Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Helping heal wounds of Mother Earth


INQUIRER NORTHERN LUZON
Inquirer Northern Luzon : Widow helps heal wounds of Earth
By Maurice Malanes
Philippine Daily Inquirer Inquirer Northern Luzon
Posted date: April 21, 2009

NATURAL or organic farming has a way of helping Florence Macagne-Manegdeg recover from what she calls a “senseless murder” that left her a widow and to raise by herself two young daughters after her husband, Jose (Pepe), was murdered more than three years ago.

“Our backyard now teems with fruits – peaches, plum, persimmon, papaya; vegetables – soybeans, lettuce, tomatoes; flowers, such as jade, zinnia and vines; and herbal plants,” says Macagne-Manegdeg or Dom-an, as she is called by her family and friends.
With her teenage children, she tends her backyard in her home village in the upland town of Sagada, Mt., Province, where she was born and raised.

“In dabbling in natural farming, I am, in my little way, helping heal the Earth even as farming helps me and my daughters heal our wounds from our tragedy,” says Dom-an, 36.

Pepe, a 37-year-old lay leader of the church-based Rural Missionaries of the Philippines, was shot and killed on November 28, 2005, in San Esteban, Ilocos Sur.
He had just finished briefing farmers on human rights and was waiting for a bus to Metro Manila when he was attacked. He was to fetch his wife, who was arriving from Hong Kong, where she worked as a maid.

Beyond pity, rage

Coming home only to see her husband’s remains in a coffin was tragic enough for Dom-an and her daughters.

“I am through with mourning and grieving, and I have to be strong for my daughters,” she says. “I should no longer dwell in anger and sorrow. I should not fall into the trap of self-pity. I have to move on instead toward my journey of peace and healing.”
Dom-an is exhausting all avenues to seek justice for her husband. She has been writing to and engaging concerned officials in the military, the Commission on Human Rights and some members of Congress, as well as regional and international human rights watchdogs.

But she is also engaged in what she calls “peace and healing initiatives,” which include promoting organic farming and organizing an organic farmers’ cooperative in Sagada.

She says the key movers of the cooperative are widows, families of overseas Filipino workers and women farmers.

Through her backyard garden, Dom-an has helped show that “healthy and joyful” food could be grown the traditional and natural way, especially in Sagada where chemicals and pesticides are used in some commercial vegetable farms.

In helping promote organic farming and the cooperative, Dom-an has to collaborate with the municipal government, community elders, the non-government Montañosa Research and Development Center, and the Episcopalian Church-supported St. Theodore Hospital.

“In the process, I’m also reintegrating with my community, my roots, and this is all part of healing,” she says.

Cultural envoy

In between preparing compost, sowing seeds and planting seedlings, Dom-an also dabbles in indigenous music, particularly the nose flute, which she has been playing since 1993.

The nose flute is spiritually significant for Dom-an because one uses one’s breath to produce music from the indigenous instrument.

Playing the flute, apart from writing poetry and essays, she says, is one of her ways of “communing with our living planet.”

For her music, Dom-an was invited by the Sacred Earth Network to help perform in a “healing music concert” on Saturday at the La Mesa eco-park in Quezon City.

Dom-an always brings along at least two nose flutes and she would play them if given the opportunity, making her a cultural envoy of her hometown.

During the congressional inquiry on human rights issues at the University of the Philippines Baguio last month, she played the nose flute before reading a statement about the circumstances and the impact of the extrajudicial killing of her husband.

On March 28, when many of Baguio’s establishments switched off their lights for “Earth Hour,” Dom-an did a “Spark in the Dark” concert at Bliss Café in the city.

Peace, healing institute

Despite the violent death of her husband, Dom-an is now busy with peace and healing initiatives. Part of her long-term dream is establishing the Kasiyana Peace and Healing Institute.

Besides promoting organic farming and cooperativism, the institute seeks to complement the indigenous restorative justice system of Sagada, which stresses peaceful resolution of conflicts, reconciliation and healing, rather than falling into an endless cycle of violence through vengeful killings and retaliation.

“The institute dreams of helping heal our wounds and those of our very own planet,” says Dom-an.

Wednesday, April 01, 2009

Faith-based public vigilance emerges in Baguio


(Filed with PDI 31 March but unpublished as of 1 April 2009)


Faith-based public vigilance emerges in Baguio
By Maurice Malanes

BAGUIO CITY, 31 March – A new form of public vigilance based not on ideology but on faith has emerged in Baguio.

This has been dramatized by a well-attended March 30 religious-led multi-sectoral “awareness rally” against the reported opening of a casino at Camp John Hay. And not only the Roman Catholics, mainline Protestants, evangelicals and Pentecostals, but also Muslims participated.

Instead of the usual red flags and banners of militant activists, the estimated 2,000 or more anti-casino rally participants held streamers, placards and banners bearing biblical passages and statements pointing how gambling could corrupt society’s sense of right and wrong, break up families, and could add to the city’s rising crimes.

Marching for almost a kilometer from the Baguio Convention Center down Session Road, the rally participants led by bishops, priests, pastors and an imam converged at the City Hall grounds where they held a 20-minute ecumenical worship service.

Selected representatives of the Baguio Multi-Sectoral Group and the Baguio-Benguet Ecumenical Group later made an audience with members of the City Council who were having their regular session.

The council accommodated the religious leaders, who also officially handed over a resolution opposing the opening of a casino in Baguio, which was signed by 15,000 signatories in just a week.

Their resolution pointed that the Bases Conversion Development Authority and the Camp John Hay Development Corporation “surreptitiously signed” a “Casino Cooperation Agreement” on July 1, 2008 for the establishment of a casino at Camp John Hay without informing the Baguio public.

Their resolution also said that the establishment of a casino at the former American resort violates the second item of 19 conditions, which the city council in 1994 required before approving the Environmental Compliance Certificate of the Camp John Hay developer, Fil-Estate.

The second condition contained in City Resolution No. 362, series of 1994, states that “the BCDA shall ensure only wholesome, family-oriented entertainment and recreational activities are conducted within the (John Hay Economic) Zone” and that “no casino operations shall definitely be allowed under any guise or form.”

Participation in governance

At the council’s session hall, the religious representatives accompanied by lawyer and church lay leader Alex Bangsoy actually engaged the city council and in a way participated in policy-making and governance as they took turns in arguing why Baguio, being an educational center and a city with a youth-dominated population, couldn’t be transformed into a gambling capital.

Vice-mayor Daniel Fariñas assured the religious leaders that the city council wouldn’t allow casino or gambling in any guise or form. To this, Roman Catholic Bishop Carlito Cenzon of the Diocese of Baguio said he had so much confidence in the city council that it wouldn’t fail its constituents.

But Cenzon asked whether the 19 conditions, which the city council required in 1994 for the development of John Hay, were weakened as was reported.

Earlier, Bangsoy cited a Philippine Daily Inquirer report, which quoted Mayor Reinaldo Bautista as saying a 2003 Supreme Court ruling on Camp John Hay had weakened the 19 conditions set by the Baguio government as prerequisites for its development, including a prohibition against a casino inside the tourism complex.

This statement plus the council’s “changing positions” on casino and other gaming forms are, according to Bangsoy, “very disturbing.” He again cited the same Inquirer report (March 8), which quoted BCDA president Narciso Abaya as saying “the city’s position on the casino kept changing.”
Besides the 19 conditions for the operation of the Camp John Hay Special Economic Zone, the city council has banned all forms of gambling in Baguio, including a casino, since 1989.

The council has affirmed this ban in a resolution approved in 2002, and another measure passed on Feb. 2 this year.

But Abaya noted the city council also passed a resolution in 2003 that approved the request of the Camp John Hay-Poro Point Development Corp. (JPDC), the office that previously managed the CJHSEZ, to operate a gambling and entertainment complex there. The JPDC has been replaced by the John Hay Management Corp., a subsidiary of BCDA.

The only condition the council imposed in that resolution was that only tourists and Camp John Hay club members can enter and participate in gambling activities. The council again overturned this 2003 resolution with another resolution in 2008.

In the council’s recent dialogue with the religious leaders, councilor Pinky Rondez was already pushing for the outright repeal of the 2003 City Council Resolution 248, which practically approved a casino at Camp John Hay.

Bautista had said no casino would rise inside Camp John Hay “while I am the mayor.”

Still, leaders of the Baguio multi-sectoral group – the same group that catapulted a cash-strapped Braulio Yaranon to the mayoralty seat in 2004 on an anti-gambling and anti-corruption platform -- made a strong message to City Hall last March 30 – that they are closely watching their elected officials every step of the way.