Voices of Faith: From freedom fighter to
anti-trafficking activist
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| Cecilia Fores-Oebanda, founder and pesident of the Visayan Forum Foundation working to combat human trafficking in the Philippines - RV. |
(Vatican Radio) A child
labourer who grew up learning to scavenge for food. A freedom fighter and
political prisoner who raised two children in jail. The indomitable founder and
president of a forum fighting to combat human trafficking in the Philippines.
Cecilia Flores-Oebanda is all
these things and has been recognized globally as a human rights activist whose
foundation has helped save at least 17.000 men, women and children trapped by
different forms of modern slavery.
She will be telling her story
at the Voices of Faith event
taking place in the Vatican on Tuesday to mark the March 8th International
Women’s Day.
Cecilia sat down with
Philippa Hitchen to talk about her childhood, her work and her inspirational
journey of faith….
Cecilia begins by describing
the Visayan
Forum Foundation which has been working for 25 years in the
Philippines to intercept the traffickers at ports and airports, to offer
protection to victims and to educate young people through a project called the
iFIGHT movement.
She talks about the wide
variety of situations where people are enslaved, through domestic work,
prostitution and through the flourishing cyber-sex industry. Poor families are
tempted by the quick money they can make and do not realise how children are
abused and traumatized by the traffickers, she says.
From child labourer to
freedom fighter
Cecilia tells her own story
of poverty, learning to sell fish and scavenge for food from seven years old,
before becoming a catechist and then, when Church workers were attacked by the
military, joining the rebel army fighting against Filipino dictator Ferdinand
Marcos. She recounts how she was eight months pregnant with her second child
when she was captured by the military, alongside two young recruits who were
shot in front of her.
Finding faith in prison
Cecilia endured an attempted
rape during her interrogation, before giving birth a few days later. She was
one of the longest serving political prisoners and was only released when the
dictatorship was toppled in 1986. Yet in jail, she says, she also found the compassion
of others, discovered the strength of her faith and learnt to appreciate the
small pleasures of breastfeeding her babies, planting vegetables or teaching
her children to write with stones on the prison walls.
Fighting for freedom from
human trafficking
Mercy and compassion are not
easy, Cecilia admits, especially as she can still see the faces of her comrades
who were killed. But she insists that forgiveness is also a process of healing
for herself and for the girls she helps to escape from the traffickers. “I
think God wanted me to be strong and to be a freedom fighter for the girls”,
she says, teaching them to forgive and embrace the future”.
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