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Published: February 3rd 2008
I learned last night that the community where I was staying last week experienced a saturation drive on Friday night. A saturation drive is a technique that was made famous in this country by the Marcos dictatorship.
What happens I have been told is that early in the morning, usually just before or after dawn, numerous police and military personal raid the community. They round up all of the men, group them somewhere open and make them strip down to their underwear. The officials claim that they are looking for gang tattoos and know criminals. This is a pretext to arrest a number of the men arbitarily. I was told that the men where all arrested this time for vagrancy.
If this news makes it into the one or two pro-people newspapers in the country the government will claim that it is seeking out and stopping terrorism with these raids. They will tell people that the urban poor communities are hotbeds for Muslim terrorist and communist terrorist activities. They will make this claim even though the armed groups are out in the rural provinces, and are currently being hemmed in so heavily by the government that they would never be able to get out of the militarized zones unnoticed.
So apparently the government is fighting terror by arresting men for vagrancy, especially men who have no know connections to either armed group and who where sleeping in their homes with their families at the time of the raid. It is funny that my host community was raided just as the people where really starting to get organized against the demolishion plan. It is also funny that the current "democratic" regime has brought back a technique that hasn't been used since the oppressive Marcos regime.
My heart aches desperately for the people who hosted me so graciously in their community. I got to leave their community and come back to a safe, comfortable compound. They have to stay in the squater settlement fighting for their basic rights against a regime that would rather intimidate them then have dialogue with them.
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palanyagborn
non-member comment
I am outrage!
I am outrage that this kind of intimidation is happening in the Philippines. Here I am in US and all I hear is how the economy is doing well and benefitting lots of citizens, apparently it is only skin deep, In a ray of hope, that people like you will and your organization will encourage the poor people how to demand in a peaceful way their basic right.