Fox to file appeal on Sona day, praying for Duterte to change his mind

SONA-WORTHY? Sister Patricia Fox says she will be disappointed if her case is not mentioned in President Duterte’s State of the Nation Address on July 23. —NIÑO JESUS ORBETA

Australian missionary Sister Patricia Fox on Friday said she would keep praying that President Duterte would change his mind about her deportation.

In its decision, the Bureau of Immigration (BI) called itself “an administrative alter ego of the President” (and) stood by his pronouncement that Sister Fox was an “undesirable alien.”

“I’m praying for (Mr. Duterte) to change his mind, for him to really become considerate, and also because the people deserve more,” Fox, 71, said of the BI deportation order issued on Thursday.

Fox’s lawyer was “dismayed” by the order and would be filing a motion for reconsideration on Monday before the President’s State of the Nation Address (Sona).

Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra said Fox’s deportation would not be enforced while she appealed.

Last month, Guevarra revoked the BI’s cancellation of Fox’s missionary visa but allowed the agency to proceed with efforts to deport her for another alleged offense.

“The issue here is what’s the truth and what’s justice,” said Fox, adding that she would be disappointed if her case were not mentioned in the President’s Sona.

Blacklisted

Describing Fox as an “undesirable alien … whose presence poses a risk to public interest,” the BI ordered the inclusion of her name in a blacklist that would bar her reentry into the Philippines.

Fox’s lawyer Ma. Sol Taule said they were dismayed by the BI’s grounds for deporting the Australian nun, adding that it was a bad precedent for other missionaries wishing to go to the Philippines.

Taule said she couldn’t understand how the nun’s activities could have hurt government, “as what she did was to selflessly serve the oppressed sectors of the society.”

“How am I a threat?” Fox herself asked, adding that she had been much quieter under the Duterte administration than in previous ones, and that attending rallies was “a minority” of what she has been doing in the country these past 28 years.

President Duterte, she said, “needs to listen to the people being displaced … the farmers who are losing land, the workers who haven’t got regular jobs.”

Sorsogon Bishop Arturo Bastes on Friday said the deportation order against Fox “confirms our suspicion that this government is systematically harassing people who criticize [its] policies.”

Bastes said the government “consider(s) Sister Fox a threat because of her defense of the rights of the ‘lumad’ who are being persecuted or driven from their lands on account of the government’s support for mining companies.”

‘Insecure government’

Manila Auxiliary Bishop Broderick Pabillo also came to Fox’s defense, saying that the government’s treatment of the nun reflected how “insecure” it felt about what it was doing.

“Why is it afraid of fact-finding missions if its policies are as good as it claims?” Pabillo said, adding that the BI order was “another instance of creeping authoritarianism” of the Duterte administration.

The peasant group Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas said the BI deportation order would backfire on the President.

“(Mr.) Duterte is further courting the ire and the disappointment of the people with this latest tyrannical stunt … He wields power like a dictator to mask this administration’s weakness and political insecurity,” the group said.

The immigration bureau said Fox had violated her missionary visa by venturing far beyond her community in Quezon City and had interfered in domestic politics by joining protests and news conferences that tackled “political and human rights issues against the government.”

Allowing Fox to join political rallies and other such activities would allow other aliens to do so as well, the BI said.

The President has made no secret of his annoyance at Fox and has said that he personally ordered an investigation of her activities.  He said he refused to hear criticism from anyone who was not Filipino.

Fox is the latest in a growing number of people who have challenged Mr. Duterte and found themselves investigated, detained, humiliated and sanctioned for offenses that his opponents say usually amount to technicalities or minor infringements. —WITH REPORTS FROM JOVIC YEE, ALIANA LOIS DIAZ AND SAMMY WESTFALL