Defend teacher feance

DEFEND TEACHER FRANCE: ACT Secretary-General Raymond Basilio sponsored a resolution at the 10th World Congress of Education International in Buenos Aires, Argentina calling for the immediate dismissal of baseless and politically motivated charges against Teacher France and the rest of the Talaingod 13 for their brave rescue of Lumad teachers and students. The Education International promptly adopted the resolution.

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Colleagues, Congress, good afternoon!

I am Raymond Basilio, Secretary-General of the Alliance of Concerned Teachers from the Philippines and I am the mover of this motion. The motion seconder is Ms. Rosalie Fatiaki, Association of the University of the South Pacific Staff.

On 15 July 2024, a local court in southern Philippines unjustly convicted ACT Teachers Party-list Representative France Castro, former representative Satur Ocampo, and 2 ACT staff and 11 teachers and members of the indigenous people’s school on fabricated charges of other forms of child abuse. The trumped-up charges stem from the team’s conduct of the National Solidarity Mission (NSM) to respond to the escalating militarization against Lumad school and communities amid then Pres. Duterte’s Martial Law in Mindanao. On November 18, 2018, the NSM rescued lumad school children from the attacks of Alamara paramilitary group who threatened to burn down Lumad schools. For this, Teacher France, participants of the NSM, and teachers and administrator of indigenous people's school were unjustly arrested, detained for three days, and slapped with trumped-up charges.

The court’s unjust decision is but the latest in a string of attacks perpetrated by the state to persecute Teacher France, from the time of the Duterte administration and under the current Marcos regime. For consistently championing the interests of teachers, the education sector and the Filipino people, she has been a constant victim of red-tagging by Vice President Sara Duterte, top military officials, and their rabid media and social media machineries. For staunchly criticizing the ills in government and the system, she has been subjected to surveillance and harassment. For courageously exposing and fighting plunder and corruption, she has been publicly threatened by former president Rodrigo Duterte himself.

Because Teacher France has been outstandingly serving as the voice of teachers and other marginalized sectors, she has reaped the ire of crooks, plunderers and fascists in power. The attacks against her are not mere attacks on her person but are attacks on the sectors that she represents, and their interests that she upholds. These are attacks against the movement of the Filipino people who strive to change the rotten system that breeds exploitation and oppression.

Teacher France Castro is the current representative of the Act Teachers Party-List in the Lower House, now serving her third and final term. She has the distinction of being one of the few, if not the only, classroom te