On 3 March 2010 at 6:00 pm, four international and UK-based organisations will be holding a free event at the Human Rights Action Centre of Amnesty International UK, to commemorate the 100 days anniversary of the Philippines’ Maguindanao massacre.
The incident demonstrates the impunity with which government officials and their private armies commit human rights violations in the Philippines, particularly in the run-up to the election season. The 23 November 2009 massacre was also the world’s largest ever single attack on working journalists. It is not a Philippine issue alone, but something that resonates both with the Filipino diaspora worldwide and the international community.
Amnesty International, the International Federation of Journalists, the National Union of Journalists in the UK and the Campaign for Human Rights in the Philippines, will gather to collectively call on President Arroyo to disarm and disband private armies and revoke Executive Order 546. Speakers at the joint event will include Amnesty International’s Asia Pacific director Sam Zarifi, who visited Mindanao shortly after the Maguindanao massacre, and Jim Boumelha, president of the International Federation of Journalists, which has produced a report on the mass killing. A short video on a survivor’s personal account of the massacre will be premiered in the event, followed by a tribute to the journalists who have been killed.
