WE are the out, loud and proud members of Progay-Philippines declaring without fear of contradiction our support to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. However, we are saddened to say that this document as a whole has been disregarded at every turn by the exploiting classes and entities which have perpetrated and continue to commit gross violations against peoples, minorities and nations.

We maintain that imperialist globalization remains the root origin that causes the systematic destruction of the rights of human beings to a decent existence, while at the same time, its patron and client states, networks of private corporations, and radical-sounding supporters continue using empty commemorations to fool the public into believing that political and civil rights are merely freedoms to satisfy lusts for consumer goods and services that they sell on the market.

We who are sexual minorities in the country of our birth live in a time when modern imperialism is intensifying its attack on human rights on both legal and real life aspects. As the crisis of global monopoly capitalism is destroying Third World economies, the conservative and ultra-rightist ideologues are displacing or absorbing their neo-liberal rivals outlaw the tiny gains of women, racial minorities, labor and even gays and lesbians for already negligible state protection. The historical roots of this rotten legal system are not the recent phenomena of global integration but goes back to the colonial period when imperialist globalization was at its early stages.

Exactly fifty years before the United Nations drafted the UDHR, the United States invaded the Philippines, murdered one-fifth of our population and reoriented the agricultural economy from servicing Spain to servicing US industries. Later on and with Japan, it enforced on us unjust economic arrangements, military treaties and puppet governments that have caused the wholesale destruction of the people's economic, social and cultural rights contained in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ECOSOC).

As a result, the Filipino masses are deprived of the fruits of their labor and a progressive industrialized economy. Only the rights of the landlords to grab lands and the rights of multinational corporations to rape our resources were respected by the courts of law.

In 1972, the American state supported Marcos in destroying the formal civil and political rights of all citizens, causing the deaths, disappearances, torture, rape and imprisonment of thousands of peasants, workers, women and others. In 1986, again the American state maneuvered to replace the fascist dictatorship with the illusion of Corazon Aquino restoring the largely formal rights that Marcos took away.

Yet, her regime and that of her protegé Gen. Fidel Ramos unleashed total war that in twelve years killed, maimed, jailed and evicted even more people than Marcos ever did in twenty years.

Imperialism continued to implement its anti-people economic sabotage behind the facade of low intensity democracy. The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund implemented the structural adjustment programs (SAPs) under Marcos and Aquino, which destroyed the right of the people to basic public services such as health and education.

Ramos and his local experts on civil society rode on the darling image of pushing for "reforms." The result is a record bounty of laws, palace orders and bills on mining, fishing, agriculture and ancestral domain which all dissolved protection of our natural resources and enhanced the rights of foreign capitalists to exploit our patrimony.

The US-Ramos regime forced the Philippines to open itself to the unjust General Agreements on Tariffs and Trade, APEC, World Trade Organization and the ASEAN Free Trade Area. The stampede of speculative investments into the country have caused massive landgrabbing, destruction of forests and mineral wealth, and at the end of the Ramos term, a chronic financial crisis.

Joseph Estrada won the presidency on the platform of bias for the poor and a promise to wipe out crime. But now we see that the US-Estrada regime is instead criminalizing the poor people's struggle to defend the little remains of our national heritage and human rights.

Indeed, the basic rights of the people to defend their livelihood are fast being declared illegal or against public interests, in a scary scenario where ironically the political supporters of the dead dictator are being decriminalized and restored to political and economic power. During the first six months of his term, militarization has intensified in the countrysides to scare peasants into abandoning their struggle for land. Estrada favors a strike ban against workers who are defending their jobs and shrinking salaries.

Estrada's idea of human rights advocacy is reserved only for personal cronies such as Malaysia's Anwar Ibrahim, showbiz stars or personal victims of heinous crimes, and stops where his naked contempt for the people's community rights begins. This double standard has given the go signal for his supporters to openly campaign for reactionary laws, policies and programs that would intrude into our very personal and collective lives. Malacañang is plotting to revive the National ID system, the anti-terrorist bill and proposed abolition of bank secrecy, giving the government high-technology powers of martial law without the need to declare it formally.

Part of this invasive atmosphere is the proposal before Congress of bills filed by Senate President Marcelo Fernan and Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago that would formalize state and private violence against gays, lesbians, transexuals and other sexual minorities. SB 894, 897 and 898 would mobilize the full power of the state to investigate the gender of people applying for civil marriages.

We note that Estrada signed the Comprehensive Agreement on the Respect for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law (CARHRIHL) with the National Democratic Front, a document which among other things upholds the rights of gays and lesbians to enter a marital union and found a family and prevents workplace discrimination based on gender and sexual preference.

In combination with Article 16 of the UDHR (which states that "men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family"), the CARHRIHL should compel Congress to withdraw the Fernan-Santiago bills.

But Estrada has chosen to show his true fascist colors. Right after signing the CARHRIHL, the government refused to honor the agreement and even launched fresh attacks against the masses, and along with this, Congress will likely disregard the CARHRIHL.

Once Congress totally outlaws gay men, lesbians and transexuals from rights to marriage, the state will be encouraged even more to pass more anti-gay measures that would increase official homophobia, as sodomy laws and laws that discriminate against people living with HIV/AIDS. As we mentioned earlier, the crisis of monopoly capitalism first fulfils its destructive effects on the Third World, in addition to economic crisis, the increase in state violence, religious fundamentalist ideologies and feudal values, which choose as its first victims women and minorities such as migrants, indigenous peoples and gays. It is not far-fetched to picture huge concentration camps being built to house prisoners who are arrested for organizing labor strikes, leading protests against industrial pollution - - or for just being a hungry migrant who repeatedly steals bread, a drug- addicted sex worker with children or a transexual with HIV.

The above examples show how much Estrada shares with Gen. Ramos the urge to dissolve the people's rights piecemeal. The two also lust for the wholesale annihilation of not only all rights but the very material basis of the people's existence with their pet projects - Charter Change and the Visiting Forces Agreement.

Estrada will craft a new Constitution that will formalize all our immoral links to APEC, GATT-WTO and the IMF-World Bank (and possibly the Multilateral Agreements on Investment or MAI in 1999) and give away our resources to the global market. The resulting economic invasion will need the military protection of the VFA's joint troop deployment.

Clearly, the present situation militates against any symbolic celebration of the human rights record of the government or its imperialist patrons, except to remind that these rights are meaningless for 70% of the multitudes of Filipinos who are driven away by the millions from their farmlands and factories to give way to the lusts of the leisure elite.

What we citizens can do is to continue struggling to create the conditions where human rights are respected and fulfilled in the full sense of the word. This compels us to confront and help defeat the crisis of the world capitalist order once and for all to liberate humankind.

Progay believes that gay rights and human rights are indivisible and must take into account the wholeness of persons and communities whether they are gay, women, children or ethnic minorities.

We call for an end to discrimination of one's sexual orientation. We call for a halt on discrimination on gay job-seekers and full economic guarantees of protection for self-employed gay workers like entertainers and beauticians in parlors and salons.

We will fight for the safety and protection of gay overseas contract workers (OCWs) who are exploited by recruiters and gay-unfriendly cultures of other countries. We demand their repatriation and the creation of appropriate jobs back home without prejudice.

We seek liberation of our culture from institutionalized segregation that results to discrimination, heckling, bashing, violence, and homophobia.

We push for the total eradication of poverty, unemployment and economic crisis besetting our ranks and the whole Filipino people. Towards this, we will work to bring about genuine land reform, national industrialization and protection of our domestic markets.

We seek state protection for gay couples and extension to them of the same rights enjoyed by opposite-sex couples.

We join our sisters in the women's movement in struggling to end patriarchy for we ourselves, like them who are doubly exploited, are its victims.

Progay goes beyond believing that human rights can be created in a vacuum just by discussing them separate from the militant mass movement for national liberation. To the tradition of human rights advocacy worldwide, we boldly contribute "gay rights and human rights in action." To this end, we will help campaign for the Estrada government and the National Democratic Front to implement in its totality the CARHRIHL.

That is why we join the oppressed workers and peasants in their struggle for national freedom and democracy and an end to plunder of the nation's patrimony and natural wealth by foreign exploiters. We will support campaigns to oppose the following: the Visiting Forces Agreement, charter change, GATT-WTO, MAI, APEC, AFTA, national ID system, the Retail Trade Liberalization Bill.

We call on all gays, bisexuals, lesbians and heterosexuals, to work together and struggle collectively for a better society and world that is equal just, free, & democratic for all of us to live in.

In the short term, let us say a big no to the criminalization of our democratic struggle for human rights. We fight the Estrada government's drive to convert our democratic rights to protest into common crimes. We say no to his anti-poor and anti-people economic and political programs.

Appendix: Pertinent provisions of the UDHR. For complete e-mail copies of United Nations documents, e-mail Progay at oca69@hotmail.com.

Article 21. Everyone has the right of equal access to public service in his country.

Article 22. Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization, through national effort and international co-operation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each State, of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality.

Article 25. Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.

Article 28. Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized.

Progay-Philippines will be holding a forum and video showing on gay rights and human rights with the theme "May K nga ba ang Gay?" in observance of the International Human Rights Day for the next day, December 10. Co-sponsoring the event are the United Church of Christ in the Philippines (UCCP) Human Rights Desk and the KARAPATAN Human Rights Alliance.