that I am being denied entry into the Philippines as just
another small part of the government’s concerted long-standing campaign to
silence the critics of the Arroyo regime and the continuing political
killings.”
The Philippines
remains one of the most dangerous countries for unionized workers and
human rights activists. Labor groups said that from the Chong Won garment
factory where workers have been on strike after management violated their
rights to freedom of association, denied workers bathroom breaks and
forced workers to take on 24 hour shifts, to the murder of Bishop Alberto
Ramento of the Philippines Independent Church, a supporter of striking
workers in the Cavite Economic Zone, the government of President Gloria
Macapagal-Arroyo has grown increasingly repressive over the past few
years.
Despite the attacks
on human rights advocates, the International Labor Rights Fund will
continue to support the demands for the protection for human rights
activists in the Philippines, the group said.
A complaint of human
rights violations perpetrated against trade union workers and organizers
was filed last month at the International Labor Organization (ILO) in
Geneva. Bulatlat
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