Disaster victims gather in Tacloban for major protest

MANILA, Philippines — Survivors of various disasters that affected the country started massing up at Tacloban City on Friday for a major demonstration culminating on Nov. 8, the anniversary of super typhoon Yolanda's landfall.

Members of the People Surge Alliance for Yolanda crossed the Cancabato Bay on board an 80-boat fleet from Basey in Samar province for the fluvial parade protest in Tacloban City.

"The arrival of our 'protest fleet' represents the dissent of Yolanda survivors in coastal communities to the onerous No-Build Zone policy that is threatening their displacement and depriving them of receiving aid. This is our opening call in a series of mass-ups of protesters demanding accountability and justice for the victims of Yolanda and all recent major disasters," People Surge chairperson Dr. Efleda Bautista said.

"The NBZ policy is being used to demolish coastal communities, not to save them from coastal hazards, all the while exempting big business developers attempting to convert our coasts into economic zones, black sand mines, and tourism hubs," she added.

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Hundreds of students from the University of the Philippines Visayas – Tacloban College also walked out of their classes to welcome the arrival of the protest fleet at the UP Botanical Garden.

The youth activists led by People Surge Youth and the Pulso Han Mag-aaram are railing against the rising cost of what they dub as "commercialized" education that aggravates their post-Yolanda concerns.

The Women International Solidarity Mission by women's group Gabriela will conclude their mission at UP Tacloban and join the mass-up, bearing cases of abuses toward women in evacuation centers following the disaster.

Members of the UP contingent will converge with thousands of lakbayan survivors who traveled to Tacloban City to demand genuine and unconditional rehabilitation of affected agricultural lands and the pull-out of military operations harassing their communities.

They will troop to the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) to hold a symbolic protest against the "politicized" use of the conditional cash transfer program 4P's and other aid.

"We are calling out DSWD Secretary Dinky Soliman for her agency's latest crime against Yolanda survivors, involving the threats of excluding survivors from relocation sites and retracting cash transfers to 4P's beneficiaries if they participate in the Global Surge. Excuse me, Dinky, that is a patently illegal condition for your cash transfers as it attacks the right to free speech and peaceable assembly of survivors," Bautista said.

The protesters will then proceed to the Leyte Provincial Capitol voice out their demands.

At 6 p.m. they will march as they carry carry torches into the early evening toward the Astrodome, where they will hold night of solidarity and keep vigil.

Marchers from Samar, meanwhile, will hold a parallel torch parade as they cross the San Juanico Bridge, before converging in a 15,000-strong buildup.

People Surge, alongside other survivors' groups and people's mutual aid movements under the newly-formed Daluyong National Network of Disaster Survivors, are calling for the ouster of President Benigno Aquino III for alleged criminal negligence a year after Yolanda.