This atrocious prohibition is not at all new. Seventeen years ago in September of 2007, the Movie and Television Review and Classification Board under Consoliza Laguardia imposed an X rating on a short indie film titled “Rights”, made to press for the safe release of Jonas Burgos.
That is why I think this is a missed opportunity for a festival to demonstrate how it can protect, through its mandate, a work which, like the rest, claims to reveal truth in the face of power.
Ano ang hinaing ng maralita pagkatapos ng SONA at bagyong Carina?
From the Marcos Martial Law period to 2000, one lawyer was killed each year (18 in 18 years). From 2001 to the present, there have been 204 lawyers killed at a yearly rate of about 8.87.
For many Filipino migrant workers abroad, advancements in technology have been able to provide comfort as they navigate the long and painful separation from their children, spouses, and parents back in the Philippines. They can check if their children have done their homework, watch their graduation ceremony live, virtually join a family reunion or birthday celebration, or share a prayer with their ailing mother or father. Smartphones, the internet and social media have become essential tools in their lives as migrants. For most Filipino migrants, visits back to their home provinces are expensive, and these are not even possible for many undocumented OFWs.
After the SONA, the likes of Jeff Celiz, Lorraine Badoy Partosa, and NTF-ELCAC mouthpieces look like “kulang sa yakap” from Marcos. They don’t have SONA soundbites to misuse.
This year marks the 13th year of Mary Jane’s detention on death row. And while there is no imminent threat of execution since she was granted a temporary reprieve by the Indonesian government in 2015 to allow her to testify against her traffickers in an ongoing legal case in the Philippines as a victim of human trafficking, Mary Jane does not deserve to be imprisoned for another single day.
Engracia, Carvajal and I might not have gotten our wish for a full-blown trial and ruling on the merits. But we’ve sent across our message: Fearless journalists who won’t be silenced are alive and well. They will fight for what’s true and right in defense of press freedom.
Marcos Jr.’s priority is to ensure that the neoliberal policies that his predecessor President Rodrigo Duterte passed are maximized to create the most favorable environment for big businesses, including foreign capital. To become an investment destination, the administration will provide massive tax breaks to corporations through the CREATE Law and provide foreign companies more profit-making opportunities with the amended laws on public services and foreign investments.
The Ukraine conflict is an example of how sovereign countries become launching pads of inter-imperialist proxy wars mainly because of their geopolitical and economic positions.
The US and NATO masterminded, engineered and openly funded from the US embassy in Kyiv the Maidan protests in 2013 and the bloody coup d’etat against the pro-Russian government in 2014 in order to bring to power the Russian-hating Bandera-type fascists (the National Socialists of Ukraine), the political descendants of Nazis, and a new breed of Zionist fascists, all servile to the US and West European monopoly capitalism and the NATO. Thus was institutionalized a Russophobic and neo-fascist regime in Ukraine in 2014.