Disappeared

Today, in observance of the International Week of the Disappeared, a gathering of human rights advocates, relatives and friends of desaparecidos (Spanish for disappeared) will take place at the Bantayog ng mga Bayani. Commemoration rites will be held at 5 p.m. at the new Salonga Building’s Yuchengco Auditorium.

If you have not been to that hallowed place, then go some time. It is at the corner of EDSA and Quezon Ave. You can’t miss the Castrillo bronze landmark, a soaring monument of a mother lifting up her fallen son from the ground. Quietly explore the place, light candles and run your fingers on the names of contemporary heroes and martyrs etched on black granite. (The desaparecidos as a group have their own Bantayog in the Baclaran Church grounds.)

Today is also the 30th anniversary of the disappearance of lawyer and activist Hermon C. Lagman. He is one of the many activists who disappeared and believed to have been summarily executed during the dark years of martial rule. The Lagman family and the Families of Victims of Involuntary Disappearance (FIND) are the organizers of today’s affair.

The search never ends even as new names are added to the list today, an era supposed to be far removed from those terrifying Marcos-dominated years. But dark forces continue to stalk the land, defying laws and values that are meant to put in place justice and humanity in this country.

We have not really put the past behind. The mourning continues. Sadly, politically and ideologically motivated abduction and disappearances have become part of our culture. And no one side has the monopoly of victimhood or of glaring impunity.

Numbers are cold. Behind the numbers are names. Behind the names on the list are real persons. They had lives, they have families, friends and communities that grieve for them and have become diminished because of their disappearance.



Here is a story I wrote more than 20 years ago, about two mothers who found the remains of their sons. I exhumed it, so to speak, while my thoughts were flying to the families of the missing, especially the family of Jason Burgos who disappeared last April. Jason is the son of the late Joe Burgos who fought for press freedom.

Here are excerpts from the story. Was this so long ago?

****

“Dig here!” she ordered. “Dig! My son is buried right here where I stand.” No one quite believed Henedina Portugal, but when the men shoveled the earth and turned it over, there was her son, Celso, slowly becoming a part of it all.

The place is called Gethsemane, somewhere at the Umalag Crossing…and many refer to it as the place where “salvage” victims are buried.

Manang Dina herself could not quite explain how she knew her son was buried right there. In prayer she had begged that her son to be returned to him. “Where is he? Return him to me,” she pleaded.

Her boy Celso was all of 16, in his third year in high school, when he disappeared. He had been missing for two years along with three others…

It had been a long, painful search. There had been prayer rallies on behalf of the missing, habeas corpus hearings, a letter to military authorities, but all these had yielded minimal results. She then had to find her own leads, track down possible witnesses.

Her two older sons are military men, one a corporal and the other a draftee. They had been very upset about the fate of their younger brother…

Looking back on the day of the exhumation in Gethsemane, Manang Dina said she was grateful to a lot of people, especially those witnesses who had given her leads…

In her home are prominently displayed photographs of Celso. But, she said, “When my older sons in the military come home, I hide the photos. It hurts them to remember their dead brother. Revenge is not yours, I tell them.

“Whose side am I on? I don’t know. All I know is that we have not broken any rules. But they call us rebels. If that is what we are, then we are Christian rebels. The church is full of us on Sundays. Who are the rebels—the ones who steal or the victims?

Manang Dina’s thoughts turned to Celso: “I raised him, took care of him. When he burned with fever I would rush him to the hospital. But they made him into a raw dish.”

In another scene…another mother.

Cry, cry, the women urged her. It is better that you cry. But she wouldn’t. Only much later would she let it all out, her sobs intensifying with every thud of the shovel that would give her some pieces of her son.

Ay anak, pastilan anak…she called out, ever so softly… She was weeping now, painfully beautiful in her sorrow as all mothers are. (I have her lamentations on tape and photographs of her while she waited.) The nuns gently led her to the shade of a coconut tree, while her husband held her close to him.

It rained that afternoon, making exhumation even more difficult. The air reeked with the stench of rotting flesh. Here were lumps of hair, then a piece of bone with flesh on them. Whose were these? Where were the skulls? The limbs?

****

Parang kailan lang, as the song goes. Persons still disappear and are never found.

FIND is an organization of families, relatives, friends and colleagues of the disappeared victims and surfaced (yes!) desaparecidos.

Founded in 1985, FIND continues to protest against so-called involuntary disappearances worldwide and helps in the search of the missing. It also helps ease the pain of the bereaved by helping them through livelihood programs and counseling. Contact FIND at mail@find.org.ph or 9210069.

Where have the piano makers gone?

Where have all the piano makers gone? Gone with globalization every one.

That’s my take on the vanished piano-making industry in the Philippines. Almost gone too are the craftsmen and artisans who built these great musical instruments that had brought music and liveliness to Philippine homes and concert halls.

But not entirely. Australia-based Filipino visual artist Alwin Reamillo, who comes from a family of piano makers, is back, trying to prove that the music from Philippine-made pianos need not die. Not if the few remaining piano builders could be brought back to old abandoned workshops, and with their hands (some gnarled because of tricycle driving), pick up the scattered pieces, strings, ivory keys, metal scraps and all, and put them together.

This is what Reamillo’s art exhibit “Mang Emo+Mag-himo Grand Piano Project” is doing. This exhibit is not Reamillo’s alone. Collaborating with him are piano craftsmen Jaime Pastorfide, Sabas Rabino Jr. and Tranquilino Tosio Jr., all from the Reamillo family’s closed-down piano factory that produced the Wittemberg pianos.

The exhibit’s catchy name comes from the nickname of Reamillo’s father Decimo, who was fondly called Mang Emo. “Mag-himo” is Visayan for “to make”. Mang Emo, Reamillo says, learned the rudiments of piano making by working for a piano company. Later, with his trained craftsmen, and with his brother and nephew as partners, he built a company that began with piano repair and restoration. They later went into fine pianos, some of which are in the Philamlife Auditorium, Miriam College and the Benedictine Sisters in Leyte.



The two-part, two-site commemorative visual installation is part of Reamillo’s four-month Asialink Visual Arts Residency at the Cultural Center of the Philippines and Galleria Duemila. The exhibits present the documented development and restorative construction of an art case for an upright and a parlor grand piano.

In 2005, Reamillo came home from Australia to immerse himself in what was left of the family-owned factory that closed in the 1990s. He tracked down people, especially the craftsmen who had gone their separate ways. He found one tending a fishball stall in a slum area.

Reamillo flung open the gates of the old factory and rummaged through the rubble. What he found could have belonged to the dumpsite if not for the keen eyes of the craftsmen who saw in them music waiting to be heard. Cast iron parts, sounding boards, wood, patterns, and boxes of ivory keys lay strewn about.

But with determination, Reamillo was able to make the place hum again. The key: community values and the participation of every one. These, Reamillo says, were values the late Mang Emo imparted to his workers. He was brother and fellow worker to every one.

The theme of migration is evident in the work of Reamillo who, as a Filipino migrant in Australia, has experienced what being swept away to a distant shore means. The sea and its creatures turn up in his mixed media work and on the casings of his pianos. The ghost of explorer Captain Cook lives in his ocean themes.

In Galleria Duemila (210 Loring St. Pasay City, tel. 8319990), part 2 of the exhibition presents an art case grand piano as a work in progress. A space in the gallery has been transformed into a workshop. A photo documentation has been mounted along with mixed-media paintings using the “transfer technique”. The exhibition will close on May 31 at 6 p.m. with piano performances by various Filipino artists, Ingrid Sala Santamaria and Jonathan Coo (who will both play Rachmaninoff), Eira May Tardo (Bach), Harold Galang (Smetana), and Greg Zuniega (Beethoven).

A graduate of the National High School for the Arts in Makiling, Reamillio attended the University of the Philippines where he studied visual arts. He calls himself a cross-media artist who uses painting, sculpture, sound, installation and performance. His works have been part of several collaborative projects abroad.

So will the piano-making industry in the Philippines be resuscitated? Can finely crafted pianos compete in prices with factory assembly-line brand-name pianos from China or Japan? Maybe not.

Globalization, trade liberalization and all that, have intruded into the fine art and soulful making of the finest of musical instruments. What have become of the piano makers, the piano tuners, the carvers, the metal workers, the assemblers?

Have you seen the innards of a piano? It is a wondrous thing to see, a work of art in itself.

Reamillo muses: “While I have often perceived that old piano factory as a decayed and emptied shell, not dissimilar to old perceptions of the Philippines as a nation in crisis, I have come to realize that creative transformation and change is possible. I see great possibility in breathing new life into this emptied shell…”

****

Those of you who’ve followed the music path of internationally acclaimed conductor Helen Quach who was here last April for her comeback concerts with the Manila Symphony Orchestra (MSO) could read about her journey to healing in the Sunday Inquirer Magazine, May 27.

And, music lovers, treat yourself to a night of Sir Edward William Elgar’s romantic music at 7:30 p.m., Friday, June 1, at St. Cecilia’s Hall of St. Scholastica’s College.

The MSO conducted by Arturo Molina and young American violinist and gifted composer William Harvey are the evening’s treat. English romantic composer Elgar is known best for his orchestral work, particularly the “Enigma Variations”, (which inspired the hit Rob Dougan track, “Clubbed to Death”, in the soundtrack of the 1999 smash-hit “The Matrix”). The program will feature Sir Elgar’s violin, orchestra and chamber music compositions “Chanson de Nuit, Op15, No. 1”, “Salut d’ Amour, Op. 12, ”, “Enigma Variations, Op.36” and “Violin Concerto in b minor, Op. 61”.

Elgar’s 150th birth anniversary is on June 2, 2007.

A teacher, a sheltering tree

It was hard keeping track of the body count or the exact number of casualties during the campaign period and the election day itself. The Inquirer put at 147 the death toll since the election campaign began on Jan. 14, the Philippine National Police total is 143.

I know the number stands for individual lives with faces and names, and with a network of families, friends and colleagues grieving for them. But sometimes the tally and the list of names just seem to numb feelings because they are just numbers to those of us who do not know the victims personally. This is not to say they do not matter.

One case suddenly stood out of the rest though. It was the death of a teacher. She died with a poll watcher, their bodies found in a toilet where they had taken refuge after gunmen wearing bonnets set the school house ablaze.

Why should a teacher die this way?

The name of the high school teacher is Nellie Banaag and the local poll watcher is Leticia Ramos. Their names happen to be familiar Filipino names. They are Everyteacher, Everypollwatcher. Banaag is a common family name in Batangas and there must be thousands of Leticia Ramoses in the Philippines, two former diplomats among them.



Several years ago a teacher, ______ Tatlonghari, who tried to protect the ballot was also killed in Batangas. A school building is now named after her. I remember getting a call from a nun in Batangas and getting sketchy details on what happened. Tatlonghari’s name got into the news but she was only one of many. When the frenzy died down, she emerged as special. She was a teacher.

Now another teacher is killed and I feel a knife stabbing my heart. The way she and the pollwatcher died was horrible. Those who killed them were without mercy, without conscience and I am tempted to say they deserve the same or even worse. But no, no one, not even the most loathsome of human beings deserves to die that way. That is, to be trapped, suffocated and burned in a violent rampage that was the handiwork of pitiless men. What did a teacher do to deserve this?

Two weeks ago the media world celebrated World Press Freedom Day and remembered those who died in the line of duty—88 Filipino journalists since 1986, the year we were supposed to have regained our lost freedoms. Journalists being felled has become commonplace.

Nowadays, getting killed or murdered seems to be part of a journalist’s job description. But not a teacher’s. Journalists are out there, roaming like lone wolves so to speak, with no one to look after them or watch their backs for them while they challenge fate and demigods. We are supposed to live dangerously.

A teacher roams too, but with her mind, her heart. She takes her young students to worlds they never knew before. The physical dangers are supposed to be almost nil as long as they are in the confines of their classrooms. Alas, not anymore if you go by what have happened in US campuses, the massacre in Virginia Tech and Columbine High among them, which were the handiwork of students with diseased minds, spawned by a problematic society and genes gone awry because of it.

But a Filipino teacher watching at the polls, making sure that the conduct of the elections is peaceful is not supposed to be in the crosshairs of a gun. She has no intention to grab power. In the case of Banaag, she was just doing her job. She even ran and hid to get out of harm’s way.

A photo shows Banaag’s young son, Galileo Jr., holding his beautiful mother’s photo. What does one say to this child now? That his mother is a hero? What would that mean to one who needs his mother more than the honors that would be heaped on her? And what does one say to Banaag’s husband? What does one say to her family, her friends, and of course, her students?

When a teacher is killed, I imagine a huge sheltering tree being felled. It comes down with a monumental thud, shaking the forest ground and making the other trees sway and tremble. So many living things are orphaned by the falling of one huge tree. The birds, insects, animals and plants that thrive on it, even the village beyond is affected by one tree’s falling.

A teacher is like a tree. Imagine the hundreds, even thousands, of students who will pass through her and learn from her, who will call her name and remember it the rest of their lives. There are teachers we remember so vividly and who remain part of the history of our souls.

And there are evil men who deprive a generation of learners from knowing one teacher who might have changed their lives, influenced their thinking or inspired them to be the best they could be. Because they burned the schoolhouse in Barangay Pinagbayanan in Taysan, Batangas.

But who were those men? Who sent them? They came before the break of dawn, at 3:20 a.m., when bodies were tired and sleep would have been the better option for those teachers who had spent a whole day making sure that voters exercised their rights. Evil came hooded and armed, snatched ballot boxes and poured gasoline on them and set them ablaze.

What was this supposed to accomplish?

Classes will open in a couple of weeks and there will be no Mrs. Banaag for the students to greet, for her fellow teachers to spend pleasant moments with. Oh, if only she had stayed home, defied her superiors and refused to do her duty, she would still be alive. But no, she went out there, like many teachers like her, to quietly fulfill a duty.

She will not be forgotten.

Lola Masing, comfort woman

Tomasa Dioso Salinog of San Jose, Antique, one of the many World War II so-called comfort women in Asia who suffered sexual abuse under the Japanese Imperial Army, died of multiple organ failure last April 6. She was 78.

I met Lola Masing at the International Military War Crimes Tribunal held in Tokyo in 2000. Lola Masing led a dozen former comfort women from Philippines and joined dozens from several Asian countries (China, Taiwan, Malaysia, Indonesia, East Timor, South Korea, among them) who bravely testified. A Dutch woman victim and a contrite former Japanese soldier also told their stories.

I remember that gathering to be a heart-rending occasion. Aging women went up the stage to testify, sometimes weeping, fainting, while old footage, photos and documents on the atrocities were being flashed to serve as backdrop. Some women from China who managed to attend were victims of the infamous “Rape of Nanking”, a well documented historical tragedy.

Lola Masing was only 13 in 1942 when Japanese soldiers broke into their house and took her away. The soldiers beheaded her father when he tried to save his only daughter.

“For two years,” Lola Masing narrated in her March 2007 letter to Japanese Prime Minister ABe, “I was kept as a slave to be raped and abused by Japanese soldiers. They took away the only member of my family. Alone, in abject poverty and with no one to take care of me, I could not go back to school and had to work in order to survive. The war and sexual slavery had destroyed my life and my future…



“Despite my poverty and poor health, I rejected the Asian Women’s Fund. The atonement being offered…could not compensate for the violation of my rights as a woman and the grievous crimes that were committed against me. The government of Japan should be accountable for its responsibility for what the Japanese military did…

“I am appealing to you, Prime Minister Abe, to acknowledge the truths we have told. This is the justice I have been longing and praying for. We are aware of Japan’s efforts for peace but there can be no peace in this world unless there is justice. I hope justice will come before I die.”

Lola Masing remembered being brought to a house near the garrison on Gobierno St. where she was raped and abused. The garrison was under the 170th Battalion, 4th Company of the Independent Infantry Regiment. After several months in captivity, the young Tomasa managed to escape. But in 1943, she was recaptured by a Col. Okumura who brought her to a house where she remained as a comfort woman and all-around worker. Okumura and his friends would take turns abusing her.

Lola Masing’s ordeals were similar to those of Lola Rosa Henson of Pampanga, the first comfort woman to emerge from the shadows and tell her story.

In Nov. 1992 Lola Masing also emerged to tell her story. More women followed suit. In 1993, Japanese lawyers interviewed Lola Masing in Antique so that a petition could be filed in a Japanese court. With 17 other Filipino survivors, a case was filed at the Tokyo District court. On Oct. 15, 1993, Lola Masing and Lola Rosa presented their opening disposition at the first oral hearing. Her statement:

“I decided to file a lawsuit because I know this is one way to obtain justice for the wrong done to me by the Japanese Imperial Army. My testimony as well as that of other comfort women point to the fact that a war crime of rape and sexual slavery had been committed against us.

“As a surviving victim of war, I can only offer my experience to serve as a lesson for all governments and the international community that wars bring only violence, and women become the most violated human beings in times of war.

“I demand from the Japanese government to fulfill its legal responsibility, sincerely apologize and grant compensation to all victims of sexual slavery. Justice cannot be fully served unless the Japanese government faces its responsibility.”

In 1996, Lola Masing joined the “Victims Reject-Stop the Asian Women’s Fund Assembly”. This was to stress that the Japanese government should not escape its responsibility by channeling the compensation through a non-government group.

Japan’s Supreme Court dismissed the women’s petition on Dec. 25, 2002. Lola Masing went to Tokyo in 2005 to speak at the opening of the Women’s Active Museum in Tokyo.

There were Japanese individuals who came to Lola Masing’s aid and take care of her needs. Among them was Fr. Paul Kazuyoshi Okura, head of the Catholic Archdiocesan Committee for Justice and Peace. A modest house was built for Lola Masing in Antique so she could grow old with dignity. Fr. Okura’s father was a Japanese soldier who fought in the Philippines and later took his own life.

Fr. Okura’s moving tribute: “Lola Masing was drawn up to heaven on Good Friday (2 p.m. in the Philippines, 3 p.m. in Tokyo), on the day (and time) Jesus Christ offered his life as savior of mankind. I would like to honor the memory of Lola Masing in prayer for forgiveness for the gravest crime Japan has committed.

“I place my heart into praying that Lola Masing be united with Tatsue Takashima (the lovely Japanese woman who chaired the support network and visited Antique several times) and everyone who had passed away before her, so that she will become one thousand winds from San Jose and fly above us.”

The Antique provincial government’s museum recently included Lola Masing’s life in its opening exhibit, said Susan Macabuag, a women’s advocate who had been taking care of Lola Masing’s needs.

You could read the essay I wrote on the comfort women in volume 7 (page 110) of the 10-volume “Kasaysayan: The Story of the Filipino People”. Here, the long-denied ignominous chapter was first written into history.

Under siege on World Press Freedom Day

It’s World Press Freedom Day today and the son of one of the country’s media icons is missing. Abduction is the most likely reason for the disappearance of Jonas “Jay Jay” Burgos who was reportedly seen being taken away by unidentified men at a mall. Who were they? Where have they taken him? Why?

I hope this column becomes stupid reading because Jason was found alive while I am writing this (yesterday). But this is not the case right now while I am emailing this to the Inquirer close to deadline time.

I’ve never used the press releases of those running for office but re-electionist Sen. Ralph Recto sent something well said, he could very well have said it for us, the members of the media (this is not a plug and I have not yet decided whether I will vote for him):

“The country owes the Burgos family a great deal of gratitude for the freedom it enjoys today (and) it should repay their valor by finding a missing kin. We cannot let the son of a great man who helped give us back our democracy be a victim of undemocratic methods his father strongly raged against. During dangerous times his father did not disappear for teaching us about freedom so why should his son go missing for simply teaching some folks about farming in these supposedly normal times?”



Did Jason’s abductors know he was the son of a media brave, a crusading journalist who suffered imprisonment and harassment so that we could enjoy our freedoms today? The late Jose “Jose” Burgos, Jr. put his life, family and modest fortune on the line when he published “We Forum” and, later, “Malaya” toward the end of the martial law years. His efforts certainly paid off when the Marcos dictatorship came crumbling down, with a lot of credit going to the so-called mosquito or alternative press that Joe was part of.

Today, let us remember Joe and pray for his missing son. At 5:30 late this afternoon, the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines will lead a candle lighting ceremony at the Boys’ Scout Circle on Timog Ave. There will be no speeches, only reading of poetry on press freedom. Come and join, you do not have to be a member of the media.

This is a tribute to the journalists who were killed in the line of duty—88 since 1986 when our freedoms were supposed to have been restored.

Joe died two years ago after a lingering illness. He may not have died a martyr but he gave much from the substance of his life. His name is now engraved on the Wall of Remembrance of the Bantayog ng mga Bayani (Monument for Heroes) that honors those who lived and died so that we could gain back our freedoms. The International Press Institute named Joe one of the world’s 50 Press Freedom Heroes of the 20th Century.

Today, as I go over the two slim volumes of “Press Freedom Under Siege”, I am filled with nostalgia for those days when boldness in media meant reaping results, not attracting bullets which is the case these days.
One of the pieces is by human rights lawyer Joker P. Arroyo (a senator now running for reelection) who was my defense lawyer then. He wrote about Joe’s woes: “Dec. 1982 was a chilling month for media. In a twin move, the government attempted to intimidate and hamstrung the press. On Dec. 8, ‘We Forum’ was shut down when military intelligence units stopped the opposition newspaper’s presses, sequestered all its moveable equipment, vehicles and papers, and padlocked its offices. Editor Jose Burgos, Jr. was arrested, detained, along with his staff and columnists. Even members of his production and circulation departments were hauled to jail.

“A week after, the National Intelligence Board, the country’s highest intelligence body, summoned one after another, eight women journalists for interrogation at the forbidding grounds of an army camp…”

A lecture delivered by the revered former Sen. Jose W. Diokno to writers is also included in “Press Freedom Under Siege”. This should be read by today’s aspiring journalists. Spoke he:

“How, you may well ask, can we take those risks? In today’s climate of fear, how can we afford to face those dangers?

“The answer, I suggest, is that it is precisely because of the climate of fear that we cannot afford not to face those dangers. We must damn the risks, and in a sense emulating our Moslem juramentados, say what must be said, and suffer the consequences. The alternative is to be, in Rizal’s words, ‘always running after butterflies and flowers’ (“El Filibusterismo”) and to die not only “without seeing the dawn break over our country” (“Noli Me Tangere”) but knowing that we have held back the dawn. Writers can lay down their pens and tear up their manuscripts but I know of no human—and writers are nothing if they are not human—who can completely silence his conscience.

“If your task is as dangerous as was Rizal’s it is more difficult for at least two reasons. One is that today, the enemy is not as concrete, nor as obvious as the friar was…The second difficulty lies in the clash of ideology that characterizes our situation. In Rizal’s time, the conflict was clear-cut: self-determination against imperialism…

“But I do have but one request—which you are free to disregard:…use a language that our people understand, not only with their minds but with their souls…please write for the people, not the elite, the people of whom Elias said:

“’The people do not complain because they have no voice; they do not move because they are in a stupor; and you say that they do not suffer because you have not seen how their hearts bleed. But someday, you will see and hear!’” (Noli Me Tangere).