Essays: The Village Voice

Here is the front page of the laboratory newsletter published with the articles of my students during the MindaNews 1st GSIS Summer Youth Training Workshop on news writing from May 9-19, 2006.

I had a good time with my five students in the workshop. They were around the ages 10 -13. It was like a campo out with Glenn Paul, 13; Jo, 10; Raffy, 10; Joy, 10, and Senen, 12.

We covered basic news writing topics, like definition of news, purpose of news, news elements, news structure and news sense. We studied the contents of locals news papers and identified the “characteristics” of a news article that distinguishes it from other articles.

We focused on angling for news topics or news sense and also on techniques in writing news. I introduced to them the inverted pyramid as the illustration of how we use details in writing the story. We discussed about using the Wh + 1 H questions as a data gathering tool. We also touched on the importance of context, character and consequences.

We also discussed about the need for accuracy, truth and relevance so that news would be useful to its readers. We touched on some tips in interviewing and note-taking, which are important data-gathering skills. Also we discussed the importance of understanding the subject matter even before writing about it. Also, the vital news consideration for balance and fairness.

We did some field work and went to the public market, church and walked along the streets of the subdivision to observe what subjects around the area are news worthy. The topics in The Village Voice were taken from that “news walk”. Some of them went “out” for the first time.

The students were focused on learning even if sometimes the subject bordered on complexities and sometimes long lectures! They also challenged me. Before going out to interview our major source of information, the president of the subdivision’s homeowners association, we did a lot of simulation activities on interviewing, farming questions and note-taking.

They also had several trial articles.

The best part of it was the story-telling. The kids told stories of their best summers and also their exciting activities this summer. We also went out to take some “inato” snacks in the neighborhood on my birthday and also during our field work.

I could not speak for them if they learned a lot this summer, but their smiles and their casual speak showed that at least we had a good time learning from each other and had fun going together in a unique summer experience, right from our peaceful village in Davao City.

I’m sure of one thing: I learned a lot from the experience with them. I think they will become good leaders someday, and hopefully, some of them will become future journalists too!

Reflections: Learning from people in the Thai – Burma border

In October 2005, I spent around a month of fellowship with Shan people from Burma exiled in the northern Thailand city of Chiang Mai (CM). It was a month of learning and realizations. A trip to a South East Asian country gave me an exposure to international issues such as on Burma.

My role would be to help Saengjuent, an intern from the CM-based Shan Herald Agency for News (SHAN) to apply or at least help process the things he learned from MindaNews when he went to Davao City in August 2005. The SHAN director, Khuen Sai, (middle, 2nd photo) asked me to help him train the younger members of their news agency on news writing.

I had four students in the workshop each of them played different roles in the agency. There is Arn Tai (“Ahn Tie”), the most senior who writes news in Thai language. There’s Harn Mueng (“Hahn Moong”) the translator to English from Shan language. Also, we had the guy who writes Shan language news, Noom Korn (“Noom Kohn”) and the agency’s internet guy “Muengjuent”.

They were a bunch of young and telented Shan news workers, very much eager to learn.

If we have no classes and meetings, they would encourage me to go out of town and explore the countryside. I spent time visiting areas where SHAN have contacts with communities.

They also brought me to tourist attractions in CM, like the Doi Suthep (as shown in the photos). That’s a mountain resort ran by the Kingdom of Thailand. The Thai King spends his summer time there.

Thailand and Burma (Myanmar) are neighbors. I heard they have a love-hate relationship through centuries. Now, Burma is under a military regime. The Thai government is using moderate diplomacy towards the military junta: they have close economic ties but from time to time Thailand joins the international community in pressing Burma for democracy.

As a result of internal hostilities between Burma and several rebel groups from ethnic states of Myanmar, hundreds of thousands of refugees fled the country and find their way along the Thai-Burma border through the years. The border is closed to passage in most points, but still a big number of refugees cross, largely in Northern Thailand via undisclosed routes.

The Thai government has designated “refugee camps” in selected areas. However, they are not refugee camps, in toto based on international standards—according to groups helping refugees.

According to some sources in the camps, the refugees from Burma’s states are considered by the Thai government as economic migrants, not refugees. Apparently, they lack support for livelihood inside small camps and have to look for informal jobs in proximate Thai towns along the border without identity.

I talked to many of these “migrants” in the camps I visited. I visited three but allowed entry only to two: in an area near Piang Luang and in an area north of Fang. They told me stories of violence, persecution, rape, extreme poverty and “culture of fear” in their homelands under the strong hands of the military.

I would have wanted to enter the third camp, near Mae Hong Son, which is a tourist city where Kareni (from Burma) women are shown to tourists like a “human zoo.” If you could remember photos of women with very long necks clad with some kind of a neck apparel, that’s it.

I did not enter that “tourist spot”. I agreed with my Filipina colleague in the internship program, I don’t want to add to their “commercialization” even if I know that they have consented the attention.

Back to the third camp. I could not enter because journalists were barred from entering these camps. Our guide, Si Moon, who works with a Shan NGO in the area, brought us to a quasi-camp, just beside the no-journalist refugee camp.

I was told that it would be dangerous for journalists to come in because the Thai authorities would “make it difficult for you”. I have insisted on a more logical explanation, but shut my mouth when my hosts showed some reluctance. I did not insist at all. What are they hiding there?

Well, at least we entered the “quasi-camp”. It is called so for a number of reasons. I could remember perhaps two: one, although I’m not very sure about it this time — that’s where candidates for political asylum live; and two, that’s where the disabled were taken cared of.

In that camp, I met and heard the sad but brave stories of the ex-soldiers in the first photo. Oo Reh (right) and Saw Teru (left) both 35 when I met them on 18 October 2005 along the Thai-Burma border near Mae Hong Son, (eight hours drive from Chiang Mai). Chiang Mai is almost two hours away by plane north of Bangkok.

Both of them are victims of landmines planted by the Burmese military and also by their own army. Oo lost his arms and one eye. Saw lost his sight. They both admitted ignorance about landmines when their commanders ordered them to clear their way of the mines.

In the Burmese war zones, military leaders, according to the two victims, use forced labor to clear areas from landmines. Many innocent people died because of these ‘illegal’ war weapon.

As we spoke, I hesitated to continue interviewing them because our presence and our questions seemed to have opened wounds that were about to heal from their tragic past. Oo expressed deep sadness of missing his family across the border. Saw said he did not know if his parents are still alive in Daw Tau Ka a village across Mae Hong Son, where landmine exploded and injured him.

But Saw also corrected us. He said their wounds won’t heal anymore. “If you see us in pain, there is not much we can do to take away that experience from us”. He said he also could not help from being “sad” about his ordeal. Instead, he appealed for journalists to help them help others. “There should be no more additional victims of landmines,” he said.

“Please write about us. Please tell them to remove all the mines around the world,” he said. “You do not know how painful it is. It is not like a bullet that could kill you in an instant. This one we bring all our lives. It has to stop!” (Oo and Saw spoke in Kareni and Burmese, while Si Moon translated it for us.)

It was indeed a depressing moment. I know the situation has not improved across the border. Both of them and tens or perhaps hundred of thousands more had been displaced from their homes because of hostilities and continuing tension between military forces of the Burmese junta and the rebel groups.

But I know I was there for a reason. I remembered both Oo Reh and Saw Teru when I came face to face with Myanmar’s tourism minister who told the press during the ASEAN Tourism Forum in Davao City in January 2006 that there is peace in Myanmar and that people there are happy.

Both victims, like the good soldiers that they said they are, told us also about the things that make them happy. Saw listens to music while Oo finds time interacting with the other residents in the camp. Both are taken cared by a small foundation helping victims of landmines across the border.

It was indeed a learning experience for me. It made me resolve to become a journalist who works for peace and to give voice to those who find themselves ignored. I saw and felt no difference between these people and those I met back in Mindanao who had been continuously plaged with evacuation, hostilities and poverty too. All of these are problems of human insecurity, prevalent everywhere.

When my Shan friends gave me a unique send-off dinner, where we squatted around spicy and exotic Shan and Thai food, in Chiang Mai on 21 October 2005; I felt the camaraderie among neighbors refreshed in my mind. I might have entered a “collective” that is different from mine because of cultural, historical, racial, economic and other divides; still I think we just belong to one neighborhood in Asia. I still think there are more similarities than differences.

Asians are divided in many respects, but are common in many things too. That trip made me see further, beyond my constructs of myself and the world. It opened my eyes to an interconnected world where there are local manifestation of global problems. And perhaps, local solutions too that have bearing across borders.

(The internship program was sponsored by the South East Asia Press Alliance or SEAPA based in Bangkok, Thailand)

Updates: On dividing a province

Every province in the island of Mindanao had been divided geo-politically, except for Bukidnon. This land-locked province with a population of around 1.1 million from two cities and 20 municipalities, originally was a sub-province of Agusan, then Misamis. It officially became the Province of Bukidnon in 1917.

Since the 1950s to the creation of the Province of Compostela Valley in 1998, provinces around Mindanao had been sub-divided for a number of reasons. One reason, of course, is increase in population. Another, is governance, including issues of management and proximity among other things.

Bukidnon remains undivided. But this is challenged by House Bill No. 4834 filed by Bukidnon 3rd district Rep. Juan Miguel Zubiri, son of Bukidnon governor Jose Ma. R. Zubiri, Jr. But Bukidnon 1st district Rep. Nereus Acosta and his group has blocked the move.

Heared at the House in 2005 and by a Senate committee chaired by Sen. Alfredo Lim in April this year, the move was reportedly returned to the Province of Bukidnon for further consultation.

There are serious political debates and movements around Bukidnon about this proposal. Already, Don Carlos, a town in the southern part of the province was reportedly chosen via a plebiscite to be the new capital of the proposed Bukidnon del Sur province.

But the proponents were accused to have railroaded the process of consultation in favor of political preservation. However, accordingly, the same could also be said against the proposal’s opponents.

As of now, the discussions are on-going, although Rep. Acosta told this blogger in April that the Senate move to return the proposal for further consultation was viewed as a blow.

As of blog time, no updates were obtained from the camp of Rep. Zubiri.

Information spread about this concern. As they come and go, the need for updates is underlined. Please check here for an initial read on the matter. The information is taken from the official Journal of the House of Representatives. The discussion between representatives Acosta and Zubiri at a House plenary is at the middle part of the material.

Updates from the minutes of the April Senate hearing would be uploaded soon. (Photos by Bobby Timonera: Mt. Kitanglad and Kaamulan Festival) Post your comments, suggestions and questions.

Updates: MindaNews’ peoples’ journalism

MindaNews has endeavored to engage with communities around Mindanao on Journalism. As part of the news organization’s missions/vision, it aspires to help empower peoples and communities not only through reporting about them more accurately, but also to help them become more articulate about the issues in their communities, help empower them to megaphone these issues to the public and mainstream it to a wider audience or audiences.

In that way, the voices of peoples and communities are more heard.

MindaNews has initiated the Grassroots Journalism Training to be a realization of this ideal. It was conceived together with the MindaNews cooperative. It hopes to work for a Mindanao that is reported by Mindanawons altogether. This is Our Mindanao. A voice that calls for unity and ownership. A call for empowerment. This is journalism of the people, by the people and for the people.

[This project is conducted by a team of MindaNews trainers led by Carolyn O. Arguillas (director), Penelope C. Sanz (on basic documentation), Walter I. Balane (on basic reporting)and Skippy R. Lumawag (on basic photography)].

Opinion: On the President’s formula on classroom ratio

The President’s play with numbers on the shortage of classrooms could just be a continuing manifestation of how she might have manipulated her victory in 2004. It’s a matter of attitude.

Plainly, it is possible that this president has shown consistency of actions. This is of course a show of true colors.

Indeed, there are “Two Philippines” in this administration. One is her “fantasy” or “enchanted kingdom” and the other, a helpless or tolerant society that continues to suffer the spell of the make-believe curse.

I feel that she lost credibility. Gloriaspeak has become synonymous to fudging — always doubted and ridiculed.

I challenge the President to enrol her grandchildren or relatives in those classrooms where the ratio is 100: 1. Why don’t she try enrolling the children in the family on half-day classes only?

Instead of inventing modes to manipulate governance, this administration should partner with the people in a sincere and honest to goodness public service. Partnerships with groups that already do substantial work on education could be a big help.

If Gawad Kalinga was able to do it for housing, for sure, another collaborative effort could do it for education, at least for schoolbuildings.

The President, in her sheer and untamed release of temper is isolating herself from the people who expects her to deliver in her constitutional duty as chief executive of the country.

Besides, this mother and former teacher should show children and the youth some education, I mean some manners worth emulating from a leader who should have set as an example or who should have led by it. (Photo: 14 of the 27 participants to the MindaNews’ 1st Summer Youth Training Workshops in GSIS Heights Subdivision, Matina, Davao City on May 9-19, 2006. Photo by Waltzib)