The desecration story

If learned about something really grave and shocking, would I write about it in order to call attention so that people could do something to prevent it or address it? Would I write about it even if I thought it might cause a violent conflagration or a bloody confrontation between parties concerned? Or should I sacrifice revealing the unpleasant truth that I know in order to prevent the worst that could happen?

These were some of the thoughts that raced through my mind after a May 9 Newsweek story gave rise to violent protests in many places around the world. Emotions ran high. At least 15 lives have been lost and dozens have been injured. The smoke has not yet cleared completely.

Newsweek has since retracted that explosive detail in the story reported by Michael Isikoff with John Barry. In the May 23 issue, Newsweek editor Mark Whitaker said: ``We regret that we got any part of our story wrong, and extend our sympathies to victims of the violence and the US soldiers caught in its midst.’’

Newsweek came out with a story that mentioned that US personnel who interrogated Afghan inmates in Guantanamo Bay defiled the holy Quran. They story said that the interrogators ``had placed Qurans on toilets, and in at least one case flushed a holy book down the toilet.’’

The problem with the detail on the desecration(the Newsweek story was not wholly about this one grave act) was that the reporter did not see this being done with his own two eyes. He was quoting someone who was not named.



When things got out of hand, the source backed off. Well, partially, at least. The reporter and Newsweek were left holding the bag, so to speak.

Isikoff, who was interested in happenings inside Guantanamo prison in Cuba where the Afghans have been detained for the past couple of years, was digging for more.

Newsweek narrated how it started: ``Isikoff knew that military investigators at Southern Command (in Guantanamo) were looking into the allegations. So he called a longtime reliable source, a senior US government official who was knowledgeable about the matter. The source told Isikoff that the (investigators’) report would include new details…including mention of flushing the Quran down a toilet.’’

Newsweek had approached two officials for comment but one declined and the other had a different view of the report. So far, there has been no confirmation of a ``toilet incident, except for one case, a log entry, which they still have to confirm, where a detainee was reported by a guard to be ripping pages out of a Quran and putting (them)in the toilet to stop it up as a protest. But not where the US did it.’’

In Afghanistan and Pakistan, desecrating the Quran is punishable by death. The Quran is so sacred for the Muslims that camp commanders in Guantanamo have put in place strict procedures in searching. Only Muslim troops, interrogators or chaplains may handle a copy.

I can understand the sacredness of the Quran for the Muslims and the anger that results from its desecration but I find hard to understand the violence and bloodshed that must ensue. I am not belittling the sacredness of the Quran, I am just stunned and appalled by the intensity of the rage.

Granted that the desecration happened, must a wrong be corrected by another wrong (violence and bloodshed)? Must the consequence of the transgression be worse than the transgression itself? I believe something more complex was at work there.

The pent-up rage (justifiable to a certain extent) was already there before the desecration item came out. Newsweek just stoked the fire of anti-US hatred in Muslim areas.

So much bloodshed for something that didn’t happen? How now to justify the bloodshed? Now, Newsweek can take all the blame? That Newsweek erred in its judgment is another matter.

And the source? Pentagon spokesman Danny DiRita told Newsweek and confirmed saying this to CNN: ``People are dead because of this son of a bitch. How could he be credible now?’’

After the death of Pope John Paul II there was a news item that said someone was claiming that he had in his possession a sacred Host consecrated by the late pope. It was supposedly being auctioned off at e-Bay. If you are a Catholic (and Christian, of course) you’d be shocked and angry. Catholic or not, lying or not, should this supposed Host auctioneer be lynched to death?

Now, what about my problem in the first paragraph? (I am not factoring in here the risk to the life and limb of the reporter.)

If something was only told orally to me, then I need one or two more to confirm, if possible, especially if the information is damaging. The Inquirer editorial yesterday was quite clear about this. Of course, nothing beats an official document.

Supposing the reliability of the sources is A-OK, or, better still, I was an eyewitness myself and I have photographs to show, would I tell? Yes I will. The victims, if they survive, will tell the world about it anyway sooner or later.

But if the transgressors were just cracking demeaning jokes (say, about putting pork in the food of Muslim inmates) but not within hearing distance of the inmates concerned, would I write about my observations?

It depends. Sure, I’d like to expose meanness, but if I were absolutely certain (in bold letters) that writing about the verbal slurs (uttered among, say, prison guards) would lead to the burning of a whole village, maybe I’d rather first tell their superiors about it. Or maybe I’d suggest in the article that something about them is so wicked.

If I were absolutely certain this person planted a bomb in a stadium with thousands of young people, and in fact, admits setting it to explode in five minutes, would I torture him to make him say where the bomb is?

`Just tell me why’

It was a small news item in the Inquirer’s The World section two days ago, datelined Enniskillen, Northern Ireland and written by Associated Press’ Paul Majendie. The section editor gave it a longish headline that ran across the entire page: ``Just tell me why you did it, grieving father asks IRA bomber.’’ I found myself reading the story again and again. Page A10, if you wish to read it.

The article was very short but powerful. Not weepy at all, except the last small paragraph where the dam broke. Something about the story sounded very familiar, very universal, very primal. Was it the pain, was it the senselessness, was it the wound that would not heal?

``After 25 years of grieving, John Maxwell dearly wants to ask the IRA bomber who killed his teenage son a simple question: `Why did you do it?’

``Only when he knows the answer can he bury the ghosts from one of the most notorious Irish Republican Army attacks in its 30-year fight to oust Britain from Northern Ireland.

``Maxwell’s 15-year-old son Paul was the boat-boy for Queen Elizabeth’s cousin Lord Louis Mountbatten. Both were killed in 1979 when an IRA bomb exploded on board shortly after they set sail from the fishing village of Mullaghmore…’’



Yes, I do remember Mountbatten—that dashing viceroy to India in the dying days of the British raj played by Peter O’Toole in the movie ``Gandhi’’—being killed. I do not remember the young teenager who was also killed in the bombing. But his father would never ever forget. It has stayed in his heart, in his mind, in that cold dark depth where few could enter.

The story said that under the terms of the 1998 Good Friday accord that brought an uneasy peace to Northern Ireland, hard-line prisoners were released early from jail. Among them was Thomas McMahon, the bomber who killed Maxwell’s son and three others. He was freed in 1998.

Maxwell, 68, a retired school teacher, said of the bomber who scarred his life: ``I would want to meet him. If there is any sign that we share a common humanity, it would be worth it.’’

He added: ``If he could come halfway toward seeing my point of view, it would be worthwhile.’’

The story said that it took Maxwell 18 years to pluck up the courage to see a psychotherapist and relive that nightmare day when his son ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time.

``It was unfinished business,’’ Maxwell said. ``I was holding it all in. I cried for two hours. That was the big turning point for me.’’

Maxwell could very well be a Filipino, a universal Everyman or Everyvictim of senseless violence.

You never know. You walk the streets on blistering, hot days or on wet, soggy nights and you never know who among the people you meet are grieving the loss of loved ones or are carrying the unhealed wounds from some hideous crime done to their person. The walking wounded, if you pardon the cliché, we will always have with us and they have been growing in number lately.

You watch courtroom proceedings where those accused of heinous crimes are sentenced and it is not only the convicts and their families that let out primal screams. The victims and their families who are, at last, supposedly getting justice weep and gnash their teeth just as hard, saying that nothing, but nothing, could ever take away the pain.

The lesson, they say, is ``for the others’’ that they may not commit the same crime. Their victory is ``for the others’’, that they may not suffer the same. As for themselves, they could only hope that some normalcy—it is hard for them to pronounce the word joy--would creep back into their lives.

I think of these things, during these oppressive summer days when we constantly look up to the heavens to beg for the relief of rain, even acid-laced rain, to cool our heated brows. I think of all these as I see the images of those who are crushed, those whose hopes are dashed.

Rape survivor Karen Vertido is holding her head high because some other kind of justice, not necessarily legal justice, and the wave of support from women will carry her far. She is not defeated and she will not be alone.

Journalists are being murdered one after another. In some dark alleys or inside public vehicles, helpless, hard-working citizens are being robbed of their meager possessions. There is no sense in killing someone for a cell phone or a wallet.

The small-time felons always say they did not mean to kill but, uh, things got out of hand. Ows? And what about those who, in the name of ideology, planted bombs in the LRT, buses, the marketplaces, malls, piers, the ferries, harming those who knew nothing about causes? What about those who kidnapped and killed their prey, those who maimed and beat the life out of those they wanted to be their ``Brod’’? Brod daw. Ask the mother of frat neophyte Lenny Villa what it is like to lose a son.

``Sana maramdaman mo rin,’’ (I hope you get to feel what it is like) is the tearful refrain of those who will be hurting all their lives. As if that would make the pain subside.

There is, at some point, a need on the part of victims and survivors to confront the ghosts and the demons. In the case of Maxwell, it is not so much to say to the bomber, ``Behold what you have done.’’ Maybe it is not even to get an answer to `Why did you do it?’’ for Maxwell might get the plainest reply.

Suddenly I think of Pope John Paul II meeting with his assassin Mehmet Ali Agca in prison. That kind. But you don’t do that with a cell phone snatcher who killed.

To look into each other’s eyes, to stand on the same ground at last, and together, to behold the evil that was done and also the good that might yet be. Maxwell has been waiting more than 20 years for the moment. I hope it comes.

Will Malacanang let down Aetas to favor CDC?

First the good news. Praise be to the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP) for taking the side of the Aetas of Mabalacat, Pampanga and Bamban, Tarlac by honoring their ancestral land claim. The NCIP even increased the original claim of 5,515 hectares granted by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources in 1997 to more than 10,000 hectares in 2004.

The bad news is that Clark Development Corporation (CDC) has been contesting this since the beginning. And pressures from Malacanang, through a directive sent around Sept. 2004, prompted NCIP to hold in abeyance the awarding of the Certificate of Ancestral Domain Title (CADT).

Next week, starting May 19, a revalidation process will again be done, even as Aeta beneficiaries are protesting. For after a century of struggle, since the Americans occupied Aeta land and turned it into a huge military base, the Aetas thought victory was theirs. They Aetas are in for a rude awakening if their own government will let them down.

Here are some facts from NCIP documents.

As mentioned in historical accounts, in the 1700s, during the days when bravery was the highest virtue in the land, Juanico, the Son of Arap the Aeta, was chosen to lead the clan in what is now known as San Nicolas.

A Spanish document (obtained from the Bureau of Archives) containing a descriptive report corresponding to the year 1891 and the creation of Tarlac attests to the occupancy of the Aetas. On page 3 of the English translation, it says that the Negritos and Balugas were nomads living on the mountains located at the West of Capas and Bamban.



From 1900 to 1950, during the American occupation, many parts of the Aeta Ancestral Domains were taken as part of the US Military Camps (Fort Stosenberg later re-named Clark Field Military Reservation). However, in manifest recognition of the rights to these lands, the Americans did not prevent the Aetas from cultivating their lands within the areas taken as reservation. For 50 years it was exclusively the Aetas who were cultivating lands within the areas taken as military camp.

As early as 1975, the Aetas of Mabalacat and Bamban, have written petitions for the recognition of their ancestral land to then Pres. Ferdinand Marcos. This was reiterated sometime in 1982 and 1983, when they filed a ``petition for exclusion of 2,628 hectares from coverage of the Sacobia Development Authority projects for exclusive Negrito Resettlement Site, Negrito ancestral lands of Bamban from pre-hispanic era to present’’. Their petitions did not yield results.

In March 14, 1993 the DENR created Department Administrative Order (DAO) No. 2 for the identification, recognition and delineation of ancestral lands/domains claims of Indigenous Peoples. The Bamban Aeta Tribal Association, representing several other Aeta communities in Tarlac, filed an application. Their claim was processed.

DENR approved the Aetas’ claim and issued R03-CADC-107 dated Nov. 21, 1997 over 5,515 hectares within the area of Bamban, Tarlac.

On Jan. 13, 1998, Romeo S. David, president and CEO of CDC wrote then Executive Secretary Alexander Aguirre requesting that the CADC 107 be declared null and void. Aguirre formed a Joint Action Team (JAT) to look into CADC 107. The JAT findings on the extent of the ancestral domain more or less tallied with what DENR had approved.

With the birth of the Indigenous Peoples Rights Act in 1997, a petition for the conversion of the same into Certificate of Ancestral Domain Title (CADT) was filed by the Aetas. Processing of the petition of turning CADC to CADT (from claim to title) were done from Jan. 2003 to April 2004. Publication of the technical description (and an erratum) and map of the claim was likewise done last year.

The petition was then heard by NCIP en banc on Oct. 6, 2004, Nov. 9 and 12, 2004.

On Nov. 24, 2004, CDC manifested its intention to question the NCIP approval of the claim and the CADT issuance.

With pressures from Malacañang, the NCIP held in abeyance the awarding of the CADT and entered into negotiations with CDC, under the auspices of the Department of Land Reform (DLR). CDC wanted the ancestral domain to cover only 1,600 hectares.

Consequently, NCIP, CDC and the DLR agreed that a revalidation of the area and the beneficiaries of the CADT shall be conducted by the three agencies. (The Clark Special Economic Zone covers 28,041 hectares; the CADT area is 10,684 hectares. The number of Aeta beneficiaries is 2,973.)

Aeta beneficiaries of the CADT have appealed to Pres. Arroyo saying that there is no basis to the claim of CDC that only 1,600 hectares should be awarded to them. They are also opposing the revalidation of the CADT, since the period prescribed has lapsed. Under the IPRA, the law provides for a 15-day period (after publication) for opposing the claim. Under the same law, the CDC should have brought the decision of the NCIP to the Court of Appeals, and not before the Office of the President or the DLR.

Here’s a sentence from an NCIP document: ``Said ownership by the Aeta tribe of the area known as Clark is undisputed and uncontroverted.’’

A source from NCIP said that the area covered by the Aetas’ ancestral domain should first be established and then awarded once and for all. And if portions of the domain have to be used by CDC then a memorandum of agreement should be made between the parties concerned.

In the Visayas, the brewing issue between the Aetas and private land developers in the hip party island of Boracay is something to watch. More on this another time.

The mountains cry out

``Like Moses leading his people out of the plagues, in the time of terror and devotion.’’ –the Inquirer on Reynaldo Punongbayan, its 1991 Filipino of the Year

I just finished going over the book ``Eruption and Exodus: Mount Pinatubo and the Aytas of Zambales’’ for which I wrote the foreword in 1991. This book chronicles the life of the Aytas and the Franciscan Sisters who lived and worked among them, before, during and after the volcanic eruption that saw much of Central Luzon covered in ash.

In it is written that it was in April 1991 that Mount Pinatubo, dormant for more than 600 years, started to awake and grumble. Two months later, in June 1991, the world witnessed an eruption like no other in a long time. The sky turned opaque gray. Ash and rocks rose from the belly of the earth and rained down on towns and cities. Faraway places in Asia even got a sprinkling of volcanic powder.

4:00 p.m., 2 April 1991—that was the day the volcano started to wake up. Fifteen years later, on April 28, 2005, the man who confronted the volcano during those crucial moments, the man who worked to make scientific sense of the grand havoc long, long after the fire had quieted down, volcanologist Reynaldo Punongbayan, 68, left this earth via the bosom of a mountain. That is putting it gently. To say that he died in a helicopter crash is so jarring to the heart.



The grief of those he left behind—his family, his colleagues, the community of scientists—is immeasurable. But I am sure there is some consolation in the fact the former head of the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology and, at the time of his death, governor of the Philippine National Red Cross, and his colleagues all died in the line of duty. They were out there to survey the crags and wounds of the hills that dumped mud, rocks, water and fallen logs on poor shoreline communities several months ago. They were on their way to Dingalan, Aurora. They were to be harbingers of information, disaster-preparedness and long-term rehabilitation efforts. But that day, April 28, they—all nine of them--were being called home to yonder eternal hills.

``It turned out to be his last mission to save lives’’ was the lead sentence of the Inquirer banner story last Friday. Reprinted on the front page was the January 1992 piece on Punongbayan who was Inquirer’s very first Filipino of the Year. The one who wrote that un-bylined piece sent five successive lengthy text messages to my cell phone. He was reveling in his resurrected work, describing how that magma of a piece was spewed, with the editor in chief breathing down his neck.

``Heady’’ was how he felt, he said. After all, he had penned, for the Inquirer, the first and final tribute to the great volcano man. There is joy and pride in having written about a great public servant, death and loss notwithstanding.

I have always been in awe of scientists, both the laboratory based and the outdoor types, and how they try to figure out the mysteries of this planet and the universe out there. Mount Pinatubo, with all the fire and the brimstone in its gut, is just a pimple on the face of the earth, the Grand Canyon a small gash.

I’ve flown twice over the Pinatubo disaster area, the first time by helicopter and the next time by hot-air balloon when the place, to my surprise, had become a giant movie set. Both experiences were sobering. I felt like a dragonfly flying across a desert. A contemplative desert experience, I must say. During such times, do volcanologists and geologists give way to mystical thoughts, do they hear the music of the universe?

The Lubos na Alyansa ng mga Katutubong Ayta ng Sambales (LAKAS), the Ayta authors of the book I mentioned, is organizing a tribute for Punongbayan. He is their brother. In 2001, during the 10th anniversary of the Mount Pinatubo eruption, the Aytas came to the Phivolcs headquarters for the commemoration. I could see the strong bond between Punongbayan and the Aytas.

What remains of Punongbayan’s mortal body and those of two others have yet to be identified. There must be precious little left as the chopper and its passengers went up in a blaze. Death was swift and instant which is not the way most people go to the afterlife. But it is not as horrific as we picture it to be, some scientists have found out.

Best-selling doctor-author Sherwin Nuland (``How We Die: Reflections on Life’s Final Chapter’’) who has scientifically studied the phenomenon of death says: ``Whatever the source, humankind and many animals seem to be protected at the instant when sudden death approaches—protected not only from the horror of death itself but from certain kinds of counterproductive actions that might ensure it or extend its anguish…

``Like so many other biochemical explanations of obscure, seemingly mystical phenomena, this one has no argument with the religious among us. I am neither the first to wonder about the mysterious ways in which God is thought to work His inscrutable will nor the source of the rumor that He may use chemicals to do it.’’ You’ve heard about endorphins.

With the help of science there is no doubt that the remains of those who perished would be identified for the peace of the bereaved. How these remains will be laid to rest is up to the families. For Punongbayan, a news report said that he had, beforehand, expressed a wish that his ashes be made part of the Taal Volcano area. (But why not Pinatubo?)

That, I think, is giving back one’s mortal shell to the earth in the truest sense. No urn, no tomb. Just the mountains of his heart. Punongbayan has chosen a perfect place. His spirit lives.