Chacha is a Dance Towards Poverty for the Peasant Women - GWP Rep. Emmi De Jesus

As the peasants do their version of ‘Occupy Mendiola’ today, Gabriela Women’s Party Rep. Emmi De Jesus expressed alarm that rural women's lives will worsen if the move for Charter Change pushes through. “Ngayon pa lang ay matindi nang kagutuman at kahirapan ang nararanasan ng mga magbubukid, ano pang uri ng pagsasamantala ang daranasin nila kapag ibinuyangyang na sa mga dayuhang mamumuhunan ang pagmamay-ari sa mga lupa at industriya ng bansa?”  

“The rural women and their families are already massively displaced from their lands and livelihood by so-called development projects such as mining concessions and land conversion. As more investors continue to plunder and desecrate lands, they sow fear and terror to control the land and the peasants. These are mostly done with the help of government-supported militias and private armies. This results to massive human rights violations especially in places where the women and their families continue to struggle for the right to own the land they till,” De Jesus further explained.

“Gabriela Women’s Party is one with the peasant women in their fight against all forms of foreign-dominated plunder. Women who hold up half the Philippine skies must unite in preventing further foreign incursions into our resources that will make our children's future bleak and uncertain,” ended the Gabriela solon.