SOLFED-NAKEM STATEMENT

JOINT SOLFED-NAKEM CONFERENCES STATEMENT

ON THE DISMISSAL OF 3 ILOKANO STUDENTS

FOR SPEAKING ILOKANO

This is a joint statement of SOLFED and Nakem Conferences International on the issue involving three students ‘advised to look for another school’ for speaking in Ilokano inside their school, Saviour’s Christian Academy.

On July 30, a day before the signing of the letter of ‘advise’, the Rev Dr Brian Shah posted in his blog, and we quote him:  “Insubordination and direct defiant among students is totally unacceptable and I don't tolerate such nonsense. Tomorrow heads will roll. It took us many years to build the school to what it is today and just a few to destroy all our hard work.”

On July 31, Rev Shah had the three students dismissed through a letter signed by Prof Cristeta Pedro, high school principal.

SOLFED and Nakem Conferences are advocacy groups fighting for the promotion and thriving of all Philippine languages, and for their use in the education of the community that speak them. We believe in the need to make full use of our languages as our social and cultural resources, and that without these resources, all peoples representing our various ethnolinguistic groups would be poorer. In particular, we advocate the use of our Philippine languages as an act of respect for our fundamental human rights. The rights are inalienable and are protected by the laws of the Philippines and other international covenants of which the country is a signatory.

We would like to express our extreme concern for these acts of Rev Shad and Prof. Pedro. We are appalled by the trauma experienced by these young students as a result of their expulsion and their stigmatization as ‘kick-outs’.

We believe that these acts are in violation of the rights of these students, and in violation as well of the current educational policy of the Philippines on Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education.

We therefore would like to ask the Department of Education and the Commission on Human Rights to fully investigate about this issue and make known to the public the results of their investigation. We would like to ask them to make use of the full force of the law to punish those found guilty.   

SOLFED and Nakem Conferences International

10 August 2013