US, PHL start joint naval exercises in Sarangani Bay

GENERAL SANTOS CITY, July 2 (PNA) – About a thousand joint American and Filipino troops are taking part in the nine-day United States (US)-Philippines naval maneuver exercises along Sarangani Bay that formally opened Monday. Capt. Robert Empedrad, deputy commander of the Naval Forces Eastern Mindanao Command, said the troops, which comprise 400 American as well as 550 Filipino naval and coast guard personnel, will undergo joint training exercises as part of the Cooperation Afloat Readiness and Training (CARAT) 2012 program.
He said two US vessels — the missile-guiding frigate USS Vandergrift and cutter-ship US Coast Guard (USCG) Waesche —are taking part in the naval exercises.
USS Vandergrift arrived around 1:05 p.m. Sunday near the mouth of Sarangani Bay and was met by Philippine Navy (PN) ship Salvador Abcede. USCG Waesche arrived about an hour later.
Vandergrift arrived at the Makar Wharf here around 3 p.m.
Empedrad, who acts as CARAT 2012 exercise director, said another US ship also arrived in the country — the USNS Safeguard, a rescue and salvage ship — and docked in Manila for training exercises at the Manila Bay.
He said naval exercises, which is the first time that US naval units were holding in the area, would be conducted in the seas off Maitum and Maasim towns in Sarangani and in Balut Island of Sarangani town in Davao del Sur.
The naval exercise, which would not be visible from the shores, is within the area of responsibility of the Naval Forces Eastern Mindanao Command, he said.
The official said inland activities include medical and dental civic action program and concerts by the US Navy’s 7th Fleet Band in this city and Glan town in Sarangani.
At-sea activities include in-port training, subject matter exercise exchanges, riverine operations training, and diving and salvage exercises.
Empedrad said four PN ships - corvettes BRP Magat Salamat and BRP Miguel Malvar, Salvador Abcede, and coastal patrol craft BRP Teotimo Figuracion — as well as Philippine Coast Guard’s (PCG) BRP Pampanga are taking part in CARAT 2012.
Commander Joseph Coyme, spokesperson of the PCG Contingent in CARAT P012, said the Coast Guard exercises will cover search and rescue and emergency medical situation.
He said the Coast Watch Stations, which are operated by the PN and being worked out to be handled by the PCG, will have a communications exercise with the American’s P3C Orion aircraft.
CARAT 2012 aims to enhance combined inter-operability and capability between the Philippine Navy and United States Navy as well as to test its personnel and naval assets’ operational readiness and ultimately, improve the defense capability of the Armed Forces of the Philippines.

The specific objectives of CARAT 2012 are: to enhance current PN and USN and USGC and PCG capabilities in naval operations; increase the level of interoperability between the navies and coast guards of both countries in the conduct of combined naval operations focused in night time operations; test and develop the combined communications interoperability between the PN and USN; and promote situational awareness and information sharing between PN and USN forces.(PNA)

UPHOLD AND PROTECT THE RIGHTS OF FILIPINO CHILDREN

STATEMENT

29 June 2012

The NDFP-Mindanao fully affirms the NDFP Declaration and Program of Action for the Rights, Protection and Welfare of Children. We reiterate our commitment to defend and promote the rights, interests and welfare of Filipino children, which are fully integrated into the social program of the people’s democratic revolution with a socialist perspective.  Ensuring the future of our children is one fundamental reason why we are waging a people’s war.  We want to create a society where all children can be provided the basic necessities like education, food, clothing, a home, and all the opportunities needed to make a happy, balanced childhood.
But in Mindanao, being part of the Philippine semi-feudal, semi-colonial system, children’s rights are systematically violated, and they carry the heaviest burden of social exploitation and oppression. Millions of them are unschooled and found in dreadful working conditions in both rural and urban areas in the island. They can be seen in the vast rice and cornfields, in large-scale plantations, such as in Dolefil, Del Monte and the sugar-cane fields of Bukidnon, in hundreds of tunnels, panning and other mining areas, and in logging concessions as low-waged or unpaid laborers. School-aged children are also heavily exploited in the landing areas and piers as porters, small vendors, and scavengers in the urban centers.  In 2009, the GPH conservatively estimated the number of working children in Mindanao, ages 5 to 17, at 543,000 individuals.
Prevalent in Mindanao and the entire country, children suffer from the most exploitative and degrading conditions, pushed to become thugs, drug peddlers and users, and mendicants. Hired or trafficked by criminal syndicates, they are helplessly forced into prostitution and in many cases, slaughtered for their organs to be traded abroad.  Minors are not even spared from the numerous extra-judicial killings committed with impunity by state-sponsored motor-riding death squads such as in the cities of Davao, Digos, Tagum, Cagayan de Oro, Butuan, Bayugan and in other urban areas in Mindanao. Calamity-related tragedies also victimize children, such as the hundreds killed during the typhoon Sendong.
Noynoy Aquinos’ Oplan Bayanihan and all preceding anti-insurgency campaigns of the GPH have created a more horrendous and more miserable life for the children. During the first half of 2012, military operations have caused massive evacuations in areas where multinational mining and plantations operate in the five regions of Mindanao as well as in several Moro communities, displacing thousands of families, close to half of them are children. In the AFP’s vicious and systematic attack on schools, especially those in remote areas, teachers and pupils are harassed, intimidated and vilified; school buildings and school premises are occupied or used for military purposes as barracks or detachments.
Children’s rights violations are repeatedly committed by the AFP, PNP and by private goons.  Most affected are Lumad and peasant children who are often traumatized by the AFP’s indiscriminate bombing and Howitzer shelling, strafing, direct threats and intimidation, such as in the provinces of Caraga, Bukidnon, Davao, North Cotabato, the Zamboanga peninsula, and in the island provinces of Sulu and Tawi-Tawi.  Consequently, they experience the most difficult and unhealthy situations; many of them get sick, some even die.  During AFP civic and combat operations, minors have become easy target for corruption, seduction and rape, drug addiction, illegal arrest, torture and even extra-judicial killing.
There are also cases of children conscripted into the AFP’s war machine as CAFGUs, CVOs, BDS guards, guides and advance guards during military operations.  A fresh case of AFP recruitment of four minors was unmasked during the NPA raid in Brgy. Binicalan, San Luis, Agusan del Sur on May 30, 2012, where one 15-year-old CAFGU was wounded.   Cases of minors being tortured by the AFP and presented as “NPA child soldiers” were documented in Davao del Sur, Davao City, Cagayan de Oro, San Fernando, Bukidnon and other parts of Mindanao. There is the case of the Villa girl from Davao City who was courted by a military man, taken to the military camp and presented to the media as a child soldier. Where there is a prolonged AFP civic-military operation, girls are duped, seduced and later abandoned into pregnancy, as was the case in 2011 of four female minors in Marihatag, Surigao del Sur.
Moro children are also subjected to a host of other oppressions and injustices, such as chauvinism and other forms of discrimination. Millions of Moro children together with their families were forced to evacuate their homes and ancestral lands during Estrada’s brutal counter-insurgency campaign in 2000-01 in Central Mindanao. During the Arroyo regime in 2008, half a million Moro people, mostly women and children, were displaced due to the state’s counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency campaigns. Moro children also suffer as their families become internal refugees as a result of inter-clan wars.
Continuing US intervention in the country, especially with the ever increasing presence of US troops, has greatly contributed to the further oppression and exploitation of children in the Philippines.  Between 2008-2009, there was the case of girls who were brought to the Tropicana Beach Resort in General Santos City as prostituted women to cater to US soldiers. US armed personnel are also directly involved in combat operations in Sulu, Tawi-Tawi, Basilan and Zamboanga del Sur, which have displaced, and even killed, Moro civilians, including children.
Thus, the NDFP’s national and democratic program and its socialist perspective for Filipino children are at the forefront of our revolutionary struggle. The rights of children to free education, food, health care, clothing and shelter and many others must be protected and upheld. They must be provided with nationalist, scientific and mass-based cultural programs. Socialized child-rearing and nursery and a support system for child-rearing mothers and single parents must also be promoted.
Currently and concretely in our base areas, violations against children’s rights are gradually eliminated.  The people’s democratic government has successfully reduced the number of illiterate adults and children, especially in many Lumad areas in Mindanao. Children have been organized, and cultural campaigns have been launched for them to combat anti-social activities. Collective production farms have been put up to help eradicate malnutrition in their communities.  Their health committees have coordinated with the health staff of the New People’s Army (NPA) to provide basic health services to the barrio-folk, especially to children. Units of the NPA and the organs of political power strictly adhere to the international laws of war regarding the non-recruitment of minors into the People’s Militia or the NPA.
In line with our long term program for children, it is our immediate task to the protect children’s rights and welfare.  Children must be kept safe from atrocities of the fascist armed forces of the GPH as well as from hostilities and anti-social groups.  They must be organized and educated on the history and current situation to know their place in Philippine society and the world.
More than ever, the NDFP-Mindanao is duty-bound to mobilize all its resources in order to defend, uphold and promote the rights and welfare of children, including the NDFP’s Program of Action which stipulates the creation of a special office for the continuing protection of children’s rights and welfare.

Ka Oris
Spokesperson

NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC FRONT-Philippines
NDFP-Mindanao