It all began with a local government policy to close down a children’s home and deport Fr. Shay Cullen, an Irish missionary who arrived in the Philippines in 1969. He was assigned to St. Joseph’s Parish in Olongapo City. He wrote about his experiences in the city helping abused children and youth affected by the sex industry that flourished beside the US military base at Subic Bay.
He wrote many articles in the 1980s in The Philippine Daily Inquirer about his campaign to close the US military bases and convert them to economic manufacturing zones. The benefits to the Filipino people if the US military bases were closed and converted would free over a thousand women and children from sex slavery in Olongapo and Angeles cities and provide work with dignity.
The former United States naval station at Subic Bay and at Clark Air Base in Pampanga were among the causes of the widespread human trafficking in Olongapo City and Angeles City, where hundreds of sex bars, hotels, and clubs held hundreds of women and children in debt bondage. The bar owners got the women into debt so they could not leave the bar and had to work for low wages.
Father Shay set out to help the youth of Olongapo City from the scourge of drug abuse. He set up the Preda Foundation and a home for the youth in 1974 to protect them from the death squads that killed many suspects. He called on the Church and society to protest the sex slavery of thousands of women and children in hundreds of brothels, to no avail. He opened a home for girl minors in 1996 to heal and protect the children from traffickers and sex abusers, and to help them recover from the trauma they suffered.
He exposed the child sex abuse that was going on with US servicemen and local pedophiles abusing children as young as nine years old. The authorities were angry at this exposure, as it showed the moral depravity of a city so dependent on the US military bases. Father Shay Cullen started a movement—a campaign to close down the US bases and convert them to manufacturing economic parks. These startling proposals shook the establishment and the sex bar owners’ association, which depended on the money from the US servicemen buying alcohol and women.
Father Shay Cullen started a publicity campaign to popularize his military base conversion ideas. These ideas were revolutionary and unacceptable at the time, but they were widely shared, and many anti-base groups emerged to promote the ideas that Fr. Shay first proposed. They were new ideas, challenging and unheard of before, as no one had ever imagined that the Philippines could survive without the US bases.
They were the second biggest employer in the country after the government. From 1988 to 1992, the US and Philippine governments tried to renegotiate the terms of an extension of the military bases at Subic and Clark. This referred to the Military Bases Agreement of 1947, which was due to expire. However, popular demand was for their removal because of the moral depravity, child sexual abuse, and exploitation of women—key issues in the campaign started by Father Shay Cullen. This is what Fr. Cullen had to say when asked where he got the idea to close the bases and start an economic conversion campaign. This is what he wrote after he exposed the sexual abuse of children by US servicemen and was threatened with deportation because of his writing:
“The Olongapo government threatened to close the Preda home for youth and take it over. A journalist asked me what I would do if the Preda home were closed. I replied, getting an idea on the spot, ‘It is better if they close the US military bases and convert them to economic zones, not close the children’s home.’ The journalist asked me: ‘Fr. Shay, is that your new campaign now?’
I thought about that and replied, ‘Yes, it’s a very good idea, and I will start a campaign to make it happen.’ Then I began to write about it frequently in my weekly column on the editorial page of the Philippine Daily Inquirer. I called it the Life After the Bases Campaign. Having researched military base conversion projects in the United States, I had ideas to propose. The city administration of Olongapo denied all child abuse allegations and boohooed the suggestion I made to close and convert the bases.
Mr. Conrad Tiu, a brave local businessman, came out and supported the idea and added the brilliant idea of a Freeport. The base conversion campaign caught on, and the rest is history.”
The campaign had a strong impact on public opinion and very likely swayed the opinions of many Philippine senators. Eventually, the Philippine Senate voted against renewing the treaty with the United States, and the bases closed and the US forces withdrew in 1992. The thousands of women and children were freed from debt bondage and were finally free to go home. The military base conversion that Fr. Cullen had proposed in 1986 and campaigned for over eight years was a great historical success for which he deserves much credit, as it brought an end to the huge sex industry and provided over a hundred thousand new jobs—real work with dignity.
END.
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