Abduction of community Health Workers including 26 women constitutes a seroius violation of the Magna Carta of Women - Maza

“The arrest of doctors and health workers, most of them women health workers including midwives, violates the right of women as enshrined in the Magna Carta to be provided with maternal and child care in the communities of Rizal. They should be released immediately and the military who enforced their arrests should be held accountable”.

Thus said Nacionalista-Makabayan Senatorial bet Rep. Liza Maza today as she expressed her strongest condemnation to the recent illegal raid and abduction of 43 community health workers and professionals, including 26 women who were conducting health skills training in Morong, Rizal yesterday.

“There’s no doubt as to the impunity of the Arroyo administration and the AFP on these cases of abduction and human rights violations,” Maza said.

Maza also cited Section 9 of the Magna Carta of Women or RA 9710 that stipulates that “the State shall ensure that all women shall be protected from all forms of violence as provided for in existing laws. Agencies of government shall give priority to the defense and protection of women against gender-based offenses and help women attain justice and healing”. She said that the law specifically states that the “State, as primary duty-bearer shall refrain from
discriminating against women and violating their rights”.

“Instead of protecting women against discrimination and from violation of their rights, the Arroyo administration itself was the very one who committed these abuses,” Maza said.

According to the Health Alliance for Democracy, around 300 soldiers and police of the Southern Luzon Command of the Armed Forces of the Philippines and the Rizal Philippine National Police and headed by Colonel Aurelio Baladad and Police Superintendent Balonglong, respectively, forcibly entered the farmhouse of Dr. Melecia Velmonte around 6:15 am yesterday. The training participants were then lined up, frisked, blindfolded, and forcibly brought to Camp Capinpin,
headquarters of the 202nd Infantry Brigade, AFP.

“All the health workers and professionals being detained by the AFP must be released in no time. Every second that passes by that they are detained aggravates the violations committed against them ,” Maza stressed.

Maza also said that these escalating political attacks against progressive groups all form part of the dirty tactics of the Arroyo administration who is extremely desperate to further cling on to power beyond 2010. ###