NY Pinoys talk China dispute while commemorating Ninoy

By Don Tagala, ABS-CBN News North America Bureau

August 22, 2013
  
NEW YORK – It’s been thirty years since then Senator Benigno Aquino Jr. took that heroic return flight to the Philippines.
 
On board the plane Aquino Jr said, “My theory is, we all have to die sometime, if it’s my faith to die by an assassin’s bullet then so be it, but I cannot be petrified by inaction or fear of assassination and stay in the corner I have to suffer with my people, I have to lead them.”
 
Aquino’s assassination not only sparked a people power revolution that freed the Filipinos from the Marcos dictatorship, it also gave life and meaning to his powerful statement — “The Filipino is worth dying for.”
 
Filipinos gathered at the San Lorenzo Ruiz Church in New York Wednesday to commemorate Aquino’s 30th death anniversary and celebrate his heroism.
 
“Our martyr Ninoy Aquino is remembered at the Church named after another martyr San Lorenzo Ruiz,”Eduardo De Vega of the Philippine Mission to the UN said, “Huwag nating kalimutan na ang kalayaan na ating nakamit at ang umiiral sa ating bansa nagumpisa po yun 30 years ago today nung inalay niya ang buhay niya.”
 
“Therefore that’s his greatest legacy and by dying his memory lives,” preached Father Joseph Marabe of San Lorenzo Church in New York.
 
Community leader Loida Nicolas Lewis says, August 21 was also a global day of prayer for the peaceful resolution of the Philippine-China territorial dispute. If the senator were alive today, lewis says Noynoy and Ninoy would have handled the Philippine-China conflict no differently
 
“I think Ninoy Aquino would have acted the same way as his son, our President Noynoy Aquino he’s doing it the right way, which is going to the international body, United Nations because there is a rule of law,” said Loida Nicolas Lewis of the US Pinoys For Good Governance.
 
Lewis says their next step is planning another protest action against China at the International Tribunal for the Law of the Seas home base in Hamburg, Germany in the next few weeks.
 
“When he said the Filipino is worth dying for and he actually died for the Philippines, we are not being asked to die for our own country, right now, however meron tayong commitment to help the government, help ourselves, to defend also our territorial integrity,” added Dela Vega.
 
You may contact Don Tagala at don_tagala@abs-cbn.com for more information.