The Progressive Alliance is proud that Etta Rosales, Chair Emeritus of our Filipino sister party AKBAYAN, is honouring us by accepting the Progressive Alliance Award 2017. Etta is the first award winner and we honour her for her special political courage.
Loretta Ann “Etta” P. Rosales
Loretta Ann P. Rosales, more commonly known as “Etta” to her comrades, is one of the leading human rights activists in the Philippines.
She has been fighting against abusive governments since her youth; she fought against the Marcos dictatorship as one of the leaders of the Philippine left resistance. As a teacher activist and organizer, she would find herself detained and tortured under the hands of the military.
As a martial law victim, she has served as instrumental in instituting a class action suit in the Hawaii District Court which resulted in the only judgment holding the former dictator Ferdinand E. Marcos liable for gross human rights violations.
In the post-martial law years, Etta would take on the task of engaging the democratization process through the left’s project of pursuing the electoral arena and political party building. She would herein serve for three terms as the party-list representative of the Akbayan Citizens’ Action Party to the Philippines’ House of Representatives from the 11th-14th Congress (1998-2007).
As parliamentarian, she would push for the passage of the Human Rights Victims Reparation and Recognition Act securing reparations to victims under the martial law regime, along with other legislation on agrarian reform, political and electoral reform.
In 2010, she was appointed as the Chairperson of the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) of the Republic of the Philippines from 2010 to 2015. As CHR Chairperson, she also served as Chairperson of the Southeast Asia National Human Rights Institutions Forum, the regional network of national human rights institutions in ASEAN.
Until now, she remains one of the staunchest critics against President Rodrigo Duterte’s bloody war on drugs and has tirelessly led various national and local coalitions to counter the emerging threat to human rights and democracy in the Philippines.
She is currently convening the Participatory Education on Rights Awareness and Social Action local- (PERAS) coalition together with several Church leaders in an effort to build grassroots support coalitions and networks in the face of the government’s drug war.
Etta finished Bachelor of Science in Foreign Service and MA in Asian Studies at the University of the Philippines Diliman. Etta currently serves as a faculty member at the De La Salle College of St. Benilde.
Please find here further information about Etta Rosales.
About the Progressive Alliance Award
At the beginning of this year, the Progressive Alliance introduced an award for people or organisations who have been committed in an exemplary way to a more peaceful and fair world.
The jury would like to express its sincere gratitude for the many proposals. The proposals have shown an impressive variety of outstanding personalities whose exceptional political creativity and abundance of ideas are the cornerstone of our worldwide movement of socialists, progressives and social democrats.
The award ceremony will take place on 10 November 2017 during the conference of the Progressive Alliance in San José, Costa Rica.
Laudatory Speech “Etta” Rosales
