RELEASE l 10 December 2011
KALIPUNAN NG DAMAYANG MAHIHIRAP
Reference: Gloria Arellano. Kadamay national secretary-general (09213927457)
An urban poor alliance called September 23 Movement said the Aquino administration has so far not treated them as humans. This as the world celebrates International Day of Human Rights today.
September 23 Movement is a community alliance from Sitio San Roque in North Triangle, composed of neighborhood organizations that have faced continuous threats of demolition since September 23, 2010, the infamous day of the 'Battle of EDSA' when residents clashed with NHA-hired demolition team and the police causing a 7-hour stand-off in EDSA.
Estrelieta Bagasbas, September 23 Movement chair said, 'No other presidents has attempted to violently demolish our homes except for Aquino, only four months after he assumed his office. And the threat of demolition continues until today even as the Christmas season is fast approaching."
Kalipunan ng Damayang Mahihirap (Kadamay), an allied group of September 23 Movement, has recorded three urban poor leaders from Metro Manila who were killed as they defended their homes from demolition teams. Fires, which were believed by people to have been set intentionally to force them out of their places become instant means to expedite its demolition rampage of urban poor communities, the group said. as more than half of those affected by fires were prohibited from returning to their homes. Fire victims victims included, there have been not less than 10,000 families that have suffered from involuntary demolition of homes this year under the Aquino administration, according to Kadamay.
Most hostile human conditions in the relocation sites
However, this number would not include the families who have volunteered to demolish their own homes, and were deceived by the National Housing Authority to take relocation packages in off-city relocation sites. These relocatees, according to Kadamay, have suffered from among the most hostile human conditions in the government relocation sites in Rizal, Bulacan and Laguna.
"We have recorded various cases of human degradation to happen in the relocation sites from drug addictions, selling parts of their body, people losing their own sanity, breaking up of marriages, to kids who stopped from going to school, among others. These cases affect tens of thousands of urban poor families in the relocation sites as the government as intensifies its relocation program for the urban poor sine the Estrada administration. The relocatees are generally stripped of their right to decent livelihood programs, and access to jobs, forcing them to go back to the community where they lived in the urban centers," Gloria Arellano, Kadamay secretary-general said.
Criminalizing the urban poor
Kadamay has recorded a special case of returning demolition victims from the North Triangle area in QC. "Of the almost 6,000 families that have relocated from North Triangle to Montalban relocation sites, almost half have come back to Sitio San Roque. Other relocatees are returning to their old communities, at the same rate. As the Aquino government boasts of its massive relocation program for the half a million urban poor center in Metro Manila alone (at 556,000 families according to DILG), the gross human right violations are sugarcoated and kept concealed even as the relocatees go back to their old communities in the urban centers," Arellano explained.
"Immediately as they return to the cities, the government criminalizes them as professional squatters and enforces the police and SWAT to drive them away. The recent demolition of homes along the BIR road in Quezon City that has ended up violently is an effort of the QC LGU to drive away residents who have already received relocation package from the government," Arellano added.
Public-Private Partnership
Meanwhile, Alyansa Kontra Demolisyon, a national network against forced eviction and demolition of urban poor communities has blamed on the Aquino government's penchants for infrastructure and 'development projects' under its Public-Private Partnership program. "These projects have deliberately taken away from urban poor settlers the small space that they occupied in the cities," according to Carlito Badion, the network's convenor. "The government has used 'development' as an excuse to relocate the urban poor settler's in a massive scale never been recorder in the Philippine history. On a national scope, millions of families will be driven from their spaces in the city as the government endorses an urban development plan that considers the urban poor as a big hindrance to development."
According to Bagasbas, who has lived in San Roque for almost three decades, "Aquino has treated us as garbage, unmindful of how our families will live as the government attempts to demolish our homes. If I had the chance, I would demolish Aquino's home too to have him a taste of how it is to live in the street or in the relocation site. We have been fighting for almost two years now, defending our homes from threat of demolition, and trying to restore a human existence that the government has taken away from us."
"He couldn't even increase the wage of the workers, nor create jobs so the urban poor could eat decently, he still has the penchant for demolishing our homes. He is so naive of our condition, as if he is not human," Bagasbas ended. ###
Demolition data in Metro Manila (Source: DILG)
Number of affected families-556, 000
Number of housing units available-32, 762
Number of units needed-523,238
Number of units the government plans to add until 2016-322,000
Number of units needed after 2016-201,238
Infrastructure and commercial projects in Metro Manila that have led or may lead to displacement of urban poor families (Source: Kadamay-NCR)
Quezon City Central Business District
Aqueduct Improvement Project (Quezon City)
NorthBay District Project ( Navotas )
National Government Center (Quezon City)
Laguna Lake Dike
Privatization of New Bilibid Prison (Muntinlupa City)
Privatization of Port area (Manila)
Mandaluyong City Welfareville Project
C-5 North Extension Project
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