Walden Bello runs for senator of the Philippines, pushes reforms in governance (tags)
Rep. Walden Bello resigned from Congress on March 19, 2015, because he could no longer support a hypocritical good governance policy under which President Aquino went after his political enemies but protected his corrupt cronies. His resignation was also an act of protest at the president’s refusal to accept command responsibility for the Mamasapano tragedy. He felt that his voluntary stepping down was the ethical thing to do since his party Akbayan, of which he was the principal representative in the House of Representatives, maintained its support for Aquino.
Filipino Women March against US Military Expansion in the Philippines and the Pacific (tags)
On the occasion of the International Women’s Day 2012, we, Filipino women declare in strongest terms possible, our opposition not only to increased presence but to U.S. military presence per se on Philippine soil.
Akbayan and the Struggle for a New Philippines (tags)
(Speech at the Gene Viernes and Silme Domingo Awards Event, Seattle University, Seattle, Washington State, July 2, 2011.)
World March of Women in the Philippines (tags)
Today, women in the Philippines and all over the world gather in different places and spaces to show our collective strength and make our collective voice heard as we speak out our sufferings, challenges, triumphs and aspirations. Our voices are joined together as we resist the abuses and marginalization wrought upon us by economic policies that discriminate against giving women productive employment, just wages and benefits at the workplace, and opportunities for livelihood and income; by societies that allow, or even promote, violence to be committed against women with impunity; by governments and public institutions that turn a blind eye to the human rights of women.
Sexual Prey in the Saudi Jungle (tags)
He was an officer in the Saudi Royal Navy assigned to the strategic Saudi base of Jubail in the Persian Gulf. She was a single mom from Mindanao, in the Philippines, who saw, like so many others, employment in Saudi Arabia as a route out of poverty. When he picked her up at the Dammam International Airport in June, little did she know she was entering, not a brighter chapter of her life but a chamber of horrors from which she would be liberated only after six long months.
When I was recently named chairman of the Committee on Overseas Workers’ Affairs of the House of Representatives of the Philippines, I was approached by members of the press for my views on migrant labor. I remembered a speech I delivered last year at the Global Forum for Migration and Development in Athens, Greece. The thrust of the speech was that migrants’ rights have to be addressed on two fronts: ending the neoliberal policies that are responsible for creating poverty in their home countries, thus forcing them to emigrate, and demanding that they are given full rights in their host countries.