Gracia returns

Avalanched by news stories on the State of the Nation Address delivered by Pres. Arroyo last Monday was the first brief news item on Gracia Burnham’s return to the country and her scheduled appearance in court today at Camp Bagong Diwa.

Sources were quoted as saying that Gracia’s testimony was facilitated by a mutual legal assistance treaty between the U.S. and the Philippines.

As most everyone knows, American missionary couple Gracia and Martin Burnham plus several others were taken hostage by the Abu Sayyaf, while they were on holiday at the Dos Palmas resort in Palawan in 2001. The hostage takers beheaded one of the hostages and kept the rest in the jungles of Mindanao for one year. During the rescue operation, Martin and Filipino nurse Ediborah Yap were killed, Gracia was wounded but survived.

Gracia now returns in the wake of a different kind of hostage crisis which involved one of our OFWs in Iraq and put the name Angelo de la Cruz on everybody’s lips. Gracia returns as Philippine and US troops start anti-terror war games in North Cotabato and in a rebel area at that. The locals are apprehensive.

`In the Presence of My Enemies,’’ the book Gracia wrote (with Dean Merrill), is a gripping account of the hostages’ ordeal in the Mindanao jungle while in the hands of the Abu Sayyaf. The book’s title is a line from Psalm 23, the shepherd psalm.



Gracia offers her reflections at the end of her book. She lets it all out. She deals with questions that are hard to answer, questions about prayer and faith. Gracia does not rage against heaven, but one could sense that feeling of being let down at some point. Yes, she survived, but Martin died.

I am sure many of us have experienced feeling let down and asking, what was it all for—the prayers, the pleadings, the believing?

But a denouement must come at some point. It is the seemingly pointless waiting that is agonizing. And things do not always end well.

For those who have not read Gracia’s book, here is a portion from Chapter 22 (Reflections) that might resonate with your ``let-down’’ experience.

``We were sitting on the ground during a rest break after hard hiking, listening to gunfire in the distance, and I was moaning, ``We’re totally forgotten. Nobody’s going anything to help us. Nobody’s even praying for us anymore.’

``My good husband replied, `Gracia, you are wrong. Many people are still praying for us. And even if everyone has stopped, our two dads are carrying on, I promise you. Remember what James 5 says about the prayer of a righteous man? We have two of the best.’

``He was exactly right, of course. The prayers of Paul Burnham and Norvin Jones alone would have met the requirements of this verse.

``Obviously, the answer lies not in the number of prayers or the particular wording used in those prayers. There has to be another factor in the mix.

``So what is it?

``I can’t claim to know for sure. There is an awful lot of Scripture that still mystifies me. During one of my many conversations with God in the jungle, I remember arguing with him about John 15:7, one of the verses I had memorized as a child: `If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.’

``I said, Lord, you would have an excuse if the verse included an extra clause…`ye shall ask what ye will, and if I agree with you, it shall be done unto you.’ But it does not say that!

``These things are hard for all of us. And in my case, it’s not just an academic exercise. I lost a husband over this.’’

Ah, what the mind and the heart have to go through during dark moments. What more when the captors kept greeting one another with words of peace and uttered the name of Allah at every turn? Gracia took note of all these.

``Perhaps it’s useful to notice that while the verse in James says fervent prayer `availeth much.’ It does not say it `availeth everything.’ Why?’’

Gracia answers that herself by saying that the Abu Sayyaf and all of us still retain the power of personal choice, of standing against God’s will. God could have fired heavenly lasers into the brains of Janjalani, Musab and Sabaya, Gracia argues, but that would be making them like puppets.

``I find it helpful to think about this analogy: Asking God to free us despite the Abu Sayyaf’s rigidity was perhaps like ordering the US Marines to come get us despite a prohibition in the Philippine constitution against foreign troops ever again fighting on Philippine soil. This is rock-solid law born out of four centuries of colonialism, first under Spain, then the United States.

``Since returning home, I’ve learned just how badly the American military wanted to launch a special operation for us! I’ve been told how they sat around conference tables in Zamboanga City just itching for the opportunity. They would, of course, have done the job differently. They would have moved into action at, say, two in the morning instead of two in the afternoon, wearing night-vision goggles and all the rest to snatch us out safely.’’

I ask: Would the Americans have done it better? I doubt it.

Some people in America, Gracia says, ``want me to be offended and angry with the government for not doing this or that.’’ But Gracia is far from the depressed, morose and whimpering widow. She wants the world to know that. She recently founded the Martin and Gracia Burnham Foundation that supports missions around the world.

One day, as Gracia looked up into the wide Kansas sky, a deep happiness swept over her. And she heard herself saying out loud, ``Oh Martin—you were the best! You were the best.’’
Grace becomes Gracia.

How green is the SONA?

Environmental lawyer Antonio A. Oposa, Jr. whose green opus (two huge colorful books on the Philippine environment) I had featured here, is shaking the ramparts on behalf of all greenies.

Says he: ``In all of Pres. Arroyo’s three State of the Nation Addresses (SONA), she never said a single word on the environment. Repeat, not a single word was said on the condition of the very natural elements—land, air, water—upon which all life in this country depend.’’

Oposa’s little grievance paper is titled ``The President is an Environmental Ignoramus.’’ Ouch. ``Sometimes words have to be a little wild,’’ Oposa says, quoting JM Keynes ``Because they are the assault of thoughts upon the unthinking.’’

In painful silence the greenies listened to the past SONA, they waited for those few little green words. But they heard nothing.

After Pres. Arroyo won a mandate in the recent elections, she laid out her 10-point agenda. Again, not a single word on the environment. (Well, at least she wore green for her oath-taking.) This says something about the President’s level of awareness of the importance of air, water and land resources, Oposa points out. This is a symptom that she is suffering from a severe case of environmental ignorantia.



On Monday, July 26, the President will deliver her fourth SONA. Maybe this time she’ll add a splash of green to her address (not her dress). Or maybe not, not with released hostage Angelo de la Cruz there, taking center stage. You bet so many minutes will be devoted to the hostage crisis that led to the pull out of Philippine troops in Irag. You bet she will dwell on how it was to be between Iraq and a hard place. She will talk about more security for overseas Filipino workers (OFW) in the Middle East. They’re our dollar earners, aren’t they?

But environmental security, Oposa argues, is in fact the highest form of security. He or she who does not understand this has neither right nor reason to aspire for or hold public office. For the Philippine Constitution, lest you and I forget, speaks of the importance of a ``healthful and balanced ecology.’’

The President will surely zero in on the state of the economy. Oposa complains: ``We give too much importance to economics, totally forgetting that the base of all economic activity is the security, supply and quality of the very elements that support life—air, water and soil.’’ Didn’t the great Indian Chief Seattle say, ``Only when we have cut down all the trees, poisoned all the rivers and fished out all the seas, will we suddenly realize that we cannot eat money’’?

Economics is only a minor subset of the environment, the environmental law professor argues. Economics, is only a ``small and wholly-owned subsidiary of Ecology.’’

Economics and ecology, Oposa reminds, come from the same eco root. Eco comes from the Greek word oikos which means home. Ecology, the great science, (and art, if you may) of the environment, is about our natural home, Planet Earth, and all the living and non-living things therein that sustain life.

Come on, this is really ABC. But the UP and Harvard-trained lawyer likes to talk ABC. In the truest sense everyone is an environmentalist, he says, or should be, for who wants to drink poisoned water, breathe polluted air, eat dirty food? It goes without saying that protecting all these life-giving resources should be second nature to us. The problem is, we’re not doing this. Not all of us.

In contrast to the subject that is Ecology, Oposa says Economics is the very narrow study of the supply of things needed by a single animal to live. This animal is homo sapiens—us. Well, in fact, the natural elements in the environment are at the very foundation of this economic life. Without them there is no life, no economic life.

What a shame, Oposa rues, that in the name of economics, people have spoiled the air, dirtied the waters, scorched the earth, cleared the forests, leveled the mountains. Economic progress, anyone?

You can’t have good economics if you have bad ecology. The irony is that the exploitation of natural resources or the destruction of the ``natural capital’’ is often translated or recorded as ``profit’’. No one records the depreciation and depletion of the natural assets. The economic balance sheets do not record this. A system of accounting for our natural assets and liabilities has yet to be invented for economists.

Oposa worries: ``In the Laws of Nature, there is no right or wrong. There are only consequences. If the environmental crises and recurring tragedies do not awaken the President, if she is stuck in that economic mindset that treats depletion as revenue and losses as income, God save us from eternal damnation.’’

The Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP)and civic and environmental groups want to sponsor a public debate on the proposition: ``Environmental security is the highest form of national security.’’ For the affirmative side, the IBP National Environmental Action Team (of which Oposa is the founding chair) will field a three-person debating team.

The best and brightest in the President’s Cabinet are being challenged to join. Since the Arroyo administration has not included the environment and sustainable development in the National Agenda, it must justify its stance by taking the negative side of the debate, that is, by arguing that environmental security is not the highest form of national security.

The public be the judge. Should the affirmative side win, Oposa demands that the prize be the inclusion of and giving top priority to the natural environment and sustainable development in the government agenda.

Psalm for Angelo

Are we speaking as one? Are we standing as one to save his life?

Here is a puny man, a truck driver crouching on an immense world stage, awaiting his fate, his hands tied, knowing next to nothing about what is going on, his heart crying out, why am I here, what is my sin, what is my sin?

They don’t shoot their hostages over there, they prefer to sever the head from the torso. I don’t know how many more hours or days it will take before Angelo de la Cruz is either set free and allowed to go home to the Philippines or beheaded by his Iraqi captors.

I don’t know how many more hours or days it will take before the Philippine government accedes to Angelo’s captors’ demand that Philippine troops be withdrawn from Iraq. (While I was writing this, news came that troops will be withdrawn soon. The US government wasn’t pleased. FU!) I don’t know how many thousand candles have to be lighted, how many more prayer rallies and protest marches have to be staged in order that those who hold Angelo’s life in their hands would make the move to pave the way for his freedom.

Here at home, so many brutal words have been said, so much blame has been hurled. Name-calling, labeling, finger-pointing. The softening ingredients have all but been forgotten. One can’t help thinking—sure, everybody’s really trying to save Angelo’s life but... Are we speaking as one, standing as one, uh, doing prayer rallies as one?

Angelo waits while groups from a broad-spectrum of Angelo savers fall over each other. In the meantime, Angelo’s captors are getting more emboldened.



I will not believe anything about the final outcome of all these until I see Angelo walking free on Philippine soil.

This man with the angelic name and who carries the collective family name (de la Cruz, of the cross) that is appended to the Every Filipino Juan, is waiting for mercy, mercy and mercy. It’s either mercy or no mercy. There is no justice in all of this. Not from any side, whatever is the outcome. Not when a totally innocent man, whose family is living in near penury, has to be made a sacrificial lamb, so deliberately, so brutally. What did this poor man from Pampanga do to deserve this?

Long after he is released, if he is released alive, Angelo will have to live with the terror he has undergone. Terror will stalk his days and nights, for terror was the defining color of his slaving away in a foreign land so that his family back home could survive.

I hope Angelo comes home not only physically whole but psychologically intact as well. Only shaky and shaken, I hope. Not severely shattered.

Imagine Angelo imagining the sharpness of a blade brushing against his neck, hearing the sound of deadly weapons being fondled behind him. Death anytime, death anytime.

The line between despair and hope is so fine, it is sometimes much easier to go on a free-fall and be swallowed up in despair. If you have not looked despair and desolation in the eye, if you have not experienced what it is like to lose and lose badly because you are either poor or powerless against some overwhelming force, then you have not lived fully yet. Compassion is still just a word.

I think of Angelo and his helplessness, I think about what he must be doing now. Does he talk to his captors, does he talk to himself? What is he allowed to do? What does he want to do while in captivity? Does he want to sing the songs of his childhood, does he want to pray aloud, does he ask to sit in the sunshine and have pleasant thoughts of home? Does he regret anything?

Does he think his ordeal will be over soon? Does he think about the afterlife? Does he imagine a sharp blade suddenly cutting his neck so cleanly, it is painless after all?

I think of a stark Salvador Dali painting with the edges of things melting. I think of Angelo alone in that empty Dali vastness, pleading for mercy. I think of Psalm 137 and that weeping scene by the rivers of Babylon (which, I suppose, is the biblical Babylon not far from Baghdad). The psalm is about sorrow and hope in exile. I read it just now and I thought, ah, the psalmist of long ago wrote this for the Angelos of now. Somehow, I was comforted by it especially when I imagined it sung in a plaintive way by people I loved so well long ago and far aways.

I took the liberty of tampering with it, to recklessly lend contemporary distress to it. Anyway you could look up the original, or listen to the pop Gregorian version (Master of Chants II) sang by faux monks in velvet robes.

By the rivers of Babylon I sat mourning and weeping when I remembered my village home,
On the poplars of this strange land I hung up my instruments,
Here my captors asked for the words of a song,
My tormentors demanded a joyful hymn:
``Sing for us a song about the place where you were born!’’
But how could I sing a song about God and country in hostile territory?

If I forget you, my village, may my right hand wither,
May my tongue stick to my palate if I do not remember you and speak about you to the men who plan to slice off my head,
May my heart explode if I do not exalt in the thought that I love you beyond all my delights.

Remember now, Lord, the battles that have been fought,
The occupiers said, ``Level it, level it down to its foundations!’’
The occupied shouted, ``You destroyers, happy those who pay you back the evil you have done us!
Happy those who seize your children and smash them against a rock.’’
Here I am Lord, by the rivers of Babylon, by the rivers of Babylon.

US steps back on immunity

The latest good news is that the US has beaten a retreat.

The US has withdrawn its bid for immunity through the renewal of Resolution 1487 at the UN Security Council deliberations. Renewal would have meant a grant of a 12-month period of immunity to peacekeeping personnel who are citizens of countries that are not State Parties to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC). The US is not a Rome Statue signatory.

The Philippine Coalition for the International Criminal Court, a member of an international coalition supported by 150 countries, hailed the development and said the US move to seek immunity would have been another way to escape prosecution by any international body.

According to the Asian Forum on Human Rights and Development (Forum Asia), Resolution 1487 would be a corruption of the intent and purpose of the Rome Statute because it exempts a certain class of people from international justice. It undermines the authority of the ICC to determine its own jurisdiction and forces the Security Council to overstep the bounds of its own authority.

This development in the UN shows the Security Council upholding the integrity of the ICC and affirming international justice and the rule of law. Countries that held fast to their position against Resolution 1487 were Benin, Brazil, China, France, Germany, Spain and Romania.

By the way, the Philippines, represented by Amb. Lauro Baja, chaired the Security Council during the deliberations on Resolution 1487. The Philippines’ vote went for Resolution 1487 despite the overwhelming tide against it. The US, seeing the odds, retreated. With its pro-US vote, the Philippines had exposed itself.



The US move had met with growing opposition among Security Council members and the international community. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan had strong words of caution on the renewal bid. In a meeting last June, Annan said: ``But allow me to express the hope that this does not become an annual routine. If it did, I fear the world would interpret it as meaning that the Council wished to claim absolute and permanent immunity for people serving the operations it establishes or authorizes. If that were to happen, it would undermine not only the authority of the ICC but also the authority of the Council and the legitimacy of the of UN peacekeeping.’’

With Resolution 1487 in the trash can, the ICC can now move on with the investigation and prosecution of crimes in its first case referred by the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Although the U.S. and Iraq are not signatories of the Rome Statute, non-signatories could be prosecuted if the complaining country is a signatory. Washington does not recognize the UN-mandated court.

Here are comments on the US retreat from media institutions abroad.

The Guardian argued that ``by withdrawing a resolution to extend immunity from prosecution for its troops for another year, the mighty US diplomatic machine threw itself into reverse gear. In theory, the move means that American soldiers or civilians could now be brought before the ICC by a member country, or by the UN Security Council itself, after the current resolution expires on June 30. In practice, it is not going to happen; Washington has done bilateral `non-surrender’ deals with 90 nations. The ICC jurisdiction does not extend to Iraq and the chief prosecutor will anyway be fully occupied hunting down war criminals in the Congo. Nor can (the) retreat be interpreted as a sign that the US legal establishment is any closer to accepting the notion that an American soldier accused of war crimes could be tried and judged anywhere other than in an American court.’’

So, is it all for naught?

The Australian said the US move could raise ``concern that Washington, which does not recognize the UN-mandated court, might follow through its threat to shut down or stop participating in UN-authorized peacekeeping operations.’’

The Chicago Tribune, the Baltimore Sun and the Orlando sentinel said this was the result of intense lobbying on the part of human rights groups and that the setback marked what may be the first concrete repercussion of the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal on American foreign relations.

The Irish Times reported on a Chinese ambassador saying the prison abuse scandal involving US soldiers maltreating Iraqi prisoners certainly made an impact on the council members.

The New York Times said that while the ICC decision may have little practical effect because neither the US nor Iraq recognized the court, the debate was widely seen as a rebuke to the US administration for seeking to marginalize the new court by negotiating bilateral exemptions for Americans the world over. Chilean ambassador to the UN said: ``There has been a U-turn. The US has realized that the UN has a legitimacy and a weight that the coalitions of the willing don’t have.’’

This was ``Annan’s victory,’’ the New York Times said and thought ``the Bush administration caved in so easily.’’

Asia Forum is now urging Asian governments to join the 96 countries that have ratified the Rome Statute and actively participate in making its functions effective. Asia Forum secretary general Gothom Arya said ``the region stands to gain the most from the Court’s clear mandate to combat impunity, a mandate seriously defended by the member countries of the United Nations.’’

But the Philippines, by the way, though a signatory of the Rome Statute, has not given its signature to ratify it. We are nowhere on this. We are not among the 96 countries that have ratified it. Pres. Macapagal-Arroyo has not pushed for the concurrence of both houses on the ratification. What a pity. Can she defy the US?