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Category: Frontiers
Frontiers

No Easy Way to Save the Children

It is no easy task to rescue child victims of trafficking for commercial sexual exploitation in the Philippines. The authorities deny it even it exists. “The problem has been solved,” they say, “it does not exist now.” Journalists and human rights workers are not welcome in the office of mayors that host sex industries in their communities in case they find the evidence of child trafficking that they try so hard to hide. My experience and the evidence gathered on video and sound proves beyond doubt that children as young as 14 can be purchased by private arrangement. Sex clubs proudly advertise their Mayor’s permit and license to operate. The girls are guaranteed to be clean of sexually-transmitted diseases. The club operator, a woman, proudly told me that government-paid health workers come to the clubs to do the tests to be sure the girls do not infect the customers.

Shay Cullen | PREDA Foundation
Frontiers

A Toothless Accord

The Bali Road Map that was expected to deliver a fair, ambitious and binding (FAB) agreement at Copenhagen ended on December 19, 2009, with a mere Accord, which accepts that the average global temperature must not be allowed to rise above 2 degrees Celsius. Many of the 40,000 people who gathered in Copenhagen, and countless millions around the world, had hoped for what was being called a FAB deal. Billboards around the Bella Centre, where the Conference of the Parties (COP15) was held, linked Copenhagen with Hopenhagen. What was achieved holds out little hope as the big boys: the U.S., China, India and Brazil had cobbled together an Accord with none of the FAB elements.

Fr. Seán Mcdonagh, SSC | Environmentalist & Writer
Frontiers

Death Squads and Democracy

Why would Philippine judges hamper a human rights investigation into a killing field where many human remains are found in Davao, victims allegedly of the infamous death squad? Why would the members of the Commission on Human Rights be charged themselves? Human Rights Watch says local authorities are obstructing the course of justice and investigation into almost a thousand assassinations in the past decade. How can this be in an Asian democracy?

Shay Cullen | PREDA Foundation
Frontiers

Greed, the Guru of Growth

There were heroes that sacrificed their own lives while saving the weak and helpless during the height of the devastating tropical storm that brought rampaging flood waters cascading through Manila, sweeping all before them. A construction worker, Muelmar Magallanes, 18, leapt again and again into the raging torrent and saved over 30 women and children until he was too exhausted to fight the current as he was saving a baby girl. He was swept away to his death. A judge, Ralph Lee, 49, of Quezon City took his jet ski and later with two rubber boats rescued over 100 people in danger of being drowned by the rising waters. Hundreds of ordinary people took great risks as they carried their neighbors to safety. Thousands spent days and nights on their rooftops terrified as the water kept rising.

Shay Cullen | PREDA Foundation
Frontiers

On Becoming a Missionary

When I made the decision to become a missionary, I never thought one day I would be documenting the torture, abuse and inhuman conditions of children in prison with hidden cameras and taking legal action to rescue them and give them a new life free from abuse and the heavy hand of authority. Nor did I expect to be making undercover contact on the streets of an Asian city talking to prostituted women and children and working to help set them free from brothels, traffickers and pimps.

Shay Cullen | PREDA Foundation
Frontiers

Trafficking the Enslaved

It was an all too familiar story, similar to that of thousands in Asia and Eastern Europe. Born into poverty, living in a poor village on Negros Island in the Philippines and dreaming of a better life, Jennifer went with a recruiter, and with her parent’s approval, to work as a domestic helper in the capital Manila. But soon, her naive dreams of earning a modest wage for 12 hours a day to help her five brothers and sisters were shattered when her employer and his sons abused and raped her. She was their sexual slave for weeks and they took her out to parties with their friends who also took turns abusing her.

Shay Cullen | PREDA Foundation
Frontiers

Saving the Earth

Who could forget or harm a loving mother that has given life to each one of us, that makes the dawn for all of us to see, sustains all creatures and gives us reason to care for others,” these were the words of a wise old man of the Aeta indigenous people of the Philippines talking about Mother Earth.

Shay Cullen | PREDA Foundation

Basic Communities Can Fight Corruption

People power – the peaceful uprising of a country’s citizens against an oppressive government – is generally admitted to have started in the Philippines. So we Filipinos are being asked today if we have lost that collective power to eliminate evil. For evil, there is in the Philippines great evil. Corruption in government seems to be at an all time high, people are wondering why there is no real groundswell against it in the general perception that it is even more corrupt than the one overthrown in the first people power rebellion. And they ask if corruption is so systemic and hopeless that any effort to correct it ends in futility. Further, if in the people power revolution of 1986 the Church played a vital role, why is it not doing so now? It seems the Church has lost the vibrancy it had in the ‘70s and ‘80s.

Msgr. Francisco Claver | Retired Bishop

How We Can Help Save the Planet

Huge fire balls from massive bush fires engulfed homes and incinerated unfortunate people in South Australia, the result of prolonged drought while massive floods swamped the North Territories. In the Caribbean, massive storms, greater than previously experienced, created havoc and loss of life and property. Europe and North America have been hit with ice and snowstorms greater than previous years. Climatic extremes are on the increase and they are not a natural occurrence these days unlike 12,000-and-a-half-million years ago. Then, climate change came slowly and the earth and plants and animals had time to adapt, change and survive.

Shay Cullen | PREDA Foundation
Frontiers

The Hope of Small Farmers

Thousands of small farmers in the Philippines face a bleak 2009. A small group of them representing thousands more marched, demonstrated, staged a sit-in, shaved their heads, and went on hunger strike in a desperate last-minute effort to win their land due to them under the Comprehensive Land Reform Act of the Philippines and the Constitution. They got nothing but were arrested and jailed for trespassing. From behind prison bars, they called for help and with the help of some church people and a bishop fighting for social justice, they were freed.

Shay Cullen | PREDA Foundation
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