AIUSA Philippine Country Specialist Vener (Nerve) Macaspac organized and led a spirited action on November 22d at the San Francisco Public Library, to commemorate the 57 victims of the Maguindanao Massacre. The event was sponsored by AIUSA in collaboration with the CA-NV United Methodist Church Philippines Solidarity Task Force. Approximately 25 people attended the event which included a video screening, a brief open forum, a Write-A-Thon, and the offering of prayers inside the Library. The group then proceeded outside to light candles in front of a BART station which offered great traffic for canvassing.
The focus of the letter-writing was solidarity with the victim's families. Nerve is cooperating with the Amnesty office in the Philippines to make sure the letters are delivered to the families.
For anyone who has organized an event, you know how much planning and anxiety goes into the process. Nerve is a relatively new country specialist, and this was his first foray into this form of activism -- what a great initiation! Thanks to Nerve, and also to the AIUSA Western Regional Office for their help.
Hazel Galang, Amnesty's Southeast Asia Campaigner from London, is currently in the Philippines on this second anniversary of the Maguindanao massacre. She reports:
I have come back from the massacre site a few hours ago. Personally, it was quite a harrowing experience to go to the site where a senseless politically-motivated killing of at least 57 people happened. I went with some civil society representatives and we had to go with some military escorts as the security threat was a bit high. Two bombs were found in the massacre site and the dirt road that lead to it this morning. They were detonated by the soldiers. Another grenade was confiscated in a public market close to the site.
Fifty-seven people, 32 of them jouralists, were killed in the Maguindanao massacre on November 23, 2009. The victims were brutally killed and dumped in a mass grave on a hillside in the town of Ampatuan in the southern Philippine province of Maguindanao.
Those killed were on their way to witness the filing of candidacy for a local politician when they were stopped by an estimated 100 armed men. Leaders of the powerful Ampatuan clan have been charged in connection with the killings but no prosecutions have been concluded.
Amnesty International groups around the world have held public events and memorials commemorating the second anniversary of the massacre. In the US, Philippine Country Specialist Nerve Macaspac organized a program at the San Francisco Public Library on the 22nd.
