students learn their rights

i had a most fulfilling, enriching weekend when i attended the ‘inter-campus gathering 2007’ (ICG 2007) organised by the catholic campus ministry office (partly), because i get to meet and hear interesting talks by popular speakers like martin jalleh, anil netto, dr francis loh. no, of course i am not a student of any campus (way past the age). i was there as a reporter! (sort of). i will be writing about the gathering to our catholic paper, the herald.

the gathering started on 13 oct. and will end on 16 oct. it was held at the st anne’s church in bukit mertajam, penang. i was there on the first 2 days and back on the 3rd day (ie today) but will return tomorrow morning for the closing ceremony.

the gathering for this year was different because instead of input sessions, there were only workshop session throughout. the 500 odd students were divided into groups of 50 students or so to take turns to attend each workshop.

the theme of the gathering is ‘our freedom, our faith’ and the sessions focus on RIGHTS.

1) rights to work, focussing on
NEP – by dr francis loh, aliran member and USM lecturer,
globilisation – by jerald joseph, an activist working for komas.

2) right to religion, focussing on islam and apostasy by fr. christopher who studied islam in saudi arabia for 3 years.

3) rights to marry and sexuality – by eddie and agnes de souza (church members)
focusing on natural family planning – by dr john wong (church member)
focusing on gender equality – by dr prema from women’s centre for change

4) rights to life – focusing on war and peace by anil netto, aliran member and a blogger.

i attended the workshop on islam and it was very interesting indeed. fr. christopher, having studied islam for 3 years is very knowledable on islam, ok. i have to say this because people will tend to say "you are not a muslim, you don’t know anything about islam, please don’t talk about it. blah blah blah". fr. christopher after some intro talk gave the students 3 cases (lina joy, revathi, nyonya tahir) to reflect on and with that to come up with questions and remarks on what they think of islam, apostasy and so on. they worked in groups and later on present their findings.

since the talk on islam is quite sensitive, i guess i will not post here what happened at the workshop. on one to one basis (contact me), i can tell.

i also attended the workshop on NEP by dr francis loh. many of the students voiced their frustration on the quota system for U entry, with some giving their personal experiences. some students from sabah and sarawak also talked about discrimination on land rights.

i had wanted to attend the workshop on gender equality by dr prema and war and peace by anil netto but no time since i had decided not to stay for the 3rd day.

well tomorrow morning, i will be at the ICG 2007 again.