Ms. Sharon Ruiz-Duremdes, general secretary of the National Council of Churches in the Philippines (NCCP)
PROMINENT CHURCH LEADER TO VISIT BAY AREA AND CHICAGO TO TALK ABOUT HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES IN THE PHILIPPINES
Ms. Sharon Ruiz-Duremdes, general secretary of the National Council of Churches in the Philippines (NCCP), will make a stopover in the San Francisco Bay Area on July 12, 2007, and in Chicago on July 20-22, 2007 to speak about and discuss the human rights abuses in the Philippines. With extra-judicial killings of religious and civic leaders that advocate for the rights of Filipinos on the rise, Ruiz-Duremdes will meet with ecumenical church leaders and members on the subject. As of this writing, KARAPATAN, a human rights monitoring agency in the Philippines, has accounted for 866 killings and 180 enforced disappearances.
Ruiz-Duremdes will be hosted at the South Hayward United Methodist Church on July 12th with a reception at 6:00 p.m. and program to begin at 7:00 p.m. A seventeen-member Fact Finding Team from the California Nevada Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church recently visited the Philippines in February 2007. On that trip, they met with Ruiz-Duremdes and were hosted by the NCCP. Members of the Fact Finding Team will be on hand to also share their experiences and express their continued support for the work of the NCCP in its attempt to curtail the devastating human rights violations.
In Chicago, Ruiz-Duremdes will be the honored guest in a dinner-reception at the Agape House in the University of Illinois-Chicago on Friday, July 20 at 6:00PM. This dinner-reception will be a fundraiser to assist families of abuse victims. She will be the main speaker at a community gathering on Saturday, July 21 at 10:00AM, at the Cosmopolitan United Church in Melrose Park.
A veteran ecumenist, Ruiz-Duremdes is the first woman and layperson to head the NCCP, a position she assumed in 2000. The NCCP is an ecumenical body made up of 10 non-Roman Catholic and Protestant denominations that has acquired a reputation of opening new paths for ministry for the churches particularly in the area of peace and justice advocacy. She is an outspoken critic of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's administration for inaction on complaints and appeals by human rights groups to stop the abuses.
She has led the NCCP to partner with Roman Catholic and Muslim human rights organizations in the struggle to stop human rights abuses in the Philippines. As a result of the partnership, Ruiz-Duremdes became part of a Philippine delegation that resourced the International Ecumenical Conference on Human Rights in the Philippines in Washington D.C. last March. The delegation briefed a select group of U.S. legislators and finally testified at a Senate sub-committee hearing presided by Sen. Barbara Boxer of California on the subject matter in March 2007. Just recently, the Senate Appropriations Committee has added legislation to monitor U.S. military aid to the Philippines and to insure that it does not
support the human rights abuses.
A partial list of sponsors for the San Francisco, CA event includes the Filipino American Ministries and the Asian American Ministry Caucus of The United Methodist Church – California-Nevada Annual Conference; PANA Institute; USA Philippines Advocate Network (USAPAN); United Church of Christ; Presbyterian Task Force on the Philippines; National Alliance on Filipino Concerns (NAFCON).
The Chicago event's partial list of sponsors and endorsements of Ruiz-Duremdes' visit includes units of the Illinois Conferences of the United Church of Christ and the United Methodist Church, the
Northern Illinois Methodist Federation for Social Action, the Presbytery of Chicago, the Agape House of UIC, Filipino Human Rights Coalition, Pintig Cultural Group, and the National Association of Filipino American United Methodists.
For details of the Chicago activities, call or write to Pong Javier: 312-573-8221 or 708-268-7003; abjavierjr@....
Please call or write to Rev. Michael Yoshii: 510-522-2688 or
bvumc@... for details of the San Francisco event.