PH Congressman Neri Colmenares visits Vancouver

PH Congressman Neri Colmenares visits Vancouver

Congressman Colmenares with Craig Keating (left), North Vancouver District Councilor and MLA Mable Elmore

VANCOUVER, BC.–Lawyers  Rights Watch Canada (LWRC), the Canada-Philippines Solidarity for Human Rights and the Vancouver-Kensington community office of MLA Mable Elmore  hosted a community reception for visiting Philippine member of Congress Neri Javier Colmenares last Oct 31.  

Rep. Neri Colmenares is a member of the Philippine Congress-House of Representatives, representing the Bayan Muna (Nation First) Partylist. Bayan Muna represents an alliance of progressive grassroots organizations of workers, peasants, women, youth, professionals, indigenous peoples and overseas migrant workers and has suffered the highest number of leaders and organizers who have been assassinated since 2001. Colmenares is also a human rights lawyer and current President of the National Union of People’s Lawyers (NUPL), a national association of human rights lawyers in the Philippines. 

Heather Neun, LRWC and husband Brad, Environmentalist, researcher-scientist with Neri Colmenares

After attending the 127th Meeting of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) in Quebec City, Rep. Colmenares had public meetings and engagements with various community groups in Ottawa, Montreal and Vancouver. Rep. Colmenares also met with Members of Parliament in their home ridings and offices: NDP MP Paul Dewar, who is also the Vice Chair of the Parliament’s Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development; NDP MP Thomas Mulcair, Leader of the Official Opposition; Liberal Party MP Bob Rae; Liberal MPs Irwin Cotler and Francis Scarpallegia; Conservative MP David Sweet; NDP MP Wayne Marston; and NDP MLAs Mable Elmore and Raj Chouhan in Vancouver. The meetings of Rep. Colmenares with Canadian members of Parliament followed up on the previous meetings that the Canadian MPs had with the Philippine human rights delegation in April 2012 and with the Philippine Parliamentarians Tour of Satur Ocampo, Luz Ilagan and Crispin Beltran in 2008. 

From left: Colmenares: Gail Davidson, Exec. Director, LRWC; Linnsie Clark, HEU lawyer; Marion Caussanel, French lawyer

Rep. Colmenares and Kairos, as witnesses, attended the meeting of the Subcommittee on International Human Rights of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development on Oct 30th.

In Vancouver, Rep Colmenares, who hails from Negros himself, was happy to meet with the Negrenses Association and Rod Belleza, also with the Richmond School Board. Migrante BC, Sanchez Mira Association, several NDP provincial candidates, trade union organizers, UBC law students and several lawyers, on the invitation of Gail Davidson, Executive Director of LRWC, came to meet Colmenares as well. An excellent speaker, Colmenares talked about the continuing human rights violations, issues of poverty and corruption, his role in the four impeachment complaints against former President Gloria Arroyo, the case of the human rights victims against the Marcoses, and Canadian mining in the Philippines and highlighted the importance of international solidarity. A former political detainee himself, Colmenares also shared his personal experiences under martial law as a young student activist in the mid-1970s, his involvement in students’ rights and welfare and human rights work. His political activism led to his arrest in 1978 and detention until 1979, and then again in 1982 until he was released in 1985.

Colmenares was pleased to meet Irwin Oostindie, executive director of W2, who had visited the Philippines as a young student activist. Radio interviews with Colmenares by Irwin Oostindie and Charles Boylan can be heard on Vancouver Co-op Radio archived past shows.

This is Colmenares’ second visit to Canada after more than two decades. From a student leader who went to various cities in Canada and the US,  Colmenares has returned, now as a lawyer and Congressman, to share that the struggle of the Filipino people for rights, justice, sovereignty still continues.

(PRESS RELEASE)