When paper is peppered with bullets

by Achinette Joy Villamor

The siege is not over.

When democracy returned to the Philippines in 1986, we were all made to believe that all wars for humanity have been won. We were all made to believe that people could no longer be plucked out of their homes, or picked up on the streets, to be summarily executed by criminals who can never be brought to justice.

Nothing could be more chillingly, scaringly far from the truth.

Slaughter of the lambs

When Pagadian journalist Edgar Damalerio was slain in cold blood in 2002, the prime suspect was police officer Guillermo Wapile. Where is Wapile now? He is still at large, after escaping, conveniently, while in the custody of the police.

On Nov. 1, 2002, Loyd Wilson Sato, College Editors Guild of the Philippines’ vice-president for Visayas, was abducted. Suspected military intelligence agents held him for questioning and slashed his left forearm with a swiss army knife four times.

After her daughter was kidnapped on September 20, Compostela Valley resident Gloria Reynoso received a call from a man who introduced himself as a Military Intelligence Member. The man offered a deal for the safe release of the victims. Three days later, her daughter’s body, along with three other Anakbayan members who have also been abducted, were dug up inside the Selecta Banana Plantation in Barangay Quarry, Maco, The bodies bore stab wounds and torture marks. Marjorie Reynoso’s severed head was found near the shallow grave.

Witness accounts of the abduction and, subsequently, the disposal of the bodies, tag a certain Willy Javier, a suspected MIG agent, as the leader of the men responsible for the killings. But Lt. Col. Agane Adriatico, chief of the military’s 5th Civil Relations Group for Southeastern Mindanao, continues to maintain the military’s innocence, even as one of their own officers, who requested his name be withheld, admitted knowing Javier and that Javier had worked with the military before.

Despite the military’s vehement efforts to deodorize its image, evidence against them has been growing more and more numerous, so much so that no less than Lt. Gen. Rodolfo Garcia, the AFP vice chief of staff himself, saw it necessary to announce, in a press briefing, that there is “no deliberate effort by the military” to conduct surveillance on writers and journalists.

But this claim is crap, a double-talk that would never hold water. Because in the wake of the charges, hurled by Karapatan and Anakbayan, that the military has been tailing their members, Adriatico himself later on admitted that the army has indeed been spying on activist youths to ensure they are not “misbehaving” but that there are no military plots to abduct them.

That the spying is done to ensure that “they do not misbehave” is ridiculous. Whatever happened to the presumption of innocence before guilt is proven beyond reasonable doubt? Instead of going after the people who have obviously committed crimes, the military is spying on innocent people they suspect would eventually commit a crime. It could have been a laughable rehash of Minority Report if only it were not a tragic waste of taxpayers’ money. Perhaps, the military also have psychic twins stowed away somewhere, twins who could predict when and where a crime would happen and who would commit it. Tsk, tsk. No wonder real criminals roam the streets freely.

Enemies of the state?

PNP chief Director General Hermogenes Ebdane Jr. disclosed in a national daily interview that while he will not give names, they are indeed conducting surveillance on members of the media believed to be in contact with “enemies of the state.”

Last month, members of the Baganga Farmers Association in Davao Oriental complained that soldiers stationed in their area had barged inside the local church, where they tortured six lumad farmers.

Were these tortured farmers the enemies of the state? Were the slain writers enemies of the state? Who are the enemies of the state, really? And, for that matter, who gets to decide who the enemies of the state are and who are not?

The labels seem arbitrary, the spates of brutality indiscriminate, for even members of the academe are not spared from this culture of institutionalized and military-legitimized violence.

When around 300 students and teachers of the University of the Philippines, Diliman, marched against Senate Bill 2587, or the UP Charter Bill, last Sept. 9, the peaceful demonstration turned vicious. Senate security and Pasay City police forces violently dispersed the rallyists and left at least 16 UP students and teachers injured. They also arrested 13 others and detained them for seven hours. But the person who got the brunt of the mauling was Philippine Collegian photographer Rafael Lerma who suffered contusions and bruises on the neck, chest, and head. When the police saw Lerma, who was all the while wearing his press ID, taking photos of the dispersal, they “ganged up on him and mauled him.” They ignored Lerma’s protestations of innocence and told him that his Collegian ID was only a “cover.” They also refused to show the medico-legal report on Lerma and the other detainees to Collegian reporters who later on went to cover the proceedings.

The UP incident is almost strikingly similar to one that happened last July 28 here in our very own university. While students demonstrated against campus issues, five men, tattoed, scruffy-looking, and in shorts, entered the university through the visitors’ entrance. Subsequent questioning of the guards reveal that they had no idea who these men were. The “visitors” showed no proof of identification nor were they asked to sign the university visitors’ log book. And while one of the men used the university telephone, several students saw one of the guards giving the names of the student protestors to these “visitors”. They even drew up a list.

The students yelled at the guards, demanding to know why their names were being given out. When Today’s CAROLINIAN’s photographer took photos of the commotion, two of the men made a grab for his camera and his ID. They also tried to forcibly take the photographer with them. When he resisted, one of the men threatened, “Pusilon tika ron!” The protestors outside heard the threat and saw the man drawing his gun. They swarmed inside; the men fled towards Pelaez exit.

Where were the guards while all this was happening? Rooted to the spot, simply watching the incident. One of them tried to help out, true, but only after the men have fled. And the students remained in the lobby, furiously complaining how unknown “visitors” with guns, and in shorts, could freely enter the university while students have to kowtow to SAS’ dress code, flash their IDs, and have their bags inspected.

Strong, bloodied republic

But in a demonstration where men with guns could spy, even from inside the university, on students bearing cartolinas and manila papers, is any student ever really safe? And so for that matter, in a country where journalists are being killed right and left without the murders ever being solved, where the label ‘enemy of the state’ can be enough excuse to spy on, torture, and even butcher innocent people, can any citizen ever really sleep soundly every night?

In Southern Mindanao alone, there are already 432 cases of human rights violations with 13,064 victims. Six journalists have been killed this year, the most recent victim being Davao-based radio commentator Juan Porras Pala who was assassinated last Sept. 6. This brings the total body count to 49 murders since 1986. All murders have been unsolved, all the suspects are still at large. And this year, the Philippines ties with Colombia’s notorious record of journalist killings.

Small wonder, then, that United Nations’ UNESCO Director General Koichiro Matsuura condemns the murders and the disturbing lack of action by the Philippine government, saying, “As long as the gun is used to muzzle journalists, there can be no real freedom of expression.”

Of course, all these atrocities could only happen under the strong republic of a president who claims that it is God who puts ideas in her hearts. All these could only happen to Gloria, under whose regime hardened criminals waltz their way out of jail, or make their merry escape from police custody, while journalists, youth leaders, and even farmers are abducted, tortured, and killed, all on the slightest suspicions of having committed a crime. All these could only be possible under a president who would invent something as unauthorized by the Charter and the statutes, and as ominous as, a “state of lawlessness”, where anybody can be arrested without a warrant and detained indefinitely without charges being filed. And, just as naturally, all these could only transpire during the watch of a president arrogant and presumptuous enough to tell the media what to cover, how to cover, and when to cover.

Dr. Jose Rizal was the first to die, for the crime of putting the truths he saw on paper. Perhaps, by shooting Rizal, it was even the Spaniards who started this trend of summarily executing those who, for a cause, took up pens and papers.

But Rizal taught the Spaniards a lesson a long time ago, a lesson that those responsible for today’s atrocities would do well to remember. For as long as paper is peppered with bullets, the people’s struggle for a more liberating, humane, and democratic society will continue to rage - over hillsides and cities, in the Senate and on the streets, within school doors and homes, and inside hearts ablaze with fury over decades-long of injustices.

The siege is not over.

Sources: Army spying sows fear among youths by Anthony Allada PDI, September 26, 2003 Military eyed in youths’ abduction by Anthony Allada PDI, September 22, 2003 Groups seek justice for 49 slain journalists by PDI Mindanao Bureau PDI, September 14, 2003 Cops admit watching media by Christian Esguerra and TJ Burgonio PDI, August 19, 2003 No ‘states of rebellion, lawlessness’ in our Charter by Neal H. Cruz PDI, August 19, 2003

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