Tschetter said the ”security issue” has for some years prevented the deployment of volunteers to Mindanao, home to some of the country’s poorest communities and a heavy recipient of US aid. ”Our volunteers can be vulnerable. They live at the grassroots level of the community. And therefore, if for some reason that would not be an appropriate environment to be in, we will not put them there,” the official said in a briefing at the US Embassy.
Mindanao still no-no for Peace Corps volunteers in Philippines
Mindanao still no-no for Peace Corps volunteers
By Volt Contreras
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 05:50:00 08/29/2008
MANILA, Philippines—American Peace Corps volunteers in the Philippines have since “moved on” after the shocking murder of Julia Campbell last year, but sending them to strife-torn Mindanao remains a no-no, according to their top official.
The mission’s 47-year presence in the country remains ”robust” and the April 2007 murder case has not changed the organization’s ”opinion” of the country, Peace Corps director Ronald Tschetter told journalists in Manila Thursday.
But Tschetter said the ”security issue” has for some years prevented the deployment of volunteers to Mindanao, home to some of the country’s poorest communities and a heavy recipient of US aid.
”Our volunteers can be vulnerable. They live at the grassroots level of the community. And therefore, if for some reason that would not be an appropriate environment to be in, we will not put them there,” the official said in a briefing at the US Embassy.
”I would hope that someday we could do that (in Mindanao), but today that is not the case,” he added.
The 17th director of the Peace Corps and a former volunteer himself, Tschetter said he came here to personally thank the host country and touch base with his staff and volunteers, including an octogenarian undergoing training.
On a week-long visit that began on Aug. 26, he met with President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo on Wednesday.
The last time the corps had volunteers assigned in the South was in 2003, US Embassy press attaché Rebecca Thompson recalled at the same briefing.
The Philippines, nevertheless, continues to be ”a very special country” that has hosted the most number of volunteers through the years—around 8,000 as of last count—out of the 74 states where the corps is currently active, Tschetter said.
And Campbell’s brutal killing, although ”a personal loss” for her fellow volunteers here, has had ”no long-term effect” in the mission’s work for Filipinos, he said.
A volunteer English teacher assigned in Albay, Campbell, 40, went missing for 10 days while on vacation in Banaue, Ifugao, in April 2007.
Shortly after her body was found in a shallow grave near a mountain trail, a local woodcarver confessed to bashing her to death with a rock in a fit of rage, albeit claiming he only mistook her for someone who earlier bullied him in the neighborhood.
In June this year, a local judge found Juan Donald Duntungan, 25, guilty of Campbell’s murder and sentenced the father of three to life imprisonment.
