Linda vs Marie

Linda Clark is on the radio advertising the next week of her show on National Radio. Speaking about her Friday interview with Marie Hilao-Enriquez, she says "Marie is a human rights activist campagining for compensation from the ousetd Marcos government." That's not really the whole story.

Marie is touring Aotearoa over the next fortnight, speaking about "the Philippines as America's 'Second Front In The War On Terror' and the Impact on Human Rights." Marie's organisation, KARAPATAN, is not focussed on the Marcos regime, believing that although the leaders had changed, the system remained the same. Power is still wielded by elites in the Phillipines and human rights abuses have continued. The US lost their military bases in the Phillipines in 1991, five years after the ouster of their ally Marcos and one hundred years after invading, and are using the actions of the muslim separatist ("terrorist") movement as an excuse to get troops back in.

According to Moana Cole, of the Phillipine Solidarity Network of Aotearoa,

"A close scrutiny of the list of 34 "foreign terrorist organisations" designated as such by the US Secretary of State clearly show that only a few (ironically, those created or mentored by the US) could really be considered as terrorist organisations. The majority are either humanitarian organisations or national liberation movements espousing causes and programmes opposed to US intervention and economic domination." (source article)

Marie is currently involved in peace talks with the Muslim separatists.

I'm not sure if Linda Clark intends to limit the interview to one of Marie's ongoing projects (one which isn't even the reason for her visit to Aotearoa, but which does have the advanatge of allowing Linda to again mention Imelda Marcos' shoe collection). I suspect that she won't even know the questions to ask to find out about the Phillipines' history of conquest and occuption in which the Marcos' abuses are rooted. Go to Marie's talk on Tuesday, and listen to the interview on Friday, and hopefully that'll give a balanced look at things.