Struggle for our rights as migrants and refugees, end imperialist exploitation and oppression!
SPEECH at Second Conference on Libyan War Refugees in Hamburg - 8 February 2014
Dear fellow migrants, refugees, and friends from Caravan:
In behalf of our organization – Umangat-MIGRANTE in Rome, and the International Migrants Alliance-Europe chapter, (IMA-Europe) we express our warmest and heartfelt solidarity with your event today and with the just struggle of refugees spearheaded by the Libyan war refugees and the Caravan here in Germany.
I have been requested to share with you our experiences and standpoint on the issue of forced migration, the issue of refugees in Europe, the situation of Filipino and other migrants in Europe, and how we can resist the continuing imperialist-instigated wars mainly by the US and its NATO allies in Europe.
Lampedusa is not simply the horrendous event that happened recently in October where over 368 migrants were burned and drowned into the sea, but a painful icon of the plight of migrants, like me, who succumbed to a situation of no choice but to leave because of the imperialist aggression against our countries. I will first share with you the situation in the Philippines - why many Filipinos are being forced to migrate and then, the concrete situation in Italy particularly the exploitation of migrants and oppression of refugees.
Roots of forced migration in the Philippines
To be able to understand why almost three thousand Filipinos leave the Philippines everyday to seek work abroad, one has to understand that the Philippines suffers from foreign domination, landlessness, underdevelopment, and a corrupt elite political structure controlled by a handful of political clans.
By the end of 2013, an additional 1.7 million Filipinos have been forced to go abroad by sheer lack of opportunities, decent jobs and wages and livelihood in the country; that makes a total of over 12 million Filipinos working abroad. A record high of 7.3% unemployment rate, the highest among Asian countries. At least one-fourth of the country’s labor force has gone abroad to find work. One in every four Filipino workers was either jobless or underemployed.
In Europe, there are more than 800,000 Filipino migrants, mostly women. In Italy, Filipino migrants (127,243) make the sixth largest foreign population group, behind Romania , Albania , Morocco , China , and Ukraine. The first to the fifth largest groups respectively.
The Filipino people are being forced to migrate because of poverty and desperation - poverty borne out of the structural causes of underdevelopment which is the neo-liberal globalisation policies of advanced capitalist countries.
Liberalization, deregulation and privatization are imposed on the people. This caused de-industrialization, the collapse of local industries, causing massive unemployment. It promoted unhindered plunder of natural resources , destruction of the environment, sale of state assets at bargain price to profit-oriented transnational corporations, making basic services far beyond the reach of the majority. In the name of the US-led "war on terror" state repression is used against those advocating for people's development, defense of national patrimony and sovereignty and social transformation.
As progressive migrant Filipinos, we believe that to genuinely address the problem of forced migration, the government should decisively deviate from the past and present governments’ labor export policy and focus instead on developing the national economy by advancing local industries, agriculture and basic services. We fully support the call and struggle for national industrialization and genuine land reform as the ultimate solution to the problem of forced migration and labor export program. Only through taking steps in building the domestic economy and ensuring social welfare intervention can joblessness and forced migration be truly addressed.
Furthermore, wars, specifically imperialist-instigated wars, result in deaths, destruction, chaos, orphans and refugees. Imperialists instigate wars in a futile attempt to resolve their crises that the very system of capitalist greed, exploitation and oppression breeds. Imperialist wars destroy countries and its people in order to plunder a country's resources. In the case of the Middle East, of Iraq and Libya, the objectives is to appropriate the oil resources. The imperialist-formation that is the European Union, do not have any moral justification to violate the rights of migrants and refugees presently inside the EU. In fact, the EU should be made to account for its war crimes, crimes against humanity, against migrants, against refugees, against European citizens who themselves are victimized by the few elite and greedy ruling capitalist classes that have long imposed their will on the exploited and oppressed majority.
Organizing Filipino migrants in Italy
Confronting these issues - these root causes of migration - entails a lot of energy, patience, endurance, consistency and militancy in organizing and mobilizing our migrant compatriots. Aware of the present social fragmentation and disintegration where organizing and mobilization among our ranks is always a big challenge, we as Filipino migrant workers are fully RESOLVE that only through a united and consistent struggle will we be able to win our battles.
Umangat-Migrante Rome, a Filipino militant migrant organization and a founding member of the IMA Europe section, believes and upholds that the real solution to the problem of forced migration lies in addressing the root causes of the problem: massive poverty and imperialist development aggression. This will be realized after a continuous consciousness raising among Filipino migrant workers, conducting a critical study of society, launching organized action and mass campaigns on Philippine national and sectoral and migrant issues, organizing of Filipino migrants and forming alliances with organisations of the host people and migrants of other nationalities.
We have launched mass campaigns in Italy on issues that affect the rights and welfare of migrants and against anti-migrant and anti-people laws and repressive acts of the government. We have taken to various forms of struggle: protest rallies, marches, educational meetings, petition signi