Probe on Funeral Parlors Raking in Huge Profits from EJKs

Wazzup PIlipinas!

“Twice the victim.”

This is how Akbayan Senator Risa Hontiveros described many of the victims of extrajudicial killings (EJKs) whose families were charged by funeral homes with exorbitant fees for funeral and burial services.

Senate Resolution No. 325 filed by Hontiveros on Monday called for a Senate inquiry on the alleged exorbitant charges imposed by government-sanctioned funeral homes on victims of EJKs.

The senator said that there is an immediate need to impose proper penalties and/or halt the funeral parlors’ alleged unscrupulous practices, as well as determine if liability can be attached to the police officers in charge of their accreditation.

According to the reports received by Hontiveros’ office, it has been observed in many communities after the government declared a violent war on drugs, funeral homes accredited by the Philippine National Police- Scene of the Crime Operatives (PNP-SOCO) charge as much as P 35,000 to P 60,000, sometimes even amounting to as much as P 95,000 -- several times for funeral and burial services, more than the previous rates of P 7,000 to P 12,000.

Hontiveros said that due to the inability of many families to retrieve their loved ones from the said funeral homes, many bodies have been left in piles in unsanitary and demeaning conditions, posing health and sanitation risks.

“This is morally reprehensible. No one should charge exorbitant fees and rake in super profits from the suffering and tragedy of poor and helpless people, particularly those who were killed by extrajudicial killers. The victims of the families affected by these ruthless killings are already suffering from shock and trauma, yet they are made to deal with the stress of cobbling together the funds necessary to provide a decent burial for their loved ones,” Hontiveros added.

Since the start of the government’s war on drugs, several funeral services have been involved in controversial cases. It was reported that the remains of Jee Ick Joo, a Korean national who was allegedly kidnapped and killed by rogue police officers, were brought to a funeral home where they were cremated. The ashes were allegedly flushed into the funeral parlor’s toilet bowl.

Last year, 250 unclaimed bodies were recovered from a funeral home that had not complied with the government’s sanitation code and was operating without the required business permits for the last three years. According to residents, bodies from the Manila Police district (MPD) were often seen delivered to the funeral home.

Archivo 1984 Proudly Presents Manuel Ocampo, Early Works: 1985-1994

Wazzup Pilipinas!

Archivo 1984 proudly presents an exhibition featuring some of the earliest, more controversial work of Manuel Ocampo, on view for the first time in his home country.

Ocampo (b. 1965) studied fine arts at the University of the Philippines before moving to Los Angeles. He enrolled at the California State University in 1984, abandoning a diploma to seriously pursue painting. He has exhibited extensively and is represented in galleries and institutions throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia.

Manuel Ocampo's compositions juxtapose leitmotifs from established western iconography, religious symbolism, Filipino kitsch, and the annals of history. His imagery is deeply rooted in its symbolic and satirical nature.

With a career spanning 30 years, Manuel Ocampo has forged a path of (meandering) resistance in the international art circuit. Born and raised in the Philippines, he migrated to the US, graduating from college in California, where he used to be based for almost a decade. His first solo show at La Luz de Jesus Gallery in Los Angeles in 1988 brought him unprecedented attention in the international art scene; cemented further by his inclusion in two prominent European art events: Documenta IX (1992) and the Venice Biennale (1993). He will be featured once again in this year’s edition of the Venice Biennale (under the curatorial program of Joselina Cruz for the Philippine Pavilllion). He has subsequently participated in numerous museum exhibitions and biennials around the world, including the biennials of Gwangju (1997), Lyon (2000), Berlin (2001), and Seville (2004). Consistently exhibiting and organizing exhibits in and outside the Philippines, noteworthy of which is the series Bastards of Misrepresentation and Manila Vice in Sete, France.

Manuel Ocampo emerged at the time when postmodernist art was coming to a close giving way to an urgent voice that sought to level the cultural field through the representation of the other, landing in California after leaving the country right after the People’s Power Revolution in 1986. Living under Martial Law and being schooled by Catholic priests where he was trained to make copies of devotional retablo paintings, within such aforementioned circumstances “he wrestled with the trinity of the spiritual (Spain), the material (U.S.), and the self (Philippines).” Within this conflicting triumvirate, he has created an equally iconic visual idiom that mixes high and low, academic and popular, sacred and secular images that resound overt commentaries on religious and social taboos, race, oppression, language, and geopolitics.

The works from his early period well represented in this exhibition bear influence that are discernible in the paintings of younger contemporaries such as Robert Langenegger (the scatological Catholic imagery and political cartoon type of depicting racial tensions), Jayson Oliveria (the non-hierarchical use of images and texts), Louie Cordero (the explosion of colours), Dina Gadia (the patina of nostalgia of sourced images, mostly ads and cartoons from post-war mid-century); and in his own contemporaries who are based in Manila such as Romeo Lee (the over-all grotesquerie), and Gerardo Tan (the layering of images and erasures/defacements that reveal the conceit of an artwork being foremost a painting than a language or a political stand). It’s no coincidence that these artists were also part of the multicity travelling exhibit Bastards of Misrepresentation out of a psychic affinity and convivial friendship.

Subject of a retrospective hosted by Archivo 1984, the bulk of these artworks have been repatriated from the collection of Track 16 Gallery and collector Tom Patchett in San Diego, USA. Complemented by a few pieces belonging to local collections, this will be the first time that these works will be exhibited here in the Philippines and is the first ever significant show of Ocampo’s notorious early period that the country is able to scrutinize.

It’s a timely and apt homecoming in light of recent global political events that appears to have reverted to how it was thirty years ago, at the dawn of a Perestroika and Glasnost, as the roots of multiculturalism began to emerge with the promise of a utopian Benetton world. Despite the altruistic aims of such an aspiration, its unraveling had been vested much in its very liberalism, its unintended consequences the unbridled hold of big business almost taking stead already of the state. What was the voice of multiculturalism shouting dissent against neo-colonial homogeneity has been umbraged into a market stranglehold, and with it the double-edged blessing of market expansion into the art world. Yet how can artists live with this paradoxical guilt of making political critiques against this system where they make money from? Ocampo, knowingly and/or queasily inserts himself in this paradoxical dilemma, playing the game, as he’d rather see it, playing the identity politics card, and acing it in a luck of the draw. Yet he bemoans that dilemma : “it’s harder to forget than it is to remember.” – an identity that catches up with him in his nomadic state, forever in exile, treading through his own path of resistance before the world gets totally walled in by tyrannical philistines.

Cusi Pushes Strict Energy Safety Standards

Wazzup Pilipinas!

Energy Secretary Alfonso Cusi emphasized over the weekend the need to ensure the safety and security of all energy-related undertakings whether in the transport of fuel products or in operating and maintaining energy facilities.

Cusi expressed this sentiment as he administered the Oath of Office of the new Board Members of the Safety and Health Association of the Philippine Energy Sector, Inc. (SHAPES) at the DOE office in Taguig City.

SHAPES is an organization composed of safety, health and environmental professionals.

“We at the DOE put a premium on ensuring the safety of communities and the environment, especially the energy sector workers.

Our manpower in the energy sector is our most important asset as we work with the private sector towards an adequate, stable and sustainable energy supply for our country,” said Cusi.

Cusi invited SHAPES to be one of the private sector partners of the DOE in minimizing the dangers or hazards that are inherent in the power sector.

The DOE Chief cited as an example the ever-present hazard in transporting and storing petroleum products like gasoline, diesel and liquefied petroleum gas.

For this reason, Cusi said the DOE is always working with all the stakeholders to elevate the safety standards and protocols.

Cusi also asked SHAPES to look into the country’s adoption of modular power plants, some of which are being run in other countries by competent Filipino engineers and technicians.

“If it can be done in other countries with Filipinos working on modular nuclear power plants, why not here in the Philippines?” asked Cusi.

In conclusion, the Energy Chief also stressed the need to reintroduce a nuclear energy curriculum in the Philippine academic sector.

Photo Caption:

SAFETY MANAGERS: Taking their Oath of Office before Energy Secretary G. Cusi (center) as the new members of the Board of Directors of SHAPES, Inc. are (from left) Safety Consultant Edmundo M. Ruiz, PEME Consultancy, Inc. Vice President Josefino C. Adajar, DOE Renewable Energy Management Bureau Director Mario C. Marasigan, ANNADIM Enterprises owner Angelita N. Dimzon, Energy Development Corporation (EDC) Senior Manager for Environmental Management Regina Victoria J. Pascual, Aboitiz Power Corporation’s Asst. Vice President for Environment Management Socorro Patindol, PEME Consultancy Inc. President Joel B. Ello, EDC Head for Safety Performance and Operations Management Nestor Evaristo and Diplomate in Occupational Medicine Dr. Neil Rodrigo.