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I’ve just spent 17 days filming a documentary in the Philippines for Witness, Al Jazeera English.
The film is about a young human rights worker, Glendhyl Malabanan, who responds to killings and disappearances taking place in the Philippines. Malabanan works with a rights group known as Karapatan.
Since 2001, nearly 900 people have been executed by the military and its agents. The victims were mainly human rights workers, leftists, farmers, union leaders, church people, and journalists. Most were killed by masked men on motorbikes, hired for the job, and next to impossible to track down.
In fact, no one has been held accountable for the killings, even though UN experts have linked the military to the violence, and called on the government to stop the violence.
The backdrop to this story is the war the Philippines military has been fighting against communist insurgents known as the New People’s Army for 30 years. Some 40,000 people have been killed in the conflict.
President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and the country’s military commanders say they are fighting a war on terror. The president has declared all-out war against the rebels, and vowed to wipe them out within a year.
But civilians, accused of being communist rebels – or at least sympathizing the rebels – are being hunted down and killed.
Malabanan’s father, Romy, was a farmer’s leader and leftist. After his murder, Malabanan began working to get justice for his death and supporting the families of hundreds of other victims.
This documentary focuses on Glendhyl as she risks her own life trying to stop the killings, disappearances, and other rights abuses taking place in the Philippines, mostly out of the headlines.
(Photos by Luis Liwanag, fixer/ photo journalist.)
Manila’s Northern Cemetery is home to hundreds of squatter
s. But not for much longer.
Dozens of families have lived here for decades in cramped homes fitted between burial plots. Their only jobs are taking care of tombs belonging to the some of the country’s wealthiest citizens, now dead.
Manila’s mayor, Alfredo Lim, also known as Dirty Harry, because of his crackdown on crime and drugs,
has ordered all illegal homes in the cemetery to be demolished by the end of August 2007.
Faced with a shortage of land, and having to keep burying the dead, the city has started constructing apartment-style tombs. At the edge of the cemetery, towers of tombs, that appear to be at least 40 caskets-high, are being built.
Most of the families who lived in the cemetery have dismantled their homes to avoid clashes with authorities, and have moved out of the graveyard.
Others like Jun Calma, 30, his wife Laura Lynn, and their three sons are refusing to budge. The couple has been here for 20 years, and they have no other home. But authorities have told them their days in the cemetery are numbered, and they’ll have to pack up.
Desperate to evade city officials, the family has decided to temporarily hide their belongings – absolutely everything – at a neighbour’s house that is close by. At night, they move back into their empty home, and sleep on its bare floor, hoping one day, they can reclaim their right to stay.
