Manila Standard Today House Reporter got us wrong on ongoing Malaysian crackdown

We would like to correct the erroneous news item titled "Some Pinoys were caned - Migrante" that came out in the March 16, 2005 issue of the Manila Standard Today by your reporter Christine F. Herrera.

What Ms. Herrera attributed to MIGRANTE International Acting Chairperson and MIGRANTE Sectoral Party Chairwoman Connie Bragas-Regalado during a hearing of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs chaired by Cebu Rep. Antonio Cuenco is not at all true.

The resource person who gave the statement that "Some of the 80,000 undocumented Filipinos caught during the Malaysian crackdown last month were caned an average of six times before they were deported was not MIGRANTE but the Center for Migrants Advocacy represented by Ellene Sana.

What Ms. Bragas-Regalado presented was the previous Malaysian crackdown in 2002 including data on the current crackdown that started on March 1, 2005.

Estimates of the Philippine government and various non-government organizations in the region place the overseas Filipino populace in Malaysia at 712,104 workers. As of December 2004, only 213,000 are considered by the Malaysian government to be legally employed, while the rest are undocumented workers (499,104).

Ms. Herrera also did not mention the most important thing that the House Committee on Foreign Affairs in taking credence to the MIGRANTE presentation of the previous Malaysian crackdown: the need for an independent Congressional on-site fact finding mission to Sabah, Malaysia to ascertain the conditions of our undocumented compatriots, including 10,000 stateless children of Filipino parentage, who are targets of the crackdown.

It is also this proposed fact-finding mission that will be able to independently produce the names of those Filipinos who were caned, abused and fined by Malaysian authorities in both the previous and current crackdowns, which Rep. Cuenco has demanded from MIGRANTE.

We hope that this sets the record straight. Thank you very much. #