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Keywords: Mindanao

  • ENVIRONMENT

    Not owning but belonging to the land

    • Fatima Measham
    • 19 July 2018
    7 Comments

    There are severe limitations in the western ways we tend to think about land. Land is conceived in terms of ownership and property — ideas that are implicated not just in colonial histories, but in extractive industries and concentrations of wealth. In this model, land is a fulcrum of power.

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  • RELIGION

    Philippines needs pro-social justice church

    • Erin Cook
    • 17 January 2018
    4 Comments

    Though public health activists in the Philippines point to the church's influence in keeping sex education out of schools and contraceptive sales low as a major factor in the country's rising HIV rate, when it comes to taking on Duterte the church is the country's strongest progressive force. But that may be set to change.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Philippines coming full, sordid circle

    • Fatima Measham
    • 25 May 2017
    3 Comments

    None of what continues to unravel in the Philippines is a shock. In August last year, barely more than a month from inauguration, Duterte mentioned the prospect of martial law in relation to his drug war. Duterte is the sixth president since the 1986 People Power revolution that overthrew Marcos. He is a close associate of the dictator's children. Martial law was long in play before the incidents in Marawi this week, and is in character for an ex-mayor with alleged links to 'death squads'.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Count the human cost of Australia's overseas mining interests

    • Fatima Measham
    • 07 March 2016
    3 Comments

    In 2012, a pregnant woman and two of her children were killed in their own home in Tampakan, on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao. Tampakan is the site of a new mine with Australian interests. The woman was the wife of a B'laan tribal leader agitating against the mine. Over recent years indigenous peoples of Mindanao been harassed, displaced and killed by militias, some allegedly with the imprimatur of the Philippine army. Much of this has passed without notice in Australia.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The white male gaze that drives child sex tourism

    • Fatima Measham
    • 27 July 2015
    14 Comments

    February's arrest of Australian man Peter Scully in the Philippines has focused concern on the sexual exploitation of Filipino women and children by foreigners. As long as they feel disempowered, when their sense of worth is measured by implicit trust and hope in white saviours and the dollar, they will continue to be preyed upon.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    My personal climate change bind

    • Fatima Measham
    • 26 May 2015
    16 Comments

    Most people think that the effects of climate change as dire but far off. I don't have that comfort. My seafarer father plays a role in generating wealth for miners who then use it as a means to influence politicians - coal, industrial salt, iron ore. I am deeply aware that my government is committed to doing as little as possible to address climate change and its lack of a coherent, internationalist policy in Australia costs countries that are climate change-vulnerable, including where my family lives back in the Philippines.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Best of 2013: My Philippines typhoon fury

    • Fatima Measham
    • 17 January 2014
    1 Comment

    I may have gotten extremely sweary on social media. Part of it was due to gut-deep fear for people to whom I am personally connected, but also generally for a country that runs in my veins. The other part of it was fury that the growing reality of extreme weather events is still being characterised as natural by climate change sceptics who have the luxury of speculating and refuting links outright.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    My Philippines typhoon fury

    • Fatima Measham
    • 12 November 2013
    23 Comments

    I may have gotten extremely sweary on social media. Part of it was due to gut-deep fear for people to whom I am personally connected, but also generally for a country that runs in my veins. The other part of it was fury that the growing reality of extreme weather events is still being characterised as natural by climate change sceptics who have the luxury of speculating and refuting links outright.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Targeting aid workers

    • Duncan MacLaren
    • 03 April 2012

    Australian aid worker David Savage was severely injured by a suicide bomber in Afghanistan. The Taliban tried to kill him in revenge for the shooting of 17 unarmed Afghan civilians by a deranged American soldier. In more innocent times aid workers were regarded as angels by all sides.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    Witnessing Washi's wrath and aftermath

    • Fatima Measham
    • 19 December 2011

    As we drove downtown, we saw people huddling on street corners, covered in mud and looking for shelter. Water shortages and power cuts further disrupted this city of half a million. Mortuaries could not even wash the mud off dead children so they could be quickly identified by parents.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Precarious lives: Involuntary displacement of people in Asia Pacific today

    • Mark Raper
    • 18 January 2010

    Significant agreement was achieved in Copenhagen on the present and future forcible displacement of people because of climate change and environmental degradation. Can global cooperation for the protection of vulnerable displaced persons be renewed to meet new circumstances?

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