We Need a War on Sex Crime

We need to declare a war on child sex crime to save thousands of children who are victims of rape and commercial sexual exploitation. A hundred thousand minors are estimated to be trafficked every year into the sex dens of iniquity in the Philippines. There they are raped and abused and addicted to drugs. The drugs makes them weak, docile and submissive and that’s what the sex abusers want and pay for- a weak vulnerable child over whom they have total power.

The girls are forced to pay for their board and lodging and food at high price and for the drugs. They are caught in a web of debt from which there is almost no escape. They are caught in debt bondage and there is no escape in most cases. There is no question that government officials are more interested in promoting the sex bars, traffickers and pimps to ply their abusive trade in buying and selling human beings, mostly children, than in curbing the trade. They issue the operating permit so the clubs can flourish. They are unwilling to close down a sex bar because they attract local and foreign tourists willing to spend big money and these politicians have interests in the sex bars. Minors are especially victimized, groomed and lured into the sex business.

That’s what happened to 14-year old Dee who was groomed online over her cell phone through text messages by a so-called boyfriend with whom she had an imagined infatuation and believed that she loved him and he loved her. This is a favorite grooming tactic of the human trafficker and the abuser. Dee fell for it. She was lured to a house and went with some of her friends. There she met Johnrey, her so called texting lover. There was a party and soon he had sexually assaulted her. She did not complain but thought that it was sexual-love and it was ok. This brainwashing of minors is common and brings them on the road to sex slavery and commercial sexual exploitation. Dee was then encouraged to have sex, drugs and alcohol with other friends of Johnrey. The teenager was one of the hundred thousand abused children sold into the sex industry in the Philippines. Soon, she was being sold to more customers and it was the end of any childhood for her. Real life had ended.

The main customers of the sex trade are the tourists from abroad. They come to Southeast Asia and especially the Philippines because they know that while some sex tourists are arrested and some are set up for exploitation by the corrupt police, they believe they can easily get away with sexually exploiting and abusing a child by paying bribes.

There is also strong evidence that the incidence of cyber-sex crimes or online sexual exploitation of children where very young Filipino children are coerced to perform sex acts for live internet broadcast to paying foreigners is increasing. A recent study conducted by UNICEF titled Perils and Possibilities: Growing up online reveals that globally there are around 75,000 child predators online at anytime and many of them are trying to contact children in the Philippines. In 2015, the Philippines Office of Cybercrime received 12,374 cyber tips from the US-based National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Also the number of criminal cases of live stream child abuse in the Philippines is rising, from 57 in 2013, to 89 in 2014, and 167 in 2015.

Cyber sex crimes are very difficult to track as it is conducted in inconspicuous places such as in residential areas as long as there is an internet connection and oftentimes parents and relatives of the child-victims are also involved in the online abuse of the victims. There is a growing acceptance that this is an Ok form of earning money by bringing their children to be videoed live on the internet.    

A study published early in 2016 conducted by the Philippine Center for Women’s Resources (CWR) estimates that every 53 minutes, a woman or child is raped and that seven in 10 victims of violence were children. The CWR report further says that despite the alarming number, victims could hardly find help. Without support, aggravated by the impunity enjoyed by the perpetrators they are helpless. Besides they don’t know their rights and how to seek redress, get help and make complaints. Violence against women is prevalent and they need to have knowledge of their rights and a contact organization to get help. 

Above all we need to get help for the children who are on the front target line of the human traffickers like Dee. If it were not for the help of the Preda Foundation, she would have been lost to the sex trade forever. There, the child loses self-respect and value. They come to believe that this is the only thing they can do to earn money to pay her debts. But Dee got help and was rescued from the brothel and brought to the Preda home for girls where she had a life changing experience. Today, she is a healthy young woman reunited with her family and going to school.

But of the hundred thousand, there are so many more to be saved and much more preventive education and social campaigning. That is the way to wake up the conscience of the nation to the fact that the commercial sexual exploitation of children and young women is already an accepted important part of the economy. It is a business from which the rich greatly profit. We have to speak out and stand against it and declare the dignity of every child and woman.

The Spread of Child Trafficking

Unpleasant as it is we must not turn the page, look away and ignore this social evil that  is destroying the lives of hundreds of thousands of children and families. The spread of child sexual abuse all over the world is the terrible crime that few want to acknowledge and fight. 

The high number of trafficked children, abducted and sold into the sex trade in developed and developing countries is unbelievable but at least 2.5 million are thought to be victimized at any given time and more are added to that list daily.  The fact that so little is spent and done to combat it is an indictment of the international community and national government officials who tolerate it. Officials actually promote and license the establishments that foster sex tourism and human trafficking.  

Hundreds of thousands of sex tourists from developed countries come to Southeast Asia every year to engage in pernicious acts of child sexual abuse and sex trafficking. The Philippines is notorious for these crimes of human trafficking and child abuse and many customers are coming from international pedophile rings. They abuse the children, make videos and sell them online. The international authorities do little to intervene and local authorities seem to condone and promote the trade in young people in the sex industry. 

The institutional Catholic Church fails to challenge sufficiently this pernicious evil that destroys the fabric of family life.  People of all beliefs and principles, social justice advocates and those who value human rights and dignity ought to be outraged and take action wherever they can. They can campaign with groups online and challenge their politicians to act to protect children and curb foreign aid to governments that fail to implement international child protection standards. 

The human right workers, child protectors and the NGOs working to save, protect and heal the victims and bring abusers to justice are the wonder workers of the children who are rescued and saved. But they are underfunded, sidelined and most of the time ignored by the authorities who do not like their outspoken defense of the abused. The judicial system mostly fails them by dismissing the charges against their rapists and traffickers. At times bribery payments under and over the table allow the culprits to walk free of responsibility for their crimes.  

Not only are the children hurt and damaged most beyond healing and recovery but families are destroyed by unfaithful husbands frequenting the sex bars and karaoke bars where young girls are offered to them. Some become addicted to this underage sex abuse and they can easily fall into incestuous relationships in their own families and abuse their own children.  The spread of the underage sex business would account for the rapid increase in the incidents of incestuous abuse cases in the Catholic Philippines.

The foreign sex tourists become addicted also and then return to their own countries and will endanger children in their own families or communities. They will also participate in live cyber-sex events over the internet having made contacts with the sex bars and clubs making the evil shows of children doing sex acts on live internet connections. They send payments through international courier services and they can order up live shows to their own twisted lustful desires. 

The most notorious of all in the Philippines is Australian pedophile and video maker Peter Scully. He has been charged with 69 charges of criminal offenses of child abuse and making videos of him have brutal sex with six year olds and killing them on video. His production, “The Destruction of Daisy” shows  many horrific crimes. 

Dutch police discovered his video online. It was referred to the Australian Federal Police in Manila and the Philippine National Bureau of Investigation. They eventually caught Scully and his helpers. They were local Filipino young women who recruited the children for him. The remains of “Daisy” was dug up in a house he rented.  He is just one of perhaps hundreds doing this secret and hidden crime. How widespread it is, no one can say since it is illegal and done in secret.

The words condemning human trafficking and the sex trade in young people are in the millions. Human trafficking, cyber sex and sex tourism have all been decried, condemned and denounced. All lectures, interventions and hand-wringing seem to be of little or no purpose.  The trade is growing and more children are falling into the grip of human traffickers, pimps and sex bar operators.

They have special impunity and enjoy police protection and government officials will issue the establishments with operating permits. They appear to be a legitimate business but behind the flashing neon lights and gaudy facades there is much exploitation.  

The cyber-crime, where child sex is offered live on-line, is one of the most pernicious internet crimes and most difficult to investigate. It is a secret world where minors are raped and abused.

Pope Francis declared human trafficking of minors to be a modern form of slavery and a crime against humanity. We would all do good to take a stand in our hearts and minds and let it flow into action.  We can work for justice of these vulnerable children. They are the most important in the Kingdom as the Master has said.  

Trafficking in Innocence After the Storm

Social worker Marlyn received a message that a 14-year-old girl named "Princess" had been trafficked and sold to a sex bar here in the Philippines. Marlyn alerted me and we began planning to rescue the child, just one of thousands of children trafficked for sexual abuse each year in the Philippines.and many more around the world. It is a problem of global  reach and the  recent  agreement  signed by the heads and representatives of  the  major religions to  fight it  is a positive encouragement. Its almost  six months since the  the devastation of Typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda) and many more children  will fall victim to sexual predators as the poverty grows and young people and parents become desperate to get jobs and money. It's all too common.

Marlyn, who herself was rescued from sex-trade traffickers, works with me in the Preda Foundation organization I founded  40 years ago that actively responds to and rescues victims, and then helps them get an education and start new lives of dignity.

This time, we organized a police raid on the sex bar, called the Crowbar, and rescued Princess and five other under age girls who had been entrapped there through debts and fear of retaliation against their families. The operator of the sex bar, a U.S. national, was arrested, and during his arraignment, Princess whispered to her social worker: "I never thought this could happen; he's rich and connected. I can't believe we got out."

Princess was rescued and was helped  at the Preda Home for Children. Over the years we have rescued thousands of children and youths from the scourge of "sex tourism," even as the sex industry continues to spread and grow with impunity.

This has all been exacerbated by the recent natural disasters in the Philippines.Another Typhoon is lashing Southern Mindanao as I  write. But  with  Yolanda last November  2013 it was the worst ever. I have been through ferocious typhoons during my 44 years in this Southeast Asian nation, but have never seen anything like the sheer savagery of Typhoon Haiyan, known locally as Typhoon Yolanda. After this super storm hit the Philippines , bringing winds of up to 150 miles an hour, torrential rain, flooding and landslides, I flew to visit the northern towns on Cebu Island to assess the damage with two Preda staff members. Our goals were to deliver aid directly to the people who most needed it and, equally important, to protect orphaned children from would-be abductors and traffickers posing as relatives. Now  months later much has been  done to  get electricity back and people fed, but  hundreds of  thousands of houses have yet to be repaired and jobs created.

Horrible as the prospect of such exploitation is, it has been a cruel reality in times of natural disasters, and Haiyan was the most devastating typhoon known to humankind: as many as 6,500 or more were killed, countless injured and made homeless. And the orphaned children remain the most vulnerable. Their towns and villages and homes are gone and their parents are dead. They face the threat of hunger, malnutrition, abduction and forced degradation in the sex trade and as slave labor.

These children need our attention and direct intervention to rescue them from child traffickers and pedophiles and Preda social workers have been  giving training to  workers to help find them and given help.  Under the pretext of saving the children, traffickers abduct them and may sell them as "brides" to pedophiles, or earn hundreds of thousands of dollars by providing these children for illegal adoption, organ transplants, sexual abuse and exploitation in brothels and as forced labor.

Poverty often makes exploitation easy. Reggie is a clear example. The 17-year-old jobless youth and his family lived on the edge of severe poverty even before Typhoon Haiyan pushed them into absolute poverty and left them with nothing. In the midst of the chaos and destruction, human traffickers forced him and six other youth from Cebu into unpaid labor on a fishing boat, only to abandon them hungry and unpaid. Then, Reggie's freedom and human rights were taken from him when local authorities jailed him for being a vagrant. He was recently rescued from illegal imprisonment and is recovering and rebuilding his life back in his home village. We can all continue to do more and to help the people in greatest need.

Though the work goes on, it never gets any easier to stomach.

The Corporate Irresponsibility of the ISPs

Child protection police working with Interpol and Europol have arrested hundreds of paedophiles in many countries: the UK, other EU countries, Australia, Canada and the USA, for ordering, paying, and viewing Philippine children forced to strip naked and do sexual acts live in front of video cameras connected to computers. These horrific and heinous crimes are generally ignored by the Philippine police, telecommunication companies and the government agencies that are mandated to protect the children. The children are victims of human trafficking for sexual exploitation and the telecommunications corporations, who are the Internet Service Providers (ISP) that allow it must be held responsible.

The recent revelations by Interpol and police raids on cyber sex dens in Cebu, Manila and Quezon city by the National Bureau of Investigation.(NBI) showed that these crimes are widespread and common practice in the Philippines. In Cordova, Cebu, the village of Ibabao has internet connections and several cyber-sex dens. Parents even sold their children to the cyber sex operators. Such is the level of economic and moral poverty there.

In Manila and Quezon city, fake "call centers" were raided by the NBI and fifteen workers were arrested and charged with sending out child pornography over the internet through the Internet Service Providers (ISPs). Every child porn image is evidence of a crime against children. Every time it is sent out and viewed by the paedophiles, that child's dignity and rights are violated. A recent report made by Pornhub says that more Filipinos are accessing pornography on mobile phones and tablets than ever before, all enabled by the ISPs. (view www.preda.org)

Thousands of young children, some from kindergarten, have been and are being sexually and psychologically abused as a result of the illegal and immoral corporate irresponsibility of the ISPs.

These companies are making vast profits from the child porn peddlers and must be held morally and legally responsible for allowing and enabling these live child sex acts to be viewed live over the internet. The abuse is only possible through connections provided by their corporations. The Philippine Internet Service Provider (ISPs) leaders are: Philippine Long Distance Telephone company (PLDT), Globe, Smart, Sun cellular, and Banyantel. The members of Philippine Internet Services Organization (PISO) are accountable too and must answer to the Filipino people for allowing the crimes against children and the non-implementation of the law. The Council for the Welfare of Children ought to act and speak out and demand the law be obeyed.

The telecommunications companies and PISO seem to have an arrangement not to implement the clear provisions of the law. They have apparently "captured" the regulators and can act with impunity.

Republic Act 9775, under Section 9 says: “The duties of Internet Service Providers (ISP) to monitor the content passing through their servers, notify the police of illegal content and provide the authorities the particulars of users who gained or attempted to gain access to an internet address which contains any form of child pornography. All ISPs shall install available technology, program or software to ensure access to or transmittal of any form of child pornography will be blocked or filtered”. (complete law at www.preda.org) Software companies that offer solutions such as Netclean Inc. have been rebuffed.

The National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) is supposed to oversee the implementation of the law. The law says that the ISP failing to implement and comply with the law should pay a fine and have its license to operate revoked for non-compliance. But the law is clearly ignored, flouted and disobeyed. If so it is a grave injustice to the Filipino people and children worldwide.

If PISO and the telecommunications companies are implementing the anti-child pornography law, Republic Act 9775, and install the filters and blocking software, there would be little or no cyber-sex or child pornography. But it is widely easily available now, that is where young Filipinos are introduced to sexuality, they are groomed and lured into abusive and damaging situations. Some are video recorded involved in sex acts and are later blackmailed over the internet that can drive them to suicide.

However, the obvious solution to the problem of child pornography is the implementation of the law. The ISPs have put themselves above it and government law enforcers and regulators go along with them. Such is the ISPs' power and influence that government and even the media are afraid, docile and subservient to them. Few writers, reporters, if any, expose the non-compliance of the ISPs and telecommunication companies.

Corruption driven by greed to make money even at the peddling of child pornography over the internet kills conscience and moral values. The corporate bosses of the ISPs who enable the transmission of child pornography are perhaps as guilty as the paedophiles who order it on line. We must act now and challenge them to comply and end impunity. 

The Lost Orphans of Yolanda

Besides the thousands that have been killed, injured, and made homeless by the most devastating typhoon known to humankind, the orphaned children are the most vulnerable. Their towns and villages and homes are no more and their parents are dead. They are threatened by malnutrition, kidnapping, and abduction. Horrible as this prospect is, it has been a deadly reality in times of natural disasters. These children need our special attention and direct intervention to save them from child traffickers and pedophiles. Under the pretext of saving the children, traffickers can abduct them and sell them as "brides" to pedophiles or earn hundreds of thousands of pounds or euros by providing these children for illegal adoption and even worse, sexual abuse and exploitation.

The Philippine Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) has called for urgent vigilance by aid workers to this form of child trafficking in the areas devastated by the most powerful typhoon in history to hit land. Called Haiyan or by its local name “Yolanda”, it has devastated and flattened entire towns, villages, and killed scores of people in the central Philippines and their children will be  known as the lost children of Yolanda. Driven by winds up to 315 kilometers an hour, brutal ordeal will scar the people of the Visayan region for a generation. We too will be judged by how we responded or when we did not.

The television reports show the extent of the devastation and the hardship, hunger and homelessness will last many months. The approaching of yet another rain storm, a tropical depression named “Zoraida” will be lashing the country by the time you read this or will be leaving more destruction to a country already reeling in shock.

As many as ten thousand and more people could have been killed. No one could predict that it would be such a killer cyclone and now the people have nothing. They are totally dependent on the generosity of donors and the ability of the government to deliver relief aid in the shortest time possible. A time will come when they will be able to pick up the strength and recover and become self-sufficient and self-reliant. But now as in all disasters, help is needed and we are called up to provide it and give back and share with those that need it most.

There are problems getting the relief to the people as roads and bridges have collapsed or buried under landslides. Bodies are decomposing under the rubble, some have been buried in mass graves. This will go on for several weeks more as rescuers and aid workers reach the remote villages

But this tragic event brings with it another kind of danger, the danger to the homeless, lost and orphaned children. With as many as fifteen thousand dead, many children will be orphaned, vulnerable to malnutrition and the worst of all, vulnerable to abduction, kidnapping, and trafficking into illegal adoptions or sexual exploitation.

Many people don’t want to read or think about such harsh and painful realities but it happens and we have to do all we can to prevent this. Preda children's charity is appealing for donations and help to send trained social workers into the devastated area to provide a child feeding station and help find and protect these lost, homeless, abandoned children before they are abducted.

With such challenges before us, we have to summon up the spiritual strength to meet them and overcome them. The Filipino people are a very resilient people and suffer up to twenty typhoons a year and one or two strong earthquakes. Sitting on the pacific ring of fire, it is expected and when there is no exploding volcano to cope with, there are plenty of other natural disasters.

In the past 44 years that I  have been a missionary in the Philippines with the people who are poor and needy, I have  come through many natural disaster, super storms, floods, landslides, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions and rivers of volcanic mud and “lahar” destroying all before them.

The Filipino people have shown the remarkable spiritual strength and resilience and are capable of coping with a sense of humor and smiling at cameras and even laughing at their own predicament. Not this time though, it’s harder than ever before.  Yet their will to live and survive is the driving strength of the Filipino people and they do it with courage and resourcefulness and are a people who get on with the task of recovering, rebuilding and planting and harvesting year after year.

These are a people who live in hope and have a great ability to overcome all kinds of disasters and hardship. The people need food, water and shelter. The children need protection, nutrition and the good will of the world community. All need help to get them through this most terrible time in their lives. They believe in a loving God who lives in all people of faith, love and good will and this eternal force of goodness will reach out to the needy through the love of others.

Donations for the orphans of Yolanda to Fr. Cullen, St. Columban's,  Widney Manor Road,  Solihull  B93 9AB or Dalgan Park Navan, Co. Meath or any TSB bank Preda - Ireland, sort code 990 604, account number 30001836.

Modern Slavery and Coddling a Convicted Foreigner

The past twenty years has seen a global response against the evil of the abuse of women and children, trafficking, sex slavery and exploitation. Hundreds of thousands of people, government officials, the United Nations, civil society and people of good will and committed Christians have worked together or separately to address modern slavery. The power of love, compassion, goodness and the respect for human dignity has made itself a strong force in the world. Thousands of women and children have been saved and helped to live a better and dignified life despite the trauma of abuse and victimization by commercial sexual exploiters. There are wonderful dedicated people, human rights and child rights defenders battling this particular obnoxious and loathsome crime and they endure the retaliation of the abusers and their coddlers.

Fourteen year-old Julie was sent by her parents to a recruiter who promised her a job as a domestic worker but instead she was enslaved, and sexually exploited in a Philippine sex club frequented by foreign sex tourists. With the help of children's rights defenders working undercover, she was found and rescued. Today she and many others are recovering and struggling to return to a more normal life at the Preda Home for Children in Olongapo city. This is possible because of new laws that are being gradually implemented to help victims.

Many minors are trafficked locally and abroad. The police and immigration authorities in European countries have been made aware that they are victims, not criminals, and deserving of help, protection, medical and psychological healing. The victims themselves are being empowered to speak out against those who have sexually abused and exploited them whether they are paedophiles, parents, relatives, clergy and irresponsible bishops, police, prosecutors and judges. The tide of public opinion has turned in favor of the victims and their protectors. Those who think they are above the law must know they are not.

Let's celebrate heroes: the child and women defenders, social workers and paralegal workers, and human rights campaigners. When they challenge and confront the wrongdoers and protect abused children, the perpetrators lash back and attack those helping the children and exposing the crimes.

In Olongapo City, an American, Allan Dale Edmonds, according to court documents, has been convicted and sentenced to prison for malicious prosecution but has somehow contrived to have his jailing held in abeyance for over a year. (see the court decision at www.preda.org/legal) He should be made to serve his sentence according to Philippine law and his American citizenship ought not be a cloak of privilege, entitlement, deference and obstruction of justice. No one should be coddled by the judicial system.

Despite his conviction, Edmonds has continued for years, his retaliation against the rescuers of his abused child by filing numerous false and baseless libel and slander charges against them. These false allegations are spread by him on the internet to the media and the public allegedly to defame and belittle those of us who saved his 7 year-old child from her abuser - his own son and house helper.

His alleged cover-up of that crime was exposed by the Preda child defenders who have rescued hundreds of children from abusers and brought many of the perpetrators to justice. Edmonds retaliated against them ever since his son and house helper was charged. Edmonds counter-charged with outrageous accusations, clearly malicious. All, but one libel case, have been dismissed by the courts and shown to have been false and baseless. His conviction and sentencing in the Olongapo Court as a criminal for false malicious prosecution against a prosecutor has deprived him of all credibility.

One of the crosses child rights defenders carry, as did Jesus Christ himself, are false defamatory accusations against social workers and defenders of human rights. Why this legal smoke screen? To keep police and media attention off his activities and to justify their actions with a facade of innocence or to intimidate and silence those of us who speak out to defend human rights?

The brave Norwegian people refused to be intimidated by the malicious acts of a single obsessed publicity-seeking killer. How right the judge was to deny him the courtroom as a platform for his ideology and defamation of others.

So too the likes of Edmonds must not be given privileges above Filipinos who suffer prison even if innocent, but since he is convicted and sentenced in a fair trial by a just and honorable judge, Mr. Allan Dale Edmonds, who has been convicted of malicious prosecution must not be coddled any longer but be taken to prison and serve out his sentence according to Philippine law.

Taking a Stand for Justice and Truth

The trafficking of children and young women into the commercial sex industry by the hundreds of thousands and the spread of the sex industry fueled by easily available child pornography is the scandal of our beautiful country. “The complicity and connivance of government officials with investments in the sex business are tolerant and encourage it” said by a social worker in Angeles City who asked not to be named out of fear for her safety. Thousands of local and foreign sex tourists flock there to exploit and abuse women and children with impunity.

Hunger and poverty following environmental disasters, environmental destruction, floods and draughts, landslides and soil erosions has driven thousands of children and teenagers into the cities over the past decade to beg for food and they are very vulnerable to trafficking for sexual exploitation. Those rescued by the Preda child rescue team have told of lives of brutality, fear and horrific abuse by sex tourists and pimps.

When some Church leaders fail to speak-out on serious social issues such as these that are bound up in our faith and morals, Christians tend to loose heart and their faith. “If they cannot lead and inspire us to work for justice and peace, dignity and decency, then who can?”, commented Juan Mercado, a community leader lamenting the silence of church leaders in response to the scandal of widespread child abuse and exploitation in the Philippines. These leaders may have overlooked the message of Jesus of Nazareth which is powerfully expressed in the age old social teachings of the Church.

The social teaching of the church is not socialism but the teaching of Jesus of Nazareth. He lived, worked and was executed for standing with the poor, telling all that the Kingdom of God was to be a just society of peace and non-violence and it was to be primarily for the poor in this world here and now. The Kingdom he said is living justly with honesty and integrity respecting the rights of all. It was a renewed humanity living in harmony with justice giving freedom to captives, lifting up the oppressed, protecting the rights and dignity of all especially the rejected and abused women and children and opposing evil and injustice.

His own mother is quoted by St. Luke as saying that “the mighty would be put down from their thrones and the poor would be lifted up”, that the rich would be sent away empty and poor would never be hungry. Such revolutionary prayers especially on the lips of a woman were truly earth-shaking. We need to follow such an example. That’s what idealistic youth want to be inspired by -- this world- changing message and life of Jesus and His mother.

We can take heart from those brave Filipino bishops who are taking a strong stand with their people and calling for social justice and the protection of the environment and the people. The churches in Mt. Province and Ifugao, Bontoc and Lagawe have spoken out through the Social Action and Development Center to protest the massive destruction on the slopes of Mt. Sumigar by contractors constructing a road. “We believe that such environmental destruction was allowed to happen because concerned government agencies failed to perform their duties to stop it” the church spokesperson said.

The beautiful island of Catanduanes is another area where environmental destruction looms from the threat of irresponsible mining. The awarding of 7,000 hectares of forest and natural park land to a private company linked to powerful government-connected business tycoon for coal mining has the province in near revolt. In a statement of concern read in all churches on the island on March 1, Bishop Manolo A. de los Santos of the Diocese of Virac called for an end to planned coal mining operations telling government officials that there had been no consultation with the people as required by law.

”The people of Catanduanes have the right to know the disastrous effects mining would bring to the island and its people”, Bishop De los Santos said.

”We don¹t want our island and our people to suffer from such tragedies brought about by irresponsible mining activity,” he said. It’s such an inspiration to have the Bishop and the clergy standing side by side with the defenders of the human rights and dedicated to justice and the defense for the creation.