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Protest actions await GMA in New York

NEW YORK (Aug. 23) — In anticipation of the upcoming visit of crisis-ridden Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo on September 15-16 for the 2005 United Nations World Summit in Manhattan here, a number of Anti-Arroyo groups are now gearing up to stage coordinated protest actions.

The “Gotta-Go-Glo” tour is a joint effort led by BAYAN-USA and the local NYC for Gloria’s Ouster Coalition. It will commence upon Arroyo’s arrival in New York, a week before the UN visit.

According to organizers, the objective of the tour is to monitor Arroyo’s visit on a daily basis, wherein Rapid Action Teams, or RATS, will in turn follow and hound Arroyo at various locations.

“It befits Arroyo to have RATS follow her around the city wherever she goes. Rats, characteristically, smell and are attracted to what is rotten in our society. Arroyo has proven the rotten and heinous nature of her administration and now must heed to people’s call to for her to step down,” claims Berna Ellorin of BAYAN USA.

Ellorin also stressed the need for more concerned Filipinos and allies to join the RATS to “help fish out the garbage plaguing the Filipino people.” RAT planning meetings will be held in Manhattan.

Among the other protest events in NYC will be RAGE 2, or Rock Against Gloria, an all-Filipino rock concert on September 3, the second RAGE concert, the first held back in late 2000, and was notably titled Rock Against Erap.

Popular calls for Arroyo’s removal from office have escalated internationally since the first quarter of 2005. As impeachment complaints circulate in Congress, protest actions across the Philippines daily expose Arroyo’s acute downfall in ratings.

In addition to committed electoral fraud, impeachment complaints include a grave track record in rampant human rights violations over the course of her stay in office since 2001. As validated by the recent International Solidarity Mission this month, a coordinated fact-finding mission investigating human rights violations in several areas in the country, reports of atrocities such as abductions, extrajudicial killings, summary executions, and torture that have accumulated under Arroyo’s term.

Organizers from the Filipino youth organization ANAKBAYAN have joined the BAYAN USA calling for Gloria’s ouster, along with New York Committee for Human Rights in the Philippines, Philippine Forum, the International Action Center, and the New York Chapter of the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement. # via NORDIS

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