Vol. 71/No. 21      May 28, 2007

The ISA is an annual event initiated by the Kilusang Mayo Uno (May First Movement), a national labor federation in the Philippines.

The audience at the meeting here included many young Filipinos and other Asian and Pacific Islanders. Celso Tolman, a member of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, chaired the event. He noted the long history of struggle by working people in the Philippines and by Filipino workers in the United States. In 1981, he said, two leaders of a cannery workers' struggle against Alaskan contractors were assassinated outside their union offices in downtown Seattle.

The delegates, Rob McCauley, Gina Salao, and Chel Cendana, represent the U.S. Committee on Labor and Human Rights in the Philippines, Philippine U.S. Solidarity Organization, and BAYAN-USA Pacific Northwest Regional Council, respectively. They said that on their fact-finding tour they would attend a May Day labor rally in Manila and then visit working-class communities and factories in different areas of the country.

The delegates reported that since 2001, 843 union leaders and others have been killed in the Philippines as part of government-backed political repression. Freedom Allah Siyam, a leader of BAYAN-USA, described Washington’s long history of imperialist plunder and its role in supporting repression in that country. He said the U.S. government has provided more than $230 million to the Philippine military since Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo became president in 2001. In October, 5,000 U.S. troops took part in joint military exercises with Philippine troops.

Discussion at the meeting also took up the popular resistance that led to the end of the U.S.-backed dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos in 1986 and forced the closing of U.S. military bases there in 1992.

The delegates said they will give a report on their trip on their return.  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home