The Arms Trade Is Killing Thousands Of Women And Children

The drums of war are beating ever louder as arms traders supply weapons for the war in the Middle East while the superpowers line up in confrontational posturing in a show of might and military power. “Might is right” is the military thinking behind the three biggest military powers that are vying for prestige and power in the world. The United States, Russia and China, despite being in the middle of a pandemic that is killing hundreds of thousands and infecting over a million, continue to build up their armed forces and supply weapons to nations of the Saudi-led coalition making war on the Houthi in Yemen.

The most devastating war is that in Yemen where thousands of civilians including many children have been killed and wounded, driven to near starvation by the air attacks of a Saudi-led coalition of Arab nations against Houthi rebels and backed by Iran that took power in Yemen in 2015. The indiscriminate air strikes against hospitals, clinics, schools, markets, mosques, houses and festival occasions are gross violations of international humanitarian and human rights laws.

Abdullah al-Ibbi was in his home in Sana’a, the capital of Yemen, with his extended family when suddenly it was hit by a missile fired from a coalition fighter jet. The building collapsed in dust and rubble like a house of cards killing 27 members of his family. He was gravely injured and barely survived by chance. The youngest child killed was two years old.

The UN has said that as many as 10,000 people have been killed in the war and two-thirds of them have been civilians. The injured total so far is 55,000 and it is increasing daily. In bringing evidence of war crimes and a halt to the arms trade by the British government, Amnesty International has visited Yemen and carefully documented as many as 42 indiscriminate air strikes and they meticulously documented and confirmed the killing of 518 civilians and 433 wounded. The evidence was presented in October 2019. In a successful court case, the judged ruled that the UK arms trade to the coalition for the war in Yemen was illegal. The arms manufacturers, however, find ways to supply weapons nevertheless likely using other countries as intermediaries. Deadly cluster bombs banned under international law but still manufactured in the United States, the UK, and Brazil have been found in Yemen. When dropped, they scatter dozens of smaller bomblets that explode when touched. The exploded remains of missiles supplied by western countries have been found and documented as evidence of war crimes against the suppliers.

If not killed by bombs and bullets supplied by the arms manufacturing nations, then cholera, Covid-19, typhoid and starvation have killed thousands more. There is an estimated 22 million people in need of humanitarian aid. It is a horrific war bringing death and destruction.

A school bus filled with children received a direct hit by a missile-firing coalition jet fighter when it was stopped in the market area of Dahyan. At least 29 children were killed outright and 30 were wounded with serious injuries, a terrible war crime among many for which no one has been held accountable. Jan Egeland, the Secretary General of the Norwegian Refugee Council said that it was a “grotesque, shameful” attack and it showed, he said, a “blatant disregard for the rules of war.”

Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and United Arab Emirates have the most fighter jets and troops in the fighting while Egypt, Jordan, Sudan and Morocco have given their support. It is a war against their traditional enemy, Iran, that is supporting the rebels. The Houthi rebels are responsible for many civilian deaths also.

Behind the coalition are the suppliers of arms, jet planes, missiles, weapons of all kinds. The Saudi Arabian spending spree is a boon for the arms suppliers who welcome war and weapons sales. A goggle search will show that the main US companies in the arms trade selling to Saudi Arabia are: Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, General Electric, Exxon Mobil, Halliburton, Honeywell and Jacobs Engineering Group. The US and the UK are biggest suppliers of jets and missiles and munitions to Saudi Arabia. The Saudis also buy weapons from France, Italy and Spain. Denmark, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden have announced that they will stop selling weapons to members of the coalition but if they have done so or not is not clear since billions of dollars in contracts are on offer or have been signed.

So the war rages on. Money is made by all and the carnage in Yemen continues as the world watches helplessly and too paralyzed to intervene as the arms traders and manufacturers do their dirty, death-dealing business with the approval of their respective governments that issue the weapons export licenses.

Russia is busy arming and supporting the tyrant Bashar Al-Assad in Syria who is going after the last remaining opposition rebels in Ilibid. Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has given support to the rebels that are holding the province. Assad’s army, armed and backed by Russian planes, advance and allegedly intentionally bomb hospitals, mosques and markets. Thousands more civilians are fleeing to the Turkish border where over 1.5 million have taken shelter for the past several years of the nine-year civil war. It is now a stand-off between Syria and Turkey.

In Asia, the United States Navy and the Chinese are escalating from a war of words and consulate closures to near confrontations in the South China Sea and the West Philippine Sea. Two US aircraft carriers and support destroyers are patrolling the international waters claimed exclusively by China where it has grabbed and occupied islands belonging to the nations in the region.

The US Navy is planning to return to Subic Bay, Philippines which it lost in 1991, on a purely commercial deal where US and Australian shipyard companies will buy the former Hanjin ship repair facility and provide repair services to the US Navy. This will deny the port and yards to Chinese investors who were negotiating with the Philippine government to take them over. Washington and the Philippine navy oppose the Chinese bid. The rivalry will continue for years to come.

History is Made as Social Issues Challenge Politics

Something has happened that is really changing the world besides the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic is changing our lifestyles, our economy and medical practices. But a greater social movement is underway as seen in numerous demonstrations by many thousands of protesters around the world. It is a protest against the dominating force of the small elite of ruling oligarchies that dominate a country's economy and political system that oppresses and kills its citizens with impunity. 

It is not the politicians who are now setting the agenda but the masses of protesting people as in the United States who have a democratic space to do so. Although the rulers try to squash, limit and eradicate people power by force and erase that democratic right and space in some places, it breaks out anew elsewhere. In Hong Kong, we witness the freedom to protest eradicated as the Chinese draconian National Security Law, rushed through by the Communist Party, is implemented as an anti-terrorist law to crush free speech and give life-sentences to protestors.

This is the end of Hong Kong as it has been since British rule when there was greater freedom and democratic space until now. The One Country, Two Systems arrangement has been shattered. Taiwan is taking note for sure. Despite lifting almost a billion Chinese people from dire poverty through a capitalist-communism system and becoming almost the number one world economic power in only fifty years, the Chinese historical opportunity to be a truly great nation in world history is long gone, too. China’s amazing economic achievement is a tainted and diminished reality in world history by violations of human and political rights and island grabbing in the South China Sea. The Communist Party has, instead of winning glory, earned the ire of nations and less respect and prestige. Today while one social movement in Hong Kong is squashed, other social movements in the United States and other countries are gathering pace and becoming changers of history.

The “Black Lives Matter” movement is challenging police brutality and indiscriminate killing of African-Americans. They are demanding the equality and respect that is owed and rightfully belongs to all people and especially to people of color. Even there, the ruling elite of the right led by Donald Trump are trying to squash the democratic space for many years. In Washington, Trump used tear gas, flash bombs and police force to disperse peaceful demonstrators in front of the White House, clearing a way for him to walk to a church and hold up a Bible for a photo opportunity. In Ferguson, Mississippi on 13 August 2014, police shot dead Michael Brown and there was a uprising by African-Americans. Their demonstration released a flood of anger and repressed feelings at the police oppression and deprivation of social justice. The police, predominantly white, were militarized and national guards with armored cars turned their machine guns on the people in a show of intimidation and force. The blatant public killing of unarmed African-American man George Floyd, 46, in Minneapolis, Minnesota last 25 May 2020 showed that racist oppression and repressed anger was still there. Three police officers came to arrest George Floyd for allegedly passing a counterfeit 20-dollar bill. One of the police, Derek Chauvin, cruelly pressed his knee into the neck of George Floyd while he cried, “I can’t breathe” for almost nine minutes. The murder was captured on cell phone video and the victim died soon after. The video went viral and ignited again a repeat of the Ferguson uprising but this time it spread to almost 100 cities across the United States denouncing institutionalized racism and police brutality. The “Black Lives Matter” protest is still ongoing and has spread around the world as oppressed and exploited indigenous people and people of color join the global protest and demand social justice and human rights.

President Donald Trump has been heavily criticized for twitting a video in support of a white supremacist shouting “White power!” from a golf cart. The movement, consisting of black and white protesters, can be summed up as a mass protest against that one phrase, “white power.” It is now international, native Americans, African- Americans, indigenous people and people of color in Canada, Brazil, France, the UK and many other countries are marching.

There is outrage and a mighty force of people power rising up to challenge the status quo and the oppressive dominant attitudes of the white supremacist and the hatred and racism expressed on social media such as Facebook. Facebook is now challenged by the business community that is withholding advertising from Facebook until it changes its support for hate speech. It is doing so.

What we have to understand is that racism is not just a few white supremacist people lording it over the African-American or brown or Asian people and considering them as inferior. It is a “political and social power” issue. South Africa was ruled by white supremacist leaders for a century until Nelson Mandela came to lead a national protest. The US Congress and Senate is a majority of white politicians.

The American white supremacist ruling elites were shocked and deeply angered by the election of Barack Obama, the first African-American to be president of the United States. Then, in retaliation it seemed, they got Trump elected. Trump, a white supremacist and racist himself did everything to destroy the Obama legacy and achievements and criminalize the protesters today. 

The Movement began more than 300 years ago when Africans were enslaved and shipped to the Americas. At its very worse, racism is the mentality of powerful people in a nation that consider the poor, those of different skin color and the indigenous peoples to be almost sub-human and that killing them is a public service as some police and military around the world do like in the United States, France, Syria, Brazil and elsewhere. The police killers in the United States and military who kill with impunity have no empathy, compassion and respect for others. They have animal-like “killer instinct.” They act on emotion, not reason. So it is they that are less fully human than their victims.

Removing statues that glorify the racists and slavers, banning the confederate flag, changing the name on racist skin bleaching creams, boycotting Facebook, bringing in new laws on  policing are just symbols of change. While social justice, equality and respect for all people has to be an immediate goal, long term change to eradicate racism has to be in the hearts and minds of the people. It starts in the classroom, where education is the key and a next generation needs to know, practice and live by the values of community equality and mutual respect, true social and civil justice and love of neighbor. 

US and China Spar over the Philippines

 

The fishermen of Masinloc and Sta. Cruz, Zambales had fished the Scarborough Shoal for generations. In the past several years, the Filipino fishing boats have been harassed and prevented from fishing near the fish-rich shoal by the incursion of Chinese fishing and militia boats.

 

In June 2019, a Chinese militia ship sank a Filipino boat in the West Philippine Sea in an act of aggression that left the Philippines looking weak and powerless. The Chinese  Navy has boldly sailed its aircraft carrier and escort ships through the Philippine Sibutu Passage without prior permission, violating Philippine sovereignty. China is claiming exclusively almost all of territory of the South China Sea that includes the West Philippine Sea within a nine-point -dash line that it has drawn around the edge of the South China Sea.

 

The Scarborough shoal, the Spratlys and Pag-asa groups of islands and other islands are well within the Philippines 12-nautical mile territorial sea and the 200-nautical mile exclusive economic zone. In the face of Chinese claims, this right has been upheld by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague. In a historic decision the court declared “there was no legal basis for China to claim historic rights to resources within the sea areas falling within the ‘nine-dash line.” “Having found that none of the features claimed by China was capable of generating an exclusive economic zone, the Tribunal found that it could — without delimiting a boundary — declare that certain sea areas are within the exclusive economic zone of the Philippines, because those areas are not overlapped by any possible entitlement of China,”  

 

China does not recognize the international arbitration decision and did not attend the hearings. Instead it continued to build up its military power in several Islands claimed by the Philippines, installing long-range surface to air missiles and building structures and aircraft runways. In a belated response, the Philippines has begun in 2020 to build up infrastructure in Pagasa Island, one of its biggest inhabited islands in the Spratly Islands. 

 

Despite Chinese objections, after two years of delay, it has built a landing ramp and a wharf for small ships to dock and land equipment to pave the existing 1.2-kilometre dirt runway.  Pagasa Island is just twenty-six kilometres northeast of the Subi Reef which is now a large Chinese military installation (one of several) on a man-made island and armed to the teeth but is within Philippines territorial waters.  

 

The Chinese send their warships through the Philippines territorial waters as if they own them.  In 2018, 35 Chinese naval ships traversed Philippine territorial waters without prior permission which is a violation of Philippine sovereignty. The Philippine defense department said that in 2018 as many as 434 Chinese ships traversed Philippines waters without prior notice and in 2019 the number was 389 ships. For sure, the source of this information is from the US Navy which keeps a close watch on all ship movements in the region.

 

The US has sent its warships passed the islands claimed by the Chinese to establish that they are in international waters and they have the “Freedom of Navigation.” They are challenging the naval might of the Chinese navy that cannot thwart them without starting World War III.

  

The Chinese taunting of the Philippines and probing of the US response is a very serious problem for the Philippines. They are caught in the middle of a global power struggle. The Chinese claim the area by "power of possession." It is adverse and illegal possession by international law, which they ignore. The Philippines is powerless to stop them and the US will not intervene. It is as if China is annexing Philippine territory. The Chinese will benefit by drilling for oil and mining minerals in the ocean’s depths and the Philippines will lose their rightful natural resources. So it is not just the hundreds of tons of fish that the Chinese are taking every day from Philippine waters but soon they will be exploiting the rest of the Philippine natural resources.  In  2016, the Philippine government put aside these concerns and entered into new relationship of friendship with China and took out huge loans from the Chinese government, creating a debt bondage relationship.

 

The only check on the powerful Chinese Navy is the United States. It was the ruler of the waves in the Asian region for decades and is still a force to be reckoned with. The United States lost access to its huge military bases in Philippines in 1992.This was due to the Mount Pinatubo volcanic eruption, diplomatic blunders and a strong social and human rights campaign by NGOs. Started and led by Preda Foundation, they campaigned successfully to convert the bases to Filipino civilian use because of the sexual exploitation of women and children in the huge military-driven sex industry.

 

On May 27, 1999 the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) came into force. This allows the US access to Philippine airfields and navy ships to dock in Philippine ports. There are three presently at Subic Bay. However, on 11 February 2020, the Philippine government suddenly announced the termination of the VFA causing consternation in Washington because of the denial of a US visa to a political ally of President Rodrigo Duterte. The termination was due to take effect on 11 August 2020. The Chinese were delighted, always seeking ways to lure allies away from the US and weaken the US military presence in the Asian-Pacific region.  However, Filipinos with millions of relatives in the United States and thousands planning to join them much prefer the pact with the US than a deal with the Chinese Liberation Army.

 

So on 3 June 2020, Foreign Secretary Teodoro Locsin announced that the Philippine government would extend the VFA at least until the end of  the year. This may be to counter the dominating Chinese presence or a negotiating tactic to wring more concessions from the United States. Only time will tell.

The Revenge of Nature- Coronavirus?

 

The coronavirus threatens the health of millions of people around the world if it spreads uncontrollably. Every precaution must be taken to prevent its spread and that means practicing greater personal and public hygiene and avoiding contact with people travelling from an infected area. We must show concern and never discriminate against anyone.  Besides strict containment, strict personal hygiene, washing of hands, and clean surroundings can hold its spread.  Public health officials must be prepared for an outbreak. The flu-like disease does not have a high fatality rate: only two people in every hundred die from it. People can get very sick with severe respiratory problems and yet recover.  Others can have the virus but have no symptoms.

 

Everywhere, including the Philippines, doctors and medical personnel have been briefed and advised on the potential health problem and we are reminded that prevention is better than cure. So there is no need to panic or raise alarm but intelligent planning, preparation and prevention is what is needed. Besides, most people are recovering from it with good medical care.

  

The big hope is that the virus cannot survive in high temperatures so bring on a hot summer everywhere, and with global warming, we can expect that. The highest temperatures ever recorded in Australia and parts of Europe in 2019 are stunning. That is because of man-made climate change. That might kill off this deadly virus and tropical countries like the Philippines might be spared. The good news is the World Health Organization (WHO) has announced that the virus may have reached its peak in China as fewer daily infections have been recorded. The coronavirus is also the result of ill-advised and illegal human behavior.

 

We have seen the outbreak of many deadly diseases and viruses in recent decades. More viruses that are affecting humans are crossing over from from other mammals and birds. Remember the avian flu? The human immuno-deficiency virus (HIV) is said to have crossed over from monkeys when people ate them as bush meat. Likewise, ebola likely came from eating monkeys, they say. Then, we had the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), said to have originated from bats, and today the 2019 coronavirus that possibly came from bats, too, although it is not yet proven.

   

You might say these diseases are the revenge of nature. The natural world is striking back at the disastrous human exploitation of the rain forests, the oceans and all wildlife by driving them to extinction. There is destruction in almost every habitat in the developing world and in some parts of the developed world, too.  Illegal trade and trafficking in many endangered animal species for huge profit could be the cause of coronavirus.

 

China is a big market for endangered animals and thousands of animals are butchered each year, mostly in Africa, to provide elephant ivory for the China ornament trade, now banned but still thriving. In 2009, there was as many as 109,000 elephants in Tanzania but due to poaching and slaughter, there were only 43,000 left in 2014, a 60 percent loss according to government reports. There is even less today.  In 1970, the number of rhino had decreased to 70,000 and as of today there are only 29,000 left on the planet.

 

They are on the way to extinction like the white rhino by bandits killing them for their valuable horn for Chinese traditional medicine. Scientific research has shown the horn to have no more medicinal value than horses’ hooves.

   

Hundreds of creatures are killed and collected to supply the demand for Chinese traditional medicine, most of which are ineffective, have no medical benefit and are unnecessary considering the huge advances in Chinese health care.

  

The small ant-eating creature called pangolin could be responsible for the jump of the 2019 coronavirus from animal to human. They are the most widely traded and trafficked creature stolen from the wild in Southeast Asia, India and Africa. They are now practically extinct in China since they killed them for food and their scales are used in traditional Chinese medicine. They have been found in the wild food market of Wuhan where the coronavirus first made the cross-over leap from animal to humans.

 

According to an investigative report by The Guardian, one shop was found to have for sale live animals such as “live wolf pups, golden cicadas, scorpions, bamboo rats, squirrels, foxes, civets, hedgehogs (probably porcupines), salamanders, turtles and crocodiles.” All destined for the cooking pot, it seems. Bats are known carriers of many viruses and the forest dwelling pangolin could have picked up the virus from the bats droppings on the forest floor, some speculate. This is a likely cross over for the virus. Or some human ate the bats. They are on sale in wildlife markets.

 

Corrupt governments like that in Brazil allow traders and loggers to attack the last of the rain forests and destroy their natural beauty by cutting trees, driving out and killing their indigenous people and trafficking their wildlife. We can expect more health problems in the future. Nature will rebel just like the mighty storms and heat waves caused by man-made climate change are coming back to hit us.

   

Why can’t we respect nature, preserve the forest, protect the environment and its wildlife?  The answer is easy. It is because of human greed. It is an insatiable, unquenchable drive beyond control. To stop the greed and trafficking of wildlife and the cross-over of animal borne viruses to humans, the authorities world-wide have to go after the traffickers and traders of wild-life. They must identify their bank accounts and confiscate their property, assets and money and jail the big-time traders. It is essential to ban all sale and trading in wildlife.

The Return of US Bases in the Philippines

Subic Bay, Philippines - After 44 years working for human rights and social development in Olongapo city, the former home port of the US 7th Fleet, I have seen the futility of using military violence to solve political and territorial problems. The Korean, Vietnam, and Middle Eastern wars were launched or supported from here. The massive loss of human life and destruction makes war untenable. The return of the US marines, navy and air force to the Philippines will not advance a peaceful negotiated settlement of the sea dispute between the Philippines and China. It's like calling in the neighborhood strong man to threaten a school yard bully. Dialogue is better and wiser than the threat of violence and confrontation especially when the US has no intention to carry it out. A non-enforceable threat fizzles out like a damp squib. The so-called negotiations between the Philippine government and the United States for "rotational" US troop deployments here to oppose Chinese expansionism make little sense. It will be a basing agreement which is unconstitutional. There must be another hidden purpose.

The Philippine government made the correct move in taking the dispute over the occupation and claims of China to Philippine shoals and islands to the United Nation, bringing in the US military as a threat will not help. What the Philippines needs to do is to summon up its courage and stand up for itself to China, the bully boy of Asia, and shake off its colonial dependency on the United States to rattle its sabers at every incursion of Chinese ships.

If the Philippine government officials will take an independent, non-violent stand to defend its sovereign territory in the strongest words possible, it will win international respect and cooperation and there will be a worldwide protest and outcry against the aggressive occupation and claims of China to Philippine territory. Rushing to hide behind the iron skirts of Mother America is shameful, an indication of moral weakness and an unnecessary embarrassment for the brave Filipino people who can fight non-violently for their rights.

The one thing that a proud nation like China wants to avoid is the shame and criticism that might be heaped on it by the world if it persists in its baseless claims to Philippine territorial waters. It has to protect its "face", that aura of dignity and honor that it believes it needs to convince world opinion that it is acting in a right and just way when in fact it may not be. It's time for China to back away with dignity and "save face". World opinion is a mightier weapon than US warplanes and ships.

China will want to show to the world that it is a responsible member of the international community and not be dubbed a predatory, aggressive, sea-grabbing nation. This negative incursion into territorial waters will damage its credibility in Africa and South America where it is trying to win friends and spread its influence. When international criticism and the ire of nations grows and less trade is the result, it may all the sooner relinquish its baseless claims to Philippine territorial waters and shoals.  No amount of oil and gas resources buried beneath the waters will be worth international repudiation.

China will not be intimidated by a show of force anyway. As a proud, ancient civilization, one of the oldest on earth, they know that the US will never be so foolish to resort to threats of military violence or engage in conflict on behalf of the Philippines. So the increased presence of the US military will not frighten China, only increase its resolve. Political action on the world stage by the Philippines and its supporters is the way to resolve this problem.

It was long argued if the 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty between the Philippines and the US covered such disputes as occurred over the Spratly Islands, and the US made it clear at that time it was not bound to act in such a dispute. US Military assistance is only offered if the Philippines is attacked. So why is the US so eager to come back to the Philippines as part of its "pivot" towards Asia, what's in it for them?

A more realistic purpose for the return to bases in the Philippines is to position troops, drones, planes and ships in proximity to areas where militant Islamist organizations affiliated with Al-Qaeda are active. Resurgent groups in Mindanao, Indonesia, Malaysia could pose a threat to American interests and for the US to have the capability of a fast response to present and future threats is an important advantage. The closing of 19 US embassies recently is an indication of the level of that terrorist threat and the Philippine bases are an ideal location for propositioning US forces to counter it and at the same time guard international sea lanes from pirates. The recent bomb blasts (including the first car bomb) in Philippine cities could well be the response of the jihads to this planned return. The Filipino people will be the first to suffer. 

The Death Penalty in Its Many Forms

The deed has been done. The death dealing chemical was injected and three human beings had there lives ended. Last Wednesday, 30 March, three Filipinos were put to death in China by lethal injection. Amnesty International says that there can be thousands executed in China, the real figure is unknown due to strict secrecy. Iran and Saudi Arabia also execute minors. Eighteen countries executed people in 2009. Despite a United Nations call for a moratorium on the death penalty. The methods of execution can be beheading, stoning, hanging, electrocution, shooting and lethal injection. Twenty thousand more are on death row around the world.

The Filipinos executed in China were found guilty of separate crimes for trafficking heroine into China. They were drug couriers hired by syndicates and sent to their death. The Philippine government asked for a stay of execution over a month ago, it was granted but only for a short period. The Philippine government has little leverage with China, the Asian giant. It is scorned in China, and seen as corrupt, disorganized and incompetent, especially after eight innocent Chinese tourists were killed in a botched rescue attempt when they were held hostage on a bus in Manila by a fired policeman seeking reinstatement.

China's anti-drug law is one of the strictest in the world shaped by the history of the Opium wars when the Western nations grew opium in India, addicted the Chinese and then sold the opium in return for silver, tea and silk. When the Emperor outlawed it the Western gunboats threatened to shell Peking. Drugs weakened China and brought great humiliation to a proud nation. China learned a vital lesson.

The death penalty is a barbaric cruel punishment according its opponents and the fact that it has been abolished by 137 nations, tends to uphold this opinion. Amnesty International says that China, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United States are responsible for most of the executions every year. Executions have fallen around the world from a high of about 714 in 2009 and in 2010 down to 527. That is little consolation to families of the executed Filipinos and a life-loving nation that has shared their grief.

The Philippines is a nation predominately Catholic and steeped in the Spanish catholic tradition. Faith can be sentimental, shallow, hypocritical, but also profound true deeply religious. That death penalty and execution most widely remembered is the one Christians look on daily in public and schools and churches -that of Jesus of Nazareth condemned to death by crucifixion. A most cruel and agonizing slow death. Few think of it that way. In fact for many the meaning has escaped them and they look on the image of the dying figure much of the time as a symbolic figure. Others have turned the crucifix into a fashion accessory or a diamond studded piece of jewelry, totally missing the contradiction that it is a instrument of torture and cruel death of a innocent man, the Son of God, for taking a stand with the poor and the oppressed. He died for his people, the people crying out for salvation from poverty hunger and injustice.

We tend to forget that the object of worship is a man wrongly and unjustly condemned and sentenced to suffer the death penalty as a convicted criminal for his activism and religious belief. In solidarity with the poor, he declared that they had the right to inherit the land, have justice and enter the kingdom of God first. For this they executed him.

In the past decades, thousands of Filipino human rights advocates and journalists, were shot, stabbed or chopped to death by hired mercenaries, or former military turned assassins and killers. The advocates were and are marked as subversives, trouble makers challenging the existing system, questioning the powers that rule and for that they were and are killed.

There are thousands more dying for a different kind of death penalty, that imposed by corrupt officials and an uncaring ruling elite in many countries. The Middle Eastern people have had enough and they are in full rebellion. Hunger and malnutrition is a form of death penalty for being poor which we must oppose. In taking a stand for life and the dignity of the human person we are working to abolish the death penalty in its many evil manifestations.