The show must go on
APRN board member and APC leader Biplab Halim, an organizer of the scheduled meeting on food sovereignty, said that the meeting of food sovereignty and peasant rights advocates will push through despite the deportation of Alam, saying the Philippine government should respect their global advocacy against poverty. “Our colleague Badrul Alam wants this meeting to push through. We will proceed with our mission come what may. The show must go on.”
Halim said Alam and other foreign social activists who are planning to come to the Philippines for international solidarity work must be removed from the blacklist of the local immigration agency, stressing that the right of democratic people to free movement must be respected and guaranteed at all times.
He said it was unfortunate President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo prevented the Bangladeshi peasant activist from entering the country. “There is nothing in any international or local law that says expressing solidarity with the poor is a crime.”
APRN General Secretary Teresa Lauron said that the Arroyo administration seems to be afraid of its own shadow for blacklisting an innocent peasant leader like Alam.
Lauron said that Alam was invited to join a meeting of PCFS and APC. Alam, as vice chairperson of APC, will facilitate the International Tribunal on International Rice Research Institute on April 4 sponsored by APC.
She said that immigration officials did not bother to explain to Alam why he was blacklisted. “If he turned out to be blacklisted, the Philippine embassy should have not have given him a visa from Bangladesh in the first place.”
Map of global repression
For his part, APC and Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP, Peasant Movement of the Philippines) Secretary General Danilo Ramos said that the deportation of Alam was another political black eye on President Arroyo before the international community. “The international community will label this as another political persecution of people fighting for land rights and state repression by the corrupt, illegal, puppet and immoral regime of President Arroyo. The deportation of comrade Alam by the Philippine government will amplify calls to put the Arroyo administration on the map of global repression.”
Ramos said that he would ask peasant organizations in Malaysia, Indonesia, India, Thailand, Bangladesh and Nepal, as well as like-minded organizations in France, Brazil, Vietnam, South Korea, China, Japan, Mongolia, Mexico, Venezuela and Cuba to immediately write the Philippine Office of the President, the Bureau of Immigration and Deportation and the Department of Justice collectively condemning the “grossly immoral, inhuman and illegal deportation” of the Bangladesh peasant leader.
The KMP leader said they will hold a dialogue with the Bangladeshi embassy in Manila next week to inform embassy officials about what happened to Alam, saying the Philippine immigration officials did not even inform the Bangladeshi diplomatic officials in Manila about the deportation of the peasant leader. Bulatlat.com (Bulatlat.com)
