UMA denounces denial of Sister Pat’s right to be missionary in PH
The Unyon ng mga Manggagawa sa Agrikultura (UMA) strongly condemns the recent decision by the Bureau of Immigration (BI) denying the Motion for Reconsideration to reinstate the missionary visa of Sister Patricia Fox. This was made on the grounds of her alleged “political activities” in the country declaring her as an “undesirable alien.” The decision was issued by the BI last May 17, 2018.
The face of Sister Pat is the face of our neglected farmers, farm workers and indigenous people in the countryside who were not only undergoing deep economic hardships, which Sister Pat tried to alleviate by helping them in very simple and basic ways, but were being beaten by the many forms of repression of politico-landlord-oligarchs under the US-Duterte regime.
According to UMA’s General Secretary, John Milton Lozande, “This decision of BI on Sister Pat’s Motion for Reconsideration to continue her stay in the country is a very big loss to Filipino workers, farmers, farm workers, urban poor and indigenous people and groups who support them. Workers still endure low wages and job insecurities under contractualization and wage freeze-policies. Farmers and farm workers still suffer with the lack of a genuine agrarian reform and rural development program. A case in point is the situation of Hacienda Luisita farmers who still have pending cases as the state continues to criminalize their rightful assertion of their right to land. The indigenous people continue to deal with dispossession of their ancestral lands by domestic and foreign mining and agribusiness plantations.”
The issue of Sister Pat’s deportation is more than the legal technicalities of the non-interference rule of foreigners to the domestic affairs of the country. The much bigger issue and reasons for the “order” for her to leave the country is Duterte’s resolve in hiding the real human rights situation in the Philippines and gagging any utterance of criticism.
The extra-judicial killings on farmers, farm workers, indigenous people, workers and the urban poor have already reached more than 130 since Duterte assumed presidency. He has already successfully prosecuted every critic that his administration had including CJ Sereno.
Duterte’s declaration of “undesirable” status of Sister Pat as a foreigner is a very clear manifestation of the antipoor and pro-landlord-oligarch stance of his administration.
The impending deportation of Sister Pat is a clear expression of the USDuterte regime’s detestation of our poor farmers, farm workers and indigenous people. As he once said, “Kayong mahihirap, mamatay kayo sa gutom wala akong pakialam.”