ALL-WOMEN HUMAN RIGHTS LEGAL TEAM TO THE PHILIPPINES

PRESS RELEASE

For Immediate Release

26 May 2006

Contact: Dorotea Mendoza, Secretary General, GABRIELA Network USA
secgen@gabnet.org, 1.212.592.3507

NEW YORK ? An all-women human rights team composed of legal luminaries left today for the Philippines to confer with the embattled organizations of the Left who have complained of the killing of over 500 activists, organizers, leaders and members of the opposition.

Initiated by GABRIELA Network, in cooperation with the National Lawyers Guild, the Center for Constitutional Rights and the Vanguard Foundation, the members of the legal team are as follows:

Jill Soffiyah Elijah, Deputy Director, Criminal Justice Institute, Harvard Law School. BA, Cornell University; Juris Doctorate, Wayne State University Law School. Ms. Elijah was in private practice for several years before joining Harvard. She specialized in criminal defense and family law. She has authored several articles and publications and has represented numerous political prisoners and social activists over the past 22 years.

Rachel Lederman, National Lawyers Guild. Ms. Lederman is one of the authors of the NLG?s Know Your Rights pamphlet. She won a million-dollar law suit against the city of San Francisco for unlawfully rounding up demonstrators protesting the Rodney King verdict in Los Angeles.

Vanessa Lucas, National Lawyers Guild. Juris Doctorate and MA in International Business Administration, University of San Diego, CA. Ms. Lucas is in private practice, representing clients in cases that include employment, labor law and civil rights. Her interests include using international law in domestic practice and immigrant rights.

Merrilyn Onisko, National Lawyers Guild, currently serves as co-chair of the NLG?s Middle East Subcommittee; also on the NLG?s Steering Committee of the International Committee and the United Nations Subcommittee. She is an alternate representative to the United Nations for the International Association of Democratic Lawyers (IADL). She recently returned from Bulgaria and Cuba where she presented reports on UN activities to the IADL Bureau. She speaks French, Spanish, Russian and conversational Mandarin.

Tina Monshipour Foster, Esq, Center for Constitutional Rights. Juris Doctorate from the Cornell Law School where she was editor of the Cornell International Law Journal and President of the Cornell Law Students Association. Ms. Foster has been deeply engaged in the pursuit of the protection and observance of civil rights for detainees held in US detention facilities all over the world. Before joining CCR, Ms. Foster practiced law in New York, specializing in criminal defense and class action litigation.

The team will be hosted in the Philippines by the GABRIELA National Alliance of Women and the Gabriela Women?s Party. The organizations are led by Congresswoman Liza Maza and by GABRIELA Secretary-General Emmi de Jesus.

Professor Annalisa Enrile, national chairperson, will represent GABRIELA Network, a US-Philippine women?s mass solidarity organization. Serving as team advisers are Judith Mirkinson and Ninotchka Rosca, who have had extensive practice in human rights and women?s rights.

In a press statement, Ms. Enrile said that as women of Philippine ancestry, Filipina-Americans ?know full well the role that organizing for one?s collective interests plays in the pursuit of the optimal in working and living conditions.?

Citing how Filipino plantation workers and cannery workers in Hawaii, California and Alaska had to organize to break out of the ?serf-conditions? of their lives in the United States in the 1930s-1940s, Ms. Enrile asked how migrant Filipinas could be expected to struggle for optimal work and living conditions ?if their sisters are being murdered in the home country for doing exactly the same thing??

The team is expected to make a comprehensive report upon return to the United States and to assist GABRIELA Network in involving international agencies to ensure the end of the killing spree in the Philippines and the persecution of people?s organizations, especially women?s organizations.

?The number of women activists and women leaders murdered with impunity makes the Philippines the top ranking ?hotspot? as far as women?s activism is concerned,? said Ms. Enrile. ?Considering that the country depends for its survival on the export of women, this is truly unconscionable.?

July 28 summary report

May 26 press release

May 26 press statement

Letter to US Ambassador to the Philippines

Letter to Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo

Statement of All-Women HR Team. 31 May 2006