Oct. 15 Meet and Greet Philippine Congressman Neri Colmenares

[Helene Lustan]

***Please distribute widely***

MEET and GREET

PHILIPPINE CONGRESSMAN

NERI COLMENARES

October 15, 2009 Thursday

7pm-9pm

Filipino Community Center

5470 Martin Luther King Way

Seattle, WA 98118
        

Congressman Neri Colmenares will meet with the Filipino community in Seattle to share the situation in the Philippines. He will be available to discuss ongoing typhoon relief efforts, the Visiting Forces Agreement, human rights, upcoming 2010 Philippines elections and more.

 

He would like to hear from the community any concern which he will bring to the attention of the Philippine government. 

 

Representative

Rep. Neri Javier Colmenares, other than being the representative of Bayan Muna in the Philippine Congress, is also a human rights lawyer and an academic.  He was also among the youngest political prisoners during martial law having been imprisoned for a total of four years at the age of seventeen. He was then a student activist organizing in urban poor communities and the peasant youth in rural Negros as well as in schools.  He has argued legal cases in front of the Supreme Court and is a lecturer at the University of Melbourne on international human rights law.  His commitment to human rights is reflected in his advocacies as Secretary-General of the National Union of Peoples’ lawyers (NUPL), a national organization of human rights lawyers in the Philippines, handling many of the human rights cases in the country today.