Protest dancing in key cities on Valentine’s Day

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ILOILO CITY, Philippines—Thousands of women and men plan to spend Valentine’s Day not on romantic dates but dancing on the streets in key cities all over the country to call for an end to violence against women.

The protest dance on Feb. 14 is part of the global “One Billion Rising” campaign to call for a stop to rapes and other forms of violence against women (VAW), said Lucy Francisco of Gabriela Women’s Party.

The campaign plans to gather a billion women and men worldwide in communities, schools, workplaces and other areas to simultaneously dance for around two minutes as a protest against VAW.

In a media briefing on Saturday, Francisco said mass street-dancing in the Visayas would be held in the cities of Iloilo, Bacolod, Cebu, Roxas and Tacloban, and the capital towns of Kalibo in Aklan and San Jose in Antique. Expected to join are students, employees, officials, church groups, lawyers, artists and local government units.

In Iloilo, dancing will begin at around 7 a.m. on Bonifacio Drive and repeated between 4 p.m. and 6 p.m. in time for the global synchronized mass dancing campaign.

Francisco said the global campaign was part of the fight against the “seven deadly sins” against women—rape and incest, sexual harassment, domestic violence, trafficking, white slavery and prostitution, discrimination in the workplace, inaccessibility or limited access to maternal health and child care, and violence resulting from state repression.