Page 20 - Hello Philippines February 2016 'B' issue

20 www.hello-philippines.com
PFiolw-Aemr regvroolutpfortonerwelgiveenePreaotipolne
SAN FRANCISCO - Thirty
years define a generation, or so says
Merriam-Webster. Those three
decades supposedly span the average
time between an individual’s birth and
parenthood, between earliest learning
and teaching, emulating and modeling.
Nineteen eighty-six was the year
Filipinos delivered what is now known
throughout the world as “People
Power,” the peaceful uprising that
culminated on Epifanio de los Santos
Avenue—also known as EDSA—
that brought down a once-feared
dictatorship.
Between then and now, a new
generation of Filipinos has been born,
many of whom have never heard the
words “People Power” or confuse it
with similar movements that ousted
another Philippine president a few
years later.
For them, a group of individuals who
fought the regime of Ferdinand and
Imelda Marcos and risked their lives
leading or supporting the opposition is
dedicating a series of events to honor
Filipinos’ greatest gift to democracy.
Organizers of “EDSA People
Power @30” have partnered with
the Philippine Consulate General in
San Francisco and Filipino American
nonprofits for a tribute that evokes the
spirit of the revolt.
“We were beginning to realize
POEA allows licensed recruiters to place
Filipino nurses in Germany outside Triple Win
MANILA - Labor and Employment
Secretary Rosalinda Dimapilis-Baldoz
on Wednesday announced that the
Governing Board of the Philippine
Overseas Employment Administration,
which she chairs, has issued a
resolution, GB Resolution No. 4, Series
of 2016, allowing the participation of
private recruitment agencies (PRAs)
in the recruitment, deployment, and
employment of Filipino nurses to
Germany.
“The resolution now paves the
way for the immediate hiring and
deployment of nurses to Germany
outside of the Triple Win Project,”
said Baldoz, who explained that the
high demand for professional nurses
in one of Europe’s largest and most
stable economies made the issuance
necessary.
Under the Triple Win Project and
as outlined in the Philippines-Germany
labor agreement signed on 19 March
2013, job placement of Filipino health
that while it had often been said that
the Marcos dictatorship silenced a
generation of national leaders, the 30
years after 1986 produced a generation
of Filipinos—in the Philippines and
around the world—who were ignorant
of what People Power was,” Susan
Po- Rufino, co-organizer of the 30th
anniversary events, told Philippine
News.
“We were collectively worried
about this post-EDSA People Power
generation whose history textbooks
hardly contained any references to
this phenomenon that propelled the
Filipino people as global models of
peaceful, radical political change. In
fact, there seems to has been a rash
of revisionist accounts lately about the
Marcos regime, in effect, trivializing
the 1986 People Power revolution
which other nations had been
emulating since then.”
An essay-writing contest for Filipino
American residents born before 1986
launches the remembrance. Book
readings and presentations, a screening
of a documentary and a photo exhibit at
the consulate will relive the highlights
and unseen moments that restored
freedom in the archipelago nation.
Po-Rufino credited Consul General
Henry Bensurto for conjuring up a
“celebration... (that looks) to the future
- have the post-EDSA generation as
professionals in Germany, particularly
nurses, may only be carried out by the
POEA’s in-house placement facility and the
Federal Employment Agency (BA) through
the International Placement Services
(ZAV).
“We will allow the hiring and
deployment of Filipino nurses to Germany
outside of the Triple Win Project. However, Germany by PRAs shall be in accordance
licensed private recruiters cannot collect
any placement fee from applicants,”
Baldoz said.
Apart from Secretary Baldoz,
Governing Board members who signed
the resolution were Hans Leo J. Cacdac,
POEA Administrator and Vice-Chairman;
Milagros Isabel A. Cristobal, Women Sector
Representative; Alexander E. Asuncion;
Land-based Sector Representative; Felix
M. Oca, Sea-Based Sector Representative;
and Estrelita S. Hizon, Private Sector
Representative.
On July 2013, however, the government
of the Federal Republic of Germany passed
an employment ordinance allowing “the
NEWS
featured speakers, sponsor an essay
contest eligible only to this generation.”
The timing for a history lesson could
not be more ideal.
“A crucial Philippine national
election is coming up, and there’s a
whole generation of Filipinos and
Filipino Americans who are not
aware of one of the most corrupt and
brutal dictatorships in the world,” co-
organizer Mila de Guzman referred to
the national elections in May. Many
of the candidates are relatives or allies
of Marcos and his cronies as well as
of his fellow ousted president (now
Manila Mayor) Joseph Estrada and his
successor Gloria Macapagal Arroyo,
who is in hospital arrest on corruption
charges.
Po-Rufino, a luxury real estate
broker, and de Guzman, a freelance
journalist, have a personal stake in the
enterprise. Both have family members
who were herded into military camps
along with other political activists
who challenged the dictatorship.
They themselves were anti-Marcos
activists , but their thoughts are with
those who died or disappeared and
missing to date or otherwise subjected
to atrocities after Marcos declared
martial law in 1972.
“More than 3,000 were killed,
thousands imprisoned and tortured,
women political prisoners were
immigration of recognized occupations,
including nurses among others, into
the German labor market, under the
so-called ‘White List’ of the German
Employment Regulation, through the
private sector.”
The Secretary said the recruitment
and placement of Filipino nurses to
with existing rules and regulations of
the POEA.
She also urged owners of licensed
recruitment agencies to adhere to the
framework of a transparent, fair, and
ethical recruitment and employment
of the nurses for their protection and
welfare.
Under GB Resolution No. 4, Series
of 2016, the PRA shall not collect
placement fees from applicants, but
they are allowed to charge service fees
from the employers.
Other fees to be paid by the
employer are for Preparatory German
Language, visa, POEA processing fee,
OWWA contribution, and airfare.
Recruitment agencies are required
to pay for the nurse’s compulsory
insurance coverage.
Applicants have to pay for their
passport, medical tests, government
clearances and membership with
Philhealth and Pag-IBIG. n InterAksyon.com
/ February 10, 2016 / 6:01 pm
February 2016 / Fortnightly – No. 4 • UK & Europe Edition
Consul General Henry S. Bensurto, Jr. (at the head of the table) chairs the January 27 meeting of the EDSA/
People Power@30 Organizing Committee.Philippine News
subjected to rape and other sexual
abuses,” said de Guzman.
Overseas Filipinos were not safe
from regime operatives.
De Guzman said she was forced into
“involuntary exile” as a UN employee
when her Philippine passport was
revoked by the consulate in New York.
“Activists in the US were not spared
from the surveillance and harassment,
and even murder,” she stressed.
“Seattle union leaders and anti-Marcos
activists Silme Domingo and Gene
Viernes were gunned down at their
union headquarters on June 1, 1981
by Marcos gunmen. In an example of
People Power, the Seattle community
joined together and formed the
Committee for Justice for Domingo
and Viernes to pursue justice and filed
a civil suit in 1982. In 1989, the U.S.
Federal District Court in Seattle found
the Marcoses, along with their U.S.
based co-conspirators, guilty of the
murders. It was the first time a former
head of state was brought to U.S. court
for the murders of U.S. citizens and
found liable.”
Their common enemy brought the
two women together.
“We met either in a demonstration
or an educational event in the early
1980s and became friends,” said de
Guzman.
Po-Rufino recalled taking part in
anti-Marcos activities as a “sort of
coming-of-age” for herself, but quickly
qualified the People Power movement
in the Bay Area as “minor compared to
the sacrifices, dedication, deprivations
of those in the resistance movement
back in the Philippines.”
The experience strengthened her
character.
“It taught me to make choices, stand
up and speak up for what I believed in
- not that I did not have this exposure
at the Diliman campus of UP in the
‘60s or for that matter, at home where
my father would invite over his fellow
former detainees during the witch-
hunting days of the 1950s,” said the
member of Movement for a Free
Philippines founded by former senator
and presidential candidate Raul
Manglapus.
“It rankled me no end when, at
that point in the life of the Filipino
nation, many people I knew refused
to take sides. That’s when I decided to
have crash courses in Zen so I could
savor that bright shining moment of
February 25, 1986!”
San Francisco was ground zero for
victory of stateside People Power.
The day that then-Consul Gen.
Romeo Arguelles announced he
was defecting from the Marcos
administration opened the formerly
forbidden doors of 447 Sutter Street
to all Filipinos including opposition
leaders and media including Philippine
News.
Po-Rufino had made the site a daily
destination “within the crowd control
metal barricades which the SFPD had
set up every day of that month (and
the month before) chanting for Marcos
to step down and that Cory Aquino be
declared president of the Philippines.”
De Guzman, who by then had
relocated to San Francisco and joined
the Coalition Against the Marcos
Dictatorship, stayed glued to the
television those pre-internet days, due
to work.
She lost no time after her comrades
had occupied the consulate while
overseas compatriots reclaimed
Malacanang Palace in Manila to fulfill
a long-awaited plan.
“Two days after the overthrow of
the dictator, I was at the Philippine
Consulate applying for a new passport
to travel to the Philippines for the first
time after almost a decade,” she told
Philippine News. “When I called my
family, the first words of my Dad, who
was celebrating his 70th birthday that
April, were: ‘Come home now, you’ll be
safe.’”
Ten years later she wrote her nieces,
Rachel and Raquel, then-11 and born
in March and April 1986.
“I told them that I hoped that they
would never live through a dictatorship,
that the historical event of People
Power would serve as a reminder that
social justice and freedom are worthy
causes to support, and that they would
pursue whatever professions their
hearts desire and try to give something
back to society as their lives would be
much richer by that humanity,” said
the author of upcoming book “Women
Against Marcos: Stories of Filipino and
Filipino American Women Who Fought
a Dictator.”
“Time will tell if my words had any
impact on them,” she added.
Po-Rufino’s children Angelo and
Georgina tagged along on their
mother’s many meetings and rallies.
Her son now lives with his wife on
the East Coast will commemorate in
spirit, but her daughter will definitely
be among the Gen-Y and Xers and
Millennials EDSA People Power@30
aims to inspire. n Cherie M. Querol Moreno /
Philippine News / Published / February 8, 2016 / 2:35pm