Nun earns ire of backers of Iloilo coal-fired plant
ILOILO CITY, Philippines — Residents of a village here are raising hell against a nun here for allegedly threatening them with the “wrath of hell” for supporting a proposed coal-fired power plant in this city.
Some residents and officials of Barangay (village) Ingore in La Paz District Friday trooped to the Colegio del Sagrado Corazon de Jesus (CSCJ) to protest against Sr. Zenaida Gan, a staunch environmental advocate and member of the Daughters of Charity, which runs the school.
The villagers demanded a public apology from Gan for allegedly calling the residents names and for claiming they will go to hell for supporting a controversial coal-powered plant project being proposed in their barangay.
“We felt insulted and we did not expect to hear this from a person of the cloth,” said village chief Ernie Poral in a telephone interview.
Gan allegedly called the residents supporting the coal plant project “mango” (Hiligaynon for stupid) and said they “will go to hell” for it.
But Gan, who is in charge of the school’s organic farm project, denied the allegations, saying her statements were “distorted and taken out of context.”
She said she was explaining to the residents the harmful effects of coal-fired power plants, especially the emissions of lead, mercury and other toxic chemicals.
“I told them that these toxic substances will harm babies inside their mother’s wombs and will affect their brain and intelligence. I did not call them ‘mango’ because they are in favor of the coal plant. What I said was that they will become so if they will be contaminated by the toxic emissions from coal plants,” Gan said in a telephone interview.
She also denied that she warned the villagers that they will go to hell if they support the project.
“I said that the negative consequences of our decisions have moral implications. And we will pay for these in hell,” she said.
The nun was with a group of anti-coal plant advocates who where blocked by police and barangay officials from reaching a protest camp of the international environmental group Greenpeace on the shoreline of Barangay Ingore last Saturday.
Greenpeace erected a portable tower and unfurled anti-coal plant banners on June 13-16 at the site of the proposed 164-megawatt coal plant inside a 40-hectare property of Panay Power Corp. (PPC). The protest was part of an international campaign against coal plants, which environmental groups blamed as one of the leading causes of global warming and climate change because of emissions of carbon dioxide and other toxic substances.
The PPC and the Metrobank subsidiary Global Business Power Corp (GBPC) have proposed the construction of the coal plant.
Business groups and most local officials support the project but environmental groups, doctors and other professionals, and church groups led by Jaro Archbishop and Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines president Angel Lagdameo oppose it.
The Ingore residents stayed for around an hour in front of the school along General Hudges Street and left after Gan spoke briefly with them.
They proceeded to the Archbishop’s Palace in Jaro District where they submitted an open letter calling on Lagdameo to “rein in its subjects like Sister Zenaida Gan so as to disagree within the decent bounds and not just become blindly disagreeable.”
In the open letter signed by around 200 residents and barangay officials, they called Gan’s alleged actions “unbecoming” and “smack[ed] of reckless disregard for decency and blatant display of ill manners.
“In the same manner that Sr. Zenaida Gan holds her belief with deep conviction, we are also rallying vigorously for the implementation of the coal plant project with the same zeal and convictions. Yet, we are doing this within the ambit of law and without the mudslinging and name-calling as befit our civilized society,” they said in their open letter.
Lagdameo was out of town on Friday for an official trip.
Sought for comment, a spokesperson of the archdiocese said Lagdameo will look into the complaint.
“This is the first time that I’ve heard about this. But the church does not condemn and pass judgment on anyone whose stand is different from ours,” Fr. Ryan Teves, head of the Jaro Archdiocese Commission on Social Communications, told the Philippine Daily Inquirer (parent company of INQUIRER.net) in a telephone interview.
Teves said they only inform and tell the people what is morally right.
“We tell them that coal plants are harmful and that it is not the solution because we have alternatives like renewable sources of energy. But we don’t condemn those who support these coal plants,” said Teves.
The church, including Lagdameo, has been actively campaigning against coal plants and has been pushing for the tapping and development of renewable sources of energy like water, sun and wind.
Bishops in Western Visayas issued a pastoral letter in 2005 opposing the construction of coal-powered plants anywhere in the region.
Jasper Inventor, climate and energy campaigner of Greenpeace Southeast Asia, said the protest against Gan “is but another ploy” to protect the interests of coal proponents.
“Sister Gan’s statement was taken out of context and used to agitate pro-coal community members,” Inventor said in a text message.
Nestor Burgos, Philippine Daily Inquirer
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