Human Rights Online Philippines

Pinay sex strike leader named one of world’s 150 fearless women
GMA News
March 11, 2012

Hasna Kandatu, the Filipina who led a sex strike last year to quell fighting in Mindanao, was named as one of Newsweek magazine‘s 150 most fearless women of the world.

According to Newsweek’s partner The Daily Beast, these women started revolutions, opened schools, and fostered a “brave new generation.”

Kandatu, a seamstress from Maguindanao, was the only Filipina on the list that included United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, singers Adele and Lady Gaga, and actresses Meryl Streep and Angelina Jolie.

On its “Women of the World” special feature, the Daily Beast noted that “daily unrest in the Philippine island of Mindanao, ongoing since the early 1970s, has made business life impossible in the small village of Dano [Dado], the women couldn’t sell goods at the market for fear of violence, and the main road between the towns had been closed.”

“But in late 2011, Hasna Kandatu and Ainon Kamanza, two members of the United Nations-sponsored collective in the tiny town, decided to employ an ancient tactic to stop a separatist rebellion in their region: they witheld sex from their husbands until they promised to quit fighting,” it said.

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