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Forgotten Philippines: Amerasians Abandoned, Sue U.S. for Rights

By Agence France Presse

A group of Filipino children abandoned by their American servicemen fathers will seek damages from the US Navy in a class suit to be filed in California this month, a missionary aiding them said Monday.

"We want to prove negligence," said Roman Catholic priest Fr. Shay Cullen, who runs a foundation for Amerasians in Olongapo City, which saw off the last US servicemen at the Subic Naval Base in November.

He said the United States must come to the aid of what he estimated to be 10,000 "throw away children" of servicemen in Olongapo and nearby Angeles City, which hosted a US air base devastated by 1991 Mt. Pinatubo eruption.

American authorities must "develop means of support" for abandoned Amerasians so "they won't be left in poverty and discrimination," Cullen said in a telephone interview from Olongapo, but he gave no details.

He said that the "abuse of women and children" was allowed to go on with the full knowledge of the US Navy" in Olongapo.

Many Amerasian children have ended up as prostitutes-like most of their mothers.

Cullen said he will accompany four Amerasian children to the United States this month to press their case in behalf of all Amerasians in the Phillipines, a former US colony.

They will be represented by Burlingame, a California law firm which offered to handle the case for free after reading a report on the Amerasians in the San Francisco Examiner newspaper, Cullen said.

The Amerasians' suit is also intended to help push US legislation granting Filipino Amerasians the option to take US citizenship, which Cullen said has been granted to such children inn South Korea, Japan, Thailand and Indochina.

US authorities had excluded Filipino Amerasians, saying that unlike elsewhere in Asia, half-Americans do not suffer from discrimination in the Philippines, which still has strong links with the United States.

President Ramos has also called on Washington to help ease the plight of the Amerasians, but Cullen said the Philippine government and authorities in Olongapo City must also share responsibility.