5 Pinoy activists held at Seoul airport

Five Filipino activists attending a meeting of non-government organizations (NGOs) in South Korea were held at the Seoul airport after they were supposedly “blacklisted" by the South Korean government. The incident came in the wake of another Filipino who was detained by Seoul airport authorites late Friday. “We were informed that we are blacklisted by the Korean government and that we are not allowed to enter Korea. They also told us that we will be sent back to the Philippines tonight," Tatcee Macabuag, one of the activists held at the airport, said in a text message to GMANews.TV on Saturday night. She added that they asked for a written explanation from the Korean government, but airport authorities could not immediately grant their request. Macabuag added that her group, which includes Focus on the Global South’s Joseph Purugganan and musician Jess Santiago, were blocked from entering the country despite the fact that activists from other countries were allowed to attend the meeting. The activists were set to attend a parallel meeting of NGOs and civil society organizations (CSOs) coinciding with the Group of 20 (G-20) summit in Seoul on Thursday. The semi-annual summit of the G-20, whose members include the world’s largest economies, is expected to tackle tighter supervision of the global financial sector, a new development agenda, and other issues facing the world economy. NGOs and CSOs have characteristically held parallel forums and protest actions during major global summits in order to air alternative agendas that they believe are not sufficiently tackled in the formal summits. However, host countries have often exhibited hostility against these parallel forums. In the last G-20 meeting in Toronto, Canada last June, police arrested nearly 1,000 protesters in demonstrations near the venue of the summit.—Andreo C. Calonzo/JV, GMANews.TV