| Home Kapatiran
Links
Contact Us
Archive
Back to
Amirah Lidasan Tour
Issue Number 29/30, May 2008
|
Kapatiran Issue
No. 29/30, May 2008
FILIPINO MUSLIM WOMAN LEADER TOURS NZ - Sheds
Light On Unknown Struggle
- Murray Horton
The Philippines Solidarity Network of Aotearoa (PSNA) is
a small Christchurch-based organisation which, as our
major contribution to building solidarity between the
Philippine and New Zealand peoples, tours a speaker from
the Philippine progressive movement through NZ every few
years. There have been four previous such tours –
Leonor Briones (1995), Crispin Beltran (1999), Emilia
Dapulang (2002) and Marie Hilao-Enriquez (2004). You can
read my articles about Marie’s tour in Kapatiran
25/26, December 2005, online at
http://www.converge.org.nz/psna/Kapatiran/KapNo25n26/Kap25n26Art/art115.htm
and Emilia’s tour in number 22, January 2003, online
at
http://www.converge.org.nz/psna/Kapatiran/KapNo22/Kap22Art/art91.htm
respectively. Unfortunately there is nothing online about
those two earlier tours, as they pre-date our Website but
they were both duly written up in Kapatiran.
At the beginning of 2006 we started to discuss who to
invite to tour NZ in 07 (these tours always require a
long lead in time, because of our limited resources, the
need to put together a national network, and to give us
plenty of time for fundraising). We decided to go outside
the immediate circle of our committee for ideas and to go
outside our comfort zone in the search for a speaker. In
2005, PSNA had helped to fund four New Zealanders to go
to the Philippines on a human rights fact finding mission
(and you can read about that in number 25/26, online at
http://www.converge.org.nz/psna/Kapatiran/KapNo22/Kap22Art/art91.htm,
in which there are a number of articles by those
delegates). Predictably they had all come back fired up
with enthusiasm, so we invited their opinions. After a
very productive discussion, we decided to invite our
first ever Muslim speaker, and set-tled on Amirah Ali
Lidasan (whom at least one of those Kiwis had met in 05).
She also came with the recommendation of our last touring
speaker, human rights leader, Marie Hilao-Enriquez, who
was instrument-tal in putting us in touch with Amirah.
She was a stranger to us but, in August 2007, my Filipina
wife Becky and I went to Manila to visit family and took
the opportunity to meet Amirah, for the first time, at an
international women’s conference that she was
attending.
First Muslim Speaker, First From Mindanao
She was not only our first Muslim, but the first speaker
we’ve hosted from Mindanao (or anywhere other than
Manila) and, at 33, our youngest ever speaker, by many
years. The fact that she’s not from Manila but from
a poor, Muslim part of Mindanao caused its own unique
problems. Amirah spends weeks at a time travelling in
very remote parts of the southern Philippines, places
with no Internet connections and out of e-mail range. So
communication was a real hassle for a lot of the time in
the buildup to the tour – in then end we found it
easier to contact her by text (and even that was a hit
and miss affair). Something as mundane as posting her the
necessary paperwork for her to apply for her NZ visa
became a saga taking weeks and weeks before the package
finally reached her. This tells you all you need to know
about the Philippines’ provincial postal service
(once she received that package of papers, getting her
actual visa was refreshingly straightforward and fast. We
thought that there might have been hassles, but there
were none). And the fact that she was our first speaker
not from Luzon (the main island, on which Manila is
situated) meant that we had some unique expenses this
time – namely the costs of getting her to and from
Manila, and her overnight accommodation there at each end
of her international journey, plus other incidental
expenses. That added several hundred dollars to the bill.
We considered it a coup to secure a young, progressive
Muslim woman as a speaker. Amirah holds two lea-dership
positions – in the Suara Bangsamoro (Voice of the
Moro [Muslim] People) Party List Organisation and the
Moro Christian People’s Alliance. Just to briefly
explain the former – under the Philip-pine electoral
system, a certain small percentage of seats in Congress
are reserved for “marginalised sectors” who
would otherwise have no repre-sentation. These are the
seats con-tested by the party list organisations, which
have to win a certain per-centage of the national vote in
order to qualify. Thus far Suara Bang-samoro has been
unsuccessful in winning any seats (the most recent
midterm Congressional elections were in 2007). Our
publicity material said that Amirah was National
Vice-Chairperson. In fact, by the time she got here, she
had been elected its President.
“War On Terror”: Making The Connections
We titled her tour: “Hidden Voices: A Filipino
Muslim On The US ‘War On Terror’ And Its Impact
On Her People”, as we felt that this would be the
best angle to attract the attention of New Zealanders (if
the Philippines per se is off the radar in NZ, then the
plight of its Muslim minority is positively
subterranean). Presidents Bush and Macapagal-Arroyo have
pronounced the Philippines to be the “Second
Front” in that “War On Terror”, and, post
9/11, the US has a newfound military interest in the
Muslim separatist struggle in Mindanao and the islands
further south (a struggle which includes a civil war that
was been ongoing since the early 1970s).
PSNA aimed to use Amirah’s tour to make the
connections between what is happening at the sharp end of
the “War On Terror” and NZ’s involvement
in the US military/intelligence Empire. For that reason,
we went out of our way to take Amirah right up to the
inner gate to the top secret Waihopai satellite
interception electronic spybase, near Blenheim, the first
of our Philippine speakers we’ve ever taken there,
and the first member of a clearly identified target group
(of the global network of spybases of which Waihopai is
part) that we’ve taken there. Waihopai is NZ’s
biggest and most important contribution to the “War
On Terror” and all other US-led wars. Amirah’s
visit there was well covered by mainstream media and she
herself was very pleased to have gone there, she clearly
understood the significance of the place. You can learn
more about Waihopai by visiting the Anti-Bases
Campaign’s Website at
http://www.converge.org.nz/abc/waihopai.html.
The actual timing of Amirah’s tour (late October,
into November, the latest in the year we’ve ever
toured a speaker) was determined by events, such as
Ramadan, which we’d never had to take into account
for any of our four previous tours. But, by pure
coincidence, it meant that Amirah was in the country
right when the NZ State was behaving in a very similar
fashion to the Philippine State. By which, I mean that
she arrived in NZ just days after October’s
“anti-terror” raids and was on tour during the
fullblown “terrorism” hysteria that followed
that. I refer you to my article “A Bad Case Of
Terrorism Hysteria” in Peace Researcher 35, December
2007, which can be read online at
http://www.converge.org.nz/abc/pr35-156.html.
This showed that our two countries have rather more in
common that had been otherwise apparent. She was able to
see for herself, and to incorporate into her speeches and
interviews throughout the country, that a repressive and
erroneous clampdown on those demonised as
“terrorists” can happen in a First World
country just as in a Third World one. That led to her
tour ma-king connections not originally envi-saged by
PSNA. She and I (her tra-vel companion and opening
speaker) took part in protest actions in both Wellington
and Auckland in the course of her tour.
Money
Fundraising is critical, tours like this simply
wouldn’t happen if PSNA couldn’t raise the
money for it. I should explain that PSNA could have paid
for it all, but that it would have virtually cleaned us
out. So PSNA underwrote it, whilst seeking funding
elsewhere. There was no “natural constituency”
to approach for money (unlike in the previous cases of
our two trade unionist speakers, Crispin Beltran and
Emilia Dapulang), so we cast a wide net. Response was
slow to start with and we thought that PSNA would end up
footing a lot more of the bill than with previous tours,
but our fears were unfounded. In the end, income was more
than $6,000. We got a very generous response from
collections at all of the public meetings (one individual
put in a $350 cash cheque to the Christchurch
collection). There were donations totalling $3,350 from a
number of organisations – Chris-tian World Service
(always the big-gest donor to PSNA’s tours),
Caritas, Quakers’ Peace and Service, the Workers
Institute for Scientific Socia-list Education, Riverside
Community, Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa
and the Anti-Bases Campaign. So just over half came from
organisations and the rest came from individuals ($500
was the biggest individual donation).
Expenditure came to $4,700, in round figures.
Financially, this was our most successful ever tour. It
brought in the biggest amount of money we’ve ever
raised on any of our five speaking tours (quite con-trary
to our expectations) and cost less than our $5,000
budget, despite it involving some unique expenses, which
I’ve already detailed. One of the reasons for us
coming in under budget was beyond our control – the
much more favourable exchange rate with $US (i.e. for
international air fares) compared to Marie
Hilao-Enriquez’s 04 tour. And since the tour we have
also received our biggest ever GST refund, virtually
entirely comprising Amirah tour expenses.
National Network
Each one of these tours necessitates putting together a
national network to organise it (PSNA only exists in
Christchurch, there are no branches elsewhere.
Interestingly, partly as a result of Amirah’s tour,
there has been interest expressed in setting up
Philippines Solidarity Groups in both Wellington and
Auckland. The Wellington one is now up and running). We
depend on a very reliable number of individuals in
various cities, and some have done it for us several
times before – Tim Howard in Whangarei; Dion Martin
in Palmerston North; Rod Prosser, John Maynard and Lee
Tan in Wel-lington. Mary Ellen O’Connor was our
Wellington organiser (on past tours she had been a key
Nelson organiser). In Dunedin, our organiser was Greg
Hughson of the Abrahamic Interfaith Group, which was the
one religious body that played an organisational role.
This was the first time we’d ever worked with them.
Thanks are due to him, to Najib Lafraie and his family,
and to Gillian Southey of Christian World Service for
putting us in touch with them and thus ensuring that
Dunedin was included in the tour. In Auckland, our key
organiser, for the first time, was Helen Te Hira, a union
official, and the National Distribution Union played a
big part by means of providing officials to drive Amirah
and I around that city (not to mention hosting us for
lunch in their Onehunga building and giving me free use
of their office facilities for several hours). Thanks are
due also to John Minto of Global peace and Justice
Auckland, who organised the public meeting.
We tried hard to get Amirah to Nelson but couldn’t
get a local organiser, so Nelson was off the itinerary
for the first time in five PSNA speaking tours. But, by
contrast, Amirah was the first of our Filipino speakers
to go to Blenheim, and enormous thanks are due to Steffan
Browning (with whom I’ve worked for years on
Waihopai spybase protests, wearing my Anti-Bases Campaign
hat). He single-handedly organised the Blenheim visit for
us, just days after the local body elections in which he
was a Mayoral candidate. Heartfelt thanks are due to all
of these people and to the others who helped in each
centre, as the tour would not have been possible without
them. Amirah spent two weeks touring both islands,
speaking in Christchurch, Dunedin, Blenheim, Wellington,
Palmerston North, Auckland and Whangarei. We stayed with
all manner of people, in their homes and I can definitely
say that I had an interesting time in my fortnight on the
road with her.
It’s worth noting that although Amirah is Muslim,
there was virtually no involvement from NZ’s Muslim
community in organising her tour (let alone attending
it). Only in Dunedin was there any Muslim organiser, in
the person of Najib Lafraie (former Afghan Foreign
Minister, now Politics Lecturer at Otago Univer-sity).
The Lafraies were the only Muslim family to host Amirah
(and me) anywhere in the country. Muslims were either a
tiny minority of her audiences or completely absent. In
Blenheim, a local Muslim made an effort to try and get
his fellow co-religionists along (he told us that not
only had he publicised it locally but to every mosque in
NZ), but only three of them turned up (him and his wife
and a friend). Amirah attended an interfaith meeting at
the Christchurch Mosque (at the invitation of a local
Muslim woman) and met with a couple of groups of Muslim
women in Auckland. And that was it. Wellington people
asked me to ring the head of the local Muslim community
to see about Amirah meeting them, attending the mosque,
etc. I did so, but nothing came of it. It can only be
speculation as to why the local Muslim community stayed
away, but Amirah wasn’t too bothered about it, and
one possible explanation may be that local Muslims are
wary of being seen as involved in “politics”,
particularly a struggle in the Philippines about which
they probably know no more than anyone else in NZ.
Likewise, there was noticeably less attendance by local
Filipinos than on previous tours. Once again, the reasons
can only be guessed at, but in light of the very
widespread prejudice against Muslims in mainstream
Christian Philippine society, it’s not hard to work
out why Amirah’s compatriots stayed away (if there
are any Filipino Muslims living in NZ, they would be a
tiny minority within that community). One pakeha woman at
Amirah’s public meeting in Whangarei (the last of
the tour and the city where Marie Hilao-Enriquez, in
2004, had the biggest turnout by local Filipinos) said
that she’d invited her Filipina neighbour who
replied: “I won’t come. The speaker is a Muslim
and they want to take over the Philippines”. That
sums it up in a nutshell. A pity, but the tour
wasn’t for the benefit of either local Muslims or
local Filipinos. It was aimed at the majority NZ
population and was very successful in raising the issues
with that population.
Meetings
In terms of numbers who attended those public meetings,
they were predictably small – ranging from 15 up to
about 40. That’s not surprising – if the
Philippines per se is off the radar of the NZ progressive
movement, let alone the NZ public, then the struggle of
Philippine Muslims is positively subterranean in terms of
NZ public awareness. In fact, PSNA was very pleased with
the public response to this tour which, thanks to better
media coverage than Marie got in 04, reached far more
people than those who actually made it to (or even knew
about) Amirah’s public meetings.
And not all Amirah’s meetings were public ones. In
Wellington, we met with an official from the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs and Trade and had a very interesting
discussion across the full range of the New
Zealand-Philippines State to State relationship; in
Auckland we met with a Human Rights Commissioner and were
briefed about the newly fledged direct involvement of
that official NZ body in the Philippines’ human
rights crisis (both of those meetings have led to follow
up work by PSNA). Amirah had her own meetings with groups
such as Muslim women and local Filipinos in several
cities, plus with activists campaigning against the
“anti-terror” crackdown here.
Amirah brought a PowerPoint and relied on it totally as
the central prop at her meetings (she didn’t
actually deliver the speech that she supplied us, which
you can read elsewhere in this issue). It was a very good
one and she modified it at various times during the tour,
taking on board suggestions that I made to her which
would make it more easily understandable by NZ audiences.
In 2004, we had terrible technical problems getting
Marie’s PowerPoint to work in nearly all venues and
she ended up giving an unaccompanied speech more often
than not. Fortunately, we had nothing like the same
problems with Amirah’s PowerPoint – which is
not to say that it was smooth sailing. In more than one
venue, there was a struggle to get it started, and/or
working properly. In two major venues, due to
misunderstandings, the local organisers had not provided
a laptop and everyone had to wait until one was found. In
Palmerston North, Amirah had been warned that there would
be no PowerPoint facilities available, so she made some
overhead projector transparencies especially for that one
meeting.
On the subject of technical hitches, I should mention the
major one that occurred on the very first working day of
the tour, namely that gale force winds which battered
Otago and Southland closed Dunedin Airport for the day
and caused our plane to have to turn back to
Christchurch, five minutes out from landing. This led to
the very real possibility of Amirah having to wipe
Dunedin from her itinerary but, fortunately, it was a
morning flight and Air New Zealand put on buses to get
several hundred stranded air travellers to their
destination. The hours spent on the bus were put to good
use – the Otago Daily Times rang and did a lengthy
interview by mobile (which had to be done in several
segments as the bus went out of and into cellphone
coverage areas). Immediately upon arrival in central
Dunedin we walked to the ODT office to meet the reporter
and to have Amirah’s photo taken. We arrived in
Dunedin less than two hours before Amirah’s public
meeting but it all worked out remarkably well (the only
thing that to be cancelled there was a community radio
interview). Travel in New Zealand is never dull. We had
several other flights, some in very small planes to
provincial airports and there were no other problems
(which is good, because Amirah told me that she is not a
good flyer). The other journeys were by bus and private
car.
Extremely Good Media Coverage
Media coverage was extremely good. The major
disappointments were that Radio NZ’s Nine To Noon
was not interested (it had featured live studio
interviews with both Marie Hilao-Enriquez in 2004 and
Emilia Dapulang in 02); and that the Listener, which was
all set for its first ever interview with one of our
speakers, pulled the plug at the last minute. But these
were outweighed by the positives. She was in the
Christchurch Press (first Philippine activist
they’ve featured since 98); Otago Daily Times (which
had interviewed Marie in 04 but not published anything);
Marlborough Express (a first – Blenheim media
coverage featured photos of Amirah at the inner gate of
the Waihopai spybase); and Manawatu Standard (front page
with several photos, whereas Marie had no media coverage
in Palmerston North). Plus several community papers: Star
(Dunedin); Blenheim Sun, Tribune (Palmerston North), and
specialist newsletters – National Distribution
Union’s Union Express, Green Party’s Te Awa.
She did two NewstalkZB and one Radio Live interviews in
Christchurch; community station interviews in
Christchurch & Wellington (studio) and an iwi station
studio interview in Whangarei. She missed out on a Radio
Waatea (Maori) interview while in Auckland due to a
misunderstanding. There had been the possibility of an
interview with the Northern Advocate in Whangarei but the
journalist was not available on the day. As with all our
previous Philippine speakers, there was no mainstream
coverage at all in Wellington or Auckland (while in
Auckland I rang and spoke to the chief reporters of both
the New Zealand Herald, the country’s biggest paper,
and the Listener. Both expressed interest but nothing
came of it). In my report on Marie Hilao-Enriquez’s
04 tour, I said that hers was our first tour to produce
no press clippings. I’m pleased to report that
Amirah’s tour was a major improvement on that,
producing a good sized number of clippings.
This Is Why We Do What We Do
In conclusion, the tour was extremely successful. I feel
that it was extremely worthwhile for several reasons
– financially; networking and making links; media
coverage; and, most importantly, raising awareness of a
totally unknown aspect of the struggle of the Philippine
peoples (and I use that plural advisedly, because
Amirah’s tour made plain the wish of the Moros for
either real autonomy or outright independence). It would
have been a revelation to many Kiwis who would have had
no previous knowledge of what has been going on in
Mindanao and points south for decades, centuries
actually. It may well be that, realistically,
Amirah’s tour was a one off, rather than the
beginning of an ongoing relationship between PSNA and
Moro organisations (in contrast to our relationship with
some of the groups represented in previous speaking tours
we’ve hosted) but we consider that an achievement in
itself, because it constitutes a 100% increase in the
relationship we previously had with Bangsamoro. That, by
itself, justifies the need for the solidarity work that
we do – to give voice to the voiceless.
Go to top
|
