Her destiny is g.r.e.a.t

His mother suffered a great deal in life only to end up crippled on a bed. This made him loose faith in his creator, the only thing that mattered to him was taken away from him. “How can there be a god so cruel?”. And so he says, “ I wish that her misery would just end”. He believed that her destiny was one filled with misery.

There is this special gift we have in us, the power to change the world. We human beings are great, we have magic in us that can touch the hearts of others. Just because someone is in a comma, or unconscious on their death bed- doesn’t mean that they are not contributing to the world. Everyone has a purpose here on earth, and the earthly sufferings might just be worth the joy and change that they bring through the process.

I’ve seen these bed ridden matured people lying on their beds- completely depend on their caretakers. Some of them stare straight into their children’s eyes, without recognizing their own flesh and blood. Tubes running through their mouths, rashes on their skin… “Why my mother he asks”.

As a stranger looking from a window, I see the people that live around her. I see the caretakers that care to all of her needs. I see the smile on their face, the love in their touch and the compassion that they have in them.

May it be that the purpose of her suffering is to change the lives of her caretakers?? May it be that the reason for her to be lying on that bed is to make her son a stronger person? To make bystanders think of their own mother???

No life on this earth is useless. People make changes, wherever they are. A smile on a face may make a world of a difference in a stranger’s life. The journey we take is one to be celebrated for all the joy, not to be mourned for all the sorrows.

I believe that our destiny changes every second we live, because human beings are ever evolving. We are called beings- because we are being mad each moment. We are ever evolving, and our destiny changes along with our thought; we are great- we shall be what we wish to be.
Our destiny is not made by chance, or some luminous man with a scripture. It is a matter of our choices in life. We can’t just wait for our destiny to happen, we live our destiny. It does not exist a second beyond NOW.

Who is Mautik Hani?

Do we care?

This is who she is not:
She is not a 'statistic.'
She is not an ‘isolated incident’.

Mautik Hani was a woman.

She was a daughter; she was someone’s friend.
Somebody called her ‘my neighbour’; another called her ‘my sister’.

Mautik Hani had dreams to chase;
questions to ask; memories to share.

There were things that made her sad;
and there were things that made her laugh.

She had feelings; she had ideas; and she had gifts to share
Her body could be flooded with pain, or pierced with joy.
She carried burdens, and somewhere, she bore hope.

Mautik Hani was a person.
No different from you,
No different from me.

We asked her in.
And then we let her die.
~
Bruised. Beaten. Her bones exposed.
The smell of rotting flesh permeated the air.
Bound. Gagged. Unconscious.
Her body weary; attacked; abused.
She slipped away from consciousness.
As did we.
~
In the past two years, Tenaganita has handled 265 cases of domestic workers who’ve been beaten, raped, deprived of wages, harassed, violated, kept in isolation, tortured and abused. While we’ve been able to get some compensation for cases of unpaid wages, not a single case of violence or abuse has gone to court or been brought to justice.

Police investigations are sluggish, court systems inaccessible, and processes drag on endlessly. Often, the victims drop the cases out of weariness, and go home as the final tethers of hope snap. Some wait persistently, stuck in the hole of trauma, each passing day taking away with it possibilities of justice.

We see the numbers grow, we watch the statistics swell, and we close our eyes as the perpetrators walk away.

The stories of these women are horrific;

Sodomised.

Scalded.

Lacerations on the vagina.

Forced to eat cockroaches.

Mouth stuffed with chilies.

Drowned.

Burned.

Face attacked with a fish scraper.

Raped.

These stories are real. These women are real. Each one is testament to the reality we’ve created around us.

We keep these women unseen and unheard, invisible from the world. They are present only when we want them to work for us, and yet we won’t even recognize what they do as ‘work’.

We are so afraid they’ll run away; we convince ourselves they’ll pick up ‘diseases’ and infect us. We tell ourselves that we’re just protecting our families. We quietly feel superior to them. We don’t let them speak to the neighbours. We worry when they have friends. We feel their work is simple, and yet we don’t do it ourselves. We throw a fit when we need to work on weekends, yet we won’t even grant them a day off. We expect pay raises, and cluck our tongues in shock when they ask for it. We hear about ‘a maid who was abused’ and quickly share the story about ‘the maid who stole from her employer’. We look at the way our friends treat them, convince ourselves that ‘we’re not like that’ and yet we stay silent about it.

This is not a generic ‘we’. It’s a ‘we’ made up of you, of me, of your sister, your friend, your husband, your wife, your boss, your neighbour, your father, your teacher — every person in this country is contained in that ‘we’. Make no mistake of this; we let this happen.

We let this happen because we’ve ignored the thousands of signs that have led to this point. Signs contained in domestic workers whose wages were never paid, who’ve been kept in isolation, who’ve been made to work every day of their lives, who’ve been slapped, who’ve been burned, who’ve been put down. Do a thousand domestic workers need to die before we decide it is enough? Or have we removed ourselves so far from our conscience that this becomes something we merely wince at but stay silent about?

Our actions have harmed these women so severely.

But so have our inactions.

Silence has a way of legitimizing violence, and our deafening silence when faced with the realities of domestic workers in our country has done exactly that.

Mautik Hani died at 36 years old from the beatings of her employers.

Mautik Hani also died because we brushed off each case that came before her as an ‘isolated incident’.

We saw the signs, we closed our eyes, and we let her die.


by Katrina Jorene Maliamauv, 26th October 2009.

What a friend they found in him

Remember Finardo G Cabilao that was brutally murdered, tortured, found sprawled in a pool of blood just like a butchered animal in a pasar malam, with severe head injuries due to repeated hitting with a blunt object by several assaulters??

I speak of him as though he was a good friend. Our paths have never crossed in this lifetime, but I trust the words of the thousands of people whose hearts he has touched, and who speak ever so fondly of this great man.

Finardo Cabilao was a diplomat from Philippines, assigned to Malaysia with an important task at hand; to stop human trafficking.

As a fully qualified social worker, Cabilo headed counseling and many other social services for countless Filipino laborers working overseas, especially those who have fallen trap into slavery gangs in Malaysia. He, a 49 year old petite man, never took fear or hesitated to join the raids and rescue operations in scattered nightspots all over East Malaysia in look for the culprits of this nasty business that thrive on women and children.

Cabilao was, by all accounts, a dedicated public servant and a tireless defender of his fellow-Filipinos who were in trouble. He was constantly risking his own safety or his status as a diplomat to help Filipinos who were sold as meat to brothels, with barely any hope for redemption. Cabilo’s embrace was described by the victims as being a sanctuary from their tormentors. Sitting next to him, one would never guess that upon the shoulders of that frail man- rests the salvation of many trafficked victims.

Cabilo put his life on the line, knowing that he was messing with some of the biggest tycoons who were making money off these trafficked victims. However, after “in-depth investigations”, Inspector-General of Police Tan Sri Musa Hassan said there was NO link between the Cabilo murder and human trafficking syndicates.

How does one rule out ALL possibiliies that the Cabilo, the Head of the social welfare department of Philippines Embassy had NOTHING to do with the fact that he was fighting against human trafficking??

Well, the authorities seem to have a perfectly reasonable and practical answer… “probably, the motive of the murder had to do with a homosexual relationship” said Musa.

Wow, who would have reckoned huh? After years of fearless fighting against some of the biggest gangsters in Malaysia, and after receiving several work-related death threats, he goes and gets himself butchered by a man that he was supposedly having a homosexual relationship with. Not only did he visit a sex worker, it was concluded that the motive of the murder was because the suspect was not paid for his service."

So here we have, a respectable 49 year old man who had devoted his life to fight against the trafficking of people, not to mention working in an embassy that has a reputation of paying their staff handsomely, married to a beautiful woman – murdered for not paying a male sex worker his worth.

According to The Star online, September 5th 2009- "Investigations are still ongoing to make a stronger case, including checking his DNA before sending it to the Attorney-General’s Chambers" (Musa, Sep 2009).

It seems to be that the purpose of the investigation was not to find enough evidence to rule out various motives to the murder. Rather, it is to find enough evidence to prove a preconceived motive of the murder.

Well, its just part of history repeating itself I guess. When there is a lack of evidence and the public is watching, let the gays get the blame for it!

As thousands of Philippians and victims of trafficking pine for the loss of a great soul, and await justice for Cabilo and those alike, the Malaysian authorities were reported to be still “working on the case.” Looks like the tycoons just found themselves some new BFF’s !!

..........................................................................................................................................................................

Just sum info that a friend had shared with me as i was writing this article; i thought might be interesting:

According to a pole done by the Malaysian Home Ministry:

* 76 % out of a 1600 sample size were angry at the local police.

* 70% out of a 1500 sample size had paid bribe to a police officer out of desperation.

Twenty froggies

This was my favourite bedtime poem that mummy use to read to me when i was tiny :)

Twenty froggies went to school, down beside a rushy pool,Twenty little coats of green, twenty vests all white and clean."We must be in time", said they; "First we study, then we play;That is how we keep the rule, when we froggies go to school."

Master Froggy, grave and stern, called the classes in their turn,Taught them how to nobly strive; likewise how to leap and dive;From his seat upon a log, showed them how to say "Kerchog!"Also how to dodge a blow from the sticks which bad boys throw.

Twenty froggies grew up fast, big frogs they became at last;Not one dunce among the lot; not one lesson they forgot;Polished to a high degree, as each froggy ought to be,Now they sit on other logs, teaching other little frogs.

f.e.e.l t.h.e l.o.v.e

JUSTICE is what LOVE LOOKS LIKE IN PUBLIC!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Above is officially my favourite phrase of the year!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This simple words are true encouragement, to continue doing the things that i find worth doing in life, regardless of the hardship.