An Interview from Exile with Marilou Verano

02/12/2024

Ella Raw speaks to Filipino activist Marilou Verano about her fight for environmental preservation and human rights

Article Image

Image by Marilou Verano

By Ella Raw

Content warning: discussions of violence and conflict

Mined metals such as nickel, copper, cobalt, and palladium are found in almost everything: the cheaply bought ring that stains your finger green, the wires in your toaster plug, even the battery in the phone, likely in your hand right now. Although, the production and distribution of these mined resources is often tarnished with corruption, environmental destruction, and the threat they pose to human rights. Sitting across from me is Marilou Verano, a Filipino accountant turned environmental activist, studying at the University of York’s Centre for Applied Human Rights. It is a summer evening in York, and in a too big room with too dim lights, we rely on the late break of sunset to see each other clearly. I asked Marilou to tell me about her life in the Philippines, her work in women’s rights, and her fight against the harmful mining companies that threatened to suppress and criminalise her.

Marilou was born in 1967 in Aroroy, a municipality of the Filipino gold mining province Masbate. Her parents were school teachers and raised her to care for the community and the environment from a young age. She recalls a family tradition of planting a tree every birthday in the land around her home;

Marilou: “Five siblings and two parents, each one of us planted a tree every birthday. So, now we have so many trees growing, we have a mini forest!”

Her parents work in the community: sharing much needed food from their rice paddies and showing compassion to people who suffered around them, inspired Marilou to emulate their altruism. And at the threshold of life, with the path her parents had previously forged forming before her, she marched towards Epifanio de los Santos Avenue, at age 18, for the People Power Revolution protests.

Peaceful protests broke out across the Philippines in 1986 as Filipinos demanded an end to the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos, who had been president for 20 years. His presidency was characterised by authoritarian rule, election fraud, extreme poverty, religious oppression, and the implementation of martial law, to name but a few.

Marilou: “The people were fed up with the system. They wanted change. We marched along Epifanio de los Santos Avenue, which is a really long avenue, and it was full of people from all walks of life, and some of us were holding rosary and flowers, and we had images of the Virgin Mary…because we are a Catholic country.”

Ella: “And to show that the protest will be peaceful?”

Marilou: “Yes, and the people in the army, most of them are also Catholic. What we were trying to tell the army is that we are all Christians, we are all Filipino. Marcos ordered the military to repress the mass action. So, we go to give them the flowers and the rosary, whilst they are holding their guns, and they put their guns down. And that was the start of our peaceful revolution in the Philippines.”

Marcos was ousted from government due to the demonstrations, and replaced with the Philippines’ first female president, Corazon Aquino. What stands out for Marilou about Aquion’s time as president is her involvement in creating the 1987 constitution. The constitution ended the dictatorial system by preventing presidents from running for more than one six-year term. “The constitution was really pro-everything, pro-human rights, pro-environment”, Marilou explains, smiling. Unwavering and unamendable, the constitution is still in place today, though whether it will remain that way is continually uncertain. The current Filipino president Ferdinand ‘Bongbong’ Romualdez Marcos Jr. (the son of the aforementioned, former exiled dictator Marcos Sr.) has expressed future plans to amend the constitution, however, his motives are tacitly under wraps.

As an adult, despite entering the workforce as an accountant, Marilou felt the same compulsion that led her to protests as a teenager: she needed to try and help the people around her. When she moved to “small but rich” Brunei in 1996 for work, she fell privy to the hidden maltreatment of female Overseas Filipino Workers (OFW), and knew she had to do something.

Marilou: “So the Filipinos are really spread all over the world. There are so many house helpers and domestic workers in other countries that are mistreated by their employer.”

Ella: “In what ways in Brunei?”

Marilou: “For example, they iron their bodies, they slap them, they don’t give them any food, they rape the women, some Filipinos jump from the tops of the building where their employer lives”

Ella: “How did you help them?”

Marilou: “Every Sunday we attend mass because most of the Overseas Filipino Workers are Catholics, so that’s the time that we have talks with other Filipinos, so we know what is happening to them and we plan what to do. I let women who were maltreated domestic helpers sleep in my house in the meantime, before bringing them to the embassy. Then they live there until it is investigated…if the embassy can prove that the worker is maltreated, the embassy will file a case against the employer and return the Filipino to the Philippines.”

Brunei was home for Marilou for three years, but in December 1999 she returned to the Philippines. She asks me sweetly if she can talk about what her country “looks like” and proceeds to explain how the Philippines is an archipelago, made up of 7,641 islands.

Marilou: “God really bestowed us with abundant natural resources. We are really rich in a variety of flora and fauna, and there are so many undisturbed habitats in the barangay [village in English] areas.”

“The Philippines is an agricultural and fishery country, so we are rich in biodiversity in the marine area as we are surrounded by waters. The tropical location of the country and the once extensive areas of rainforest have resulted in high species diversity. We are so abundant, especially in species that can only grow in Asia.”

Ella: “Is this one of the reasons why you’re so interested in environmental protection?”

Marilou: “Yeah. So, it is a very beautiful country, but the forest lands were reduced and destroyed due to the open-pit, large scale mining operation. So, there's so many areas destroyed because they did this mining operation, they cut down trees and some mining companies don’t have permits for cutting, they are violating laws.”

Open-pit mining is known to be dangerous, polluting, and damaging both to human health and the environment. As one of the biggest mining countries, it is unsurprising that the Philippines has large open-pit mines extracting gold, nickel, copper and other metals and minerals. Blast drilling produces metallic dust, entirely altering the surrounding air, causing serious illness in nearby communities, as well as water pollution and the preliminary deforestation.

Marilou was hired in 2000 by an international NGO (non-governmental organisation) to be an area coordinator in the Southern Philippines. It was here she witnessed first hand the destruction caused by mining company Lafayette on Rapu-rapu island.

Marilou: “I am the one who really took action, along with NGOs and Rapu-rapu residents, to close that mining company because toxic waste – cyanide spills and acid mine drainage – went into the water and a massive amount of fish were killed in that area, sperm whales were killed. So, it was totally closed in 2013 because of our initiative.”

Ella: “How did you close it?”

Marilou: “We submitted a petition to the Department of Environment and Natural Resources. We had a series of meetings with agencies, and media outlets covered the issue. An independent government commission found the company guilty of negligence and recommended the mine be closed down. It proved that the mining company was affecting the environment and if it opened again, it would destroy the ecosystem on that small island.”

In her new community role Marilou sought to reinvigorate the towns so impacted by the mining crisis. Working with NGOs, she trained teachers to conduct lessons about preservation and protection of marine resources, started coastal cleanups, and taught sustainable fishing methods to fishermen in the area who were previously overfishing and using dynamite – destroying coral reefs and polluting the water and the fish.

However, Marilou’s community activism and fight against harmful open-pit mining was not without pushback, nails in tyres and sticks in spokes. In 2019, after guest appearing on two radio programmes in the Philippines, discussing her advocacy, she received a warrant for her arrest.

Ella: “Why were they arresting you?”

Marilou: “They charged me with libel…the mining company, to silence me.”

Ella: “Which mining company was this?”

Marilou: “In my hometown Aroroy there is a large gold mining company, one of the largest in Asia, it is called Filminera Resources Corporation and has a Canadian partner called B2Gold.”

Marilou had explained on radio shows that her hometown was hurting, people were developing dangerous illnesses, toxic waste was spreading, air and water became polluted, and as a result farming and fishing livelihoods suffered. At the time she believed she was only telling the truth, she did not expect to face a criminal trial, especially not twice.

Marilou: “I received the first warrant of arrest in March 2019, and the second in October 2019, and it runs for more than three years. I had to prepare funds, I had to pay for the litigation fee and everything, I prepared all the documents, evidence, and I had witnesses. We had so many hearings, and I had to prepare funds also every hearing, every hearing.”

“On the witness stand the lawyer asked me ‘how do you know the mining company is destroying the environment, you are not a biologist, you are not a chemist, you are not a scientist’. But I told the lawyer that ‘although I am not a scientist, I am not a biologist, I am not a chemist, and I am an accountant by profession, I am also a human being. I have eyes that can see the destruction of the environment and I have a nose to smell the toxic chemicals the mining company is using, and I have ears to hear when the people in the community cry because of the effects of the mining operation’. So, that’s why I won the case.”

Ella: “So, what was the final court day like, how did they announce you had won?”

Marilou: “When the Clerk of Court reads the decision you have to stand up in front of the judge. When I heard the first sentence of the verdict I already knew I had won. Acquitted. So, when I heard that I really thanked God because the win was for the environment and the community also.”

Ella: “Were you scared during the trial?”

Marilou: “It was scary because I really didn’t do any crime in my life, even these libel cases, I am just helping the affected mining communities.”

Despite proving that the mining company in Aroroy was in fact doing exactly what she had (not defamatory) claimed they were doing, Marilou was still faced with obstacles, ones which would be harder to tackle than consecutive years of legal battles. Barangay officials, Marilou tentatively suggests, are granted funds from large mining corporations in order to help the mining host communities, however, the money seems to disappear, and in its place large houses and nice cars owned by the officials seem to appear. Due to her environmental advocacy work, Marilou became a target; she reveals, “politicians are very intimidating, they act like kings...my life is really at risk, because the politicians always told me that I had to stop what I was doing or something will happen to my life.”

In 2023, Marilou was nominated by the Global Witness to complete a fellowship at the University of York’s Centre for Applied Human Rights; the nomination came after the Global Witness declared the Philippines was one of the most dangerous places for environmental activists in Asia. Marilou tells me how she still faces death threats from within her province: local politicians and pro-mining bodies, whilst she grieves the deaths of environmental activist and journalist friends who spoke out and suffered.

Local government corruption was the result of a trickling tap from the national government of the Philippines. Marilou explains that the government’s Department of Environment and Natural Resources approves the mining permits which damage the lives of families already struggling due to the Philippines’ poverty problem in rural areas, and refuses to hold the mining companies accountable for the harm they cause. In order to fix the trickling tap, Marilou excitedly reveals to me that she plans to change the system: by creating a new government policy that ensures the protection of the environment and human rights is enshrined in law. The proposed law, named the Alternative Minerals Management Bill, has been filed in the Philippines Congress, and the Senate. Marilou hopes it will replace the Mining Act of 1995, which was focused on the business of mining solely, and that her research at York will help push politicians to make the move.

Reflecting on Marilou’s main message for readers, a small segment of transcript offers an answer:

Marilou: “I always say we have only one earth that we call home, if we destroy it, where can we live? We have to do what we can to protect the environment because we are here in this world because of the environment, we live because of the environment, it gives us everything…we’re protecting it not only for this generation, but also for future generations.”

The setting summer sun marks the end of mine and Marilou’s conversation as the blanket of night offers me a chilly, but carbon neutral, walk home.