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Humanists in Prison
Support the
Dapecol Rational Humanist Society
A new
Humanist group that has formed in a prison in the Philippines
recently contacted HFA. Roy Angana has been incarcerated for the
past 15 years. He has decided to work to alleviate his own
suffering by helping other inmates. He was introduced to Humanism
by a Humanist penpal.
Roy has
succeeded in encouraging 12 other prisoners to join him in his new
group. The importance of this work isn’t lost on Roy. “Our group
discussed the importance of Humanism for our overtly religious
country that has long been plagued by intolerance and factionalism
due to conflicting religious interests and human selfishness which
hampers the growth of our nation. We realized that for us to be an
effective embryonic purveyor of social change, we must start that
changes within ourselves that when people in the free society learn
about our humanistic transition without the aid of supernaturalism,
we might become a catalyst of inspiration that may ignite them to
adapt humanism and rally towards secular social change.”
Roy has
asked the members of HFA to support their work, as they “don’t want
to look like an isolated group of lonely humanists.” What they need
is “communication outside (the prison) to update us with humanist
information. Or maybe some humanists out there may simply say to us
Hi, Hello, how’s everything there?”
The staff
at HFA has decided to support Roy’s work and keep them informed of
our activities and have already sent them a copy of our recent
journal and back issues of our newsletter. We consider it part of
our mission to support Humanist communities, and perhaps we can use
our relationship with the Dapecol Humanists to inspire us and our
members to reach out to the prison populations here in Florida.
We encourage
other members of our association to write, and provide reading
materials that the members of the fledgling Dapecol Rational
Humanist Society can use while not only improving themselves, but
also working to improve the lives of their fellow prisoners in a
very religious and oppressed setting.
To
correspond with Roy and the other members of the Society, contact:
Dapecol Rational Humanist Society
Roy G Angana
Maximum
Compound
Dapecol
Davao De Norte
8105
Philippines
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