PIMENTEL ASKS SENATE TO LOOK INTO REASONS FOR BARRING IRISH MISSIONARY PRIEST FROM ENTERING RP

Minority Leader Aquilino Nene Q. Pimentel, Jr. (PDP-Laban) today said he will seek a Senate inquiry into the circumstances that prompted the government to bar an Irish missionary, Fr. Frank Nally, from entering the Philippines.

Fr. Nally, head of the Solidarity Desk of the Columban Fathers in the United Kingdom, was deported Jan. 5 from the Philippines hours after arriving at the Ninoy Aquno International Airport. But immigration authorities who sent him away failed to give any explanation for their action.

Nally was part of a British-funded fact-finding mission that looked into extrajudicial killings and harmful mining activities in Mindanao in July, 2006.

The government has the obligation to explain why it arbitrarily deported Nally, who was not a terrorist but a Catholic priest concerned with the welfare of Filipinos. Why are they using authoritarian methods to bar these people form entering the country? he said.

Upon arriving at NAIA on Jan. 4, Fr. Nally was held at the airport security office overnight and interrogated by immigration officials. His passport was confiscated and he was not allowed to use his cellphone to call people who could help him out.

Early the next day, he was put on a plane bound for Hong Kong.

Pimentel said that Fr. Nally, upon arriving in Hong Kong, promptly called him up to recount his ordeal at the hands of the immigration authorities. They also communicated through e-mail.

He said Fr. Nally has been a friend since his missionary days in Mindanao.

I know Fr. Nally very well. He is not a communist. He is not a terrorist. His only concern is his former parishioners in Midsalip, Zamboanga del Sur who have been oppressed by government policies in their communities and suffering from the harmful effects of extensive mining activities. That is the biggest problem there, he said.

The lone senator from Mindanao said the Subanen tribesmen of Midsayap have long been complaining about the invasion of their ancestral lands by the big-time mining and logging companies without due consultation with them as required by law. He said even the burial sites of their relatives and ancestors have been destroyed and desecrated by indiscriminate mining.

Pimentel described the apparent blacklisting of Fr. Nally as unjustified and puzzling because he had been going in and out of the country before the ugly NAIA incident happened.

Noting that Fr. Nally came a week before the holding of the 12th leaders of summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in Cebu, Pimentel said it was possible the Irish priest had been suspected by security authorities to be among the foreign activists who would participate in the series of protest rallies during the summit.

He said that when the fact-finding mission went to the country last July, Fr. Nally was with Member of the British Parliament Clare Short, who once served as secretary of state for international development under the Cabinet of Prime Minister Tony Blair.

According to Pimentel, Fr. Nally went to the country in the first week of January to coordinate the release of the fact-finding missions report on their visit to tribal lands in Mindanao and on the impact of operations of foreign mining firms on the countrys environment and communities.

The report was simultaneously presented in London and Manila Jan. 25.

Pimentel said it was highly possible that the government was displeased that the report of the fact-finding mission is largely critical of the policies of the administration towards the indigenous peoples.

Pimentel said the government must have also been angered when Fr. Nally sent letters to Prime Minister Blair appraising him about alarming incidence of extra-judicial killings in the country under the Arroyo administration.