Burma's Ka Hsaw Wa: RM Awardee fights for human, nature's rights

Philippine Daily Inquirer/Feature/by Ma. Ceres P. Doyo

MANILA, Philippines—ONLY A SCAR remains on the right arm of Ka Hsaw Wa where there used to be a tattoo of the word “zeal” in Burmese. When he became a hunted man, he scraped it off his skin. Not many people have gone through the suffering and dangers this man went through in his youth. He has lived to boldly tell the tale and more importantly, he has made it his goal to make life better for those who continue to suffer.

Ka Hsaw Wa was only 18 when he had to flee the oppressive rule of the military junta in Burma (Myanmar). As a freedom activist, he experienced detention and torture. He later took to the jungle in order to continue the struggle.

Armed resistance was an option. But he realized there were other paths he could take and nonviolent means he could use. This was by taking up the pen, record what he had seen and bring them to the attention of the world to effect change.

Today, from a distance, he continues to be involved in his homeland, hoping that one day his people would be free.

Ka Hsaw Wa, 39, a human rights and environmental advocate, is this year’s Ramon Magsaysay Awardee for Emergent Leadership. This Burmese is being recognized for “dauntlessly pursuing nonviolent yet effective channels of redress, exposure and education for the defense of human rights, the environment and democracy in Burma.”

He is only the 10th awardee in his category and the fourth Burmese among the 277 RM laureates.

The Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation (RMAF) added, in 2001, the Emergent Leadership Award that is conferred on individuals younger than 40. Starting this year, RMAF will no longer classify the older awardees into the other five categories as it did the past 50 years. This change would make the selection more expansive and inclusive.

No to arms

When the student uprising against the dictatorship in Burma erupted in 1988, Ka Hsaw Wa, then 17, was among those arrested, detained and tortured. An estimated 10,000 people were killed at that time.

After his release, he, like many others, left his family behind and sought refuge in the jungle. He saw suffering up close, listened to stories of atrocities and recorded them so the world would know.

“All they knew was to take up arms,” Ka Hsaw Wa told the Inquirer. He decided to find new ways and means.

“We have to have new tactics and approaches. There have been big debates on these in Burma,” he added.

A former British colony, Burma, a country of 48 million people, is ruled by one of the most repressive governments in Asia. A China-backed military junta reigns and rules.

Gas pipeline

Making Thailand his base, Ka Hsaw Wa continued to listen and record stories of thousands of victims. He slipped in and out of Burma’s “black areas” unnoticed.

He spoke to many victims of the building of the Yadana gas pipeline financed by the US-based Unocal and the French corporation Total.

The biggest foreign investment in Burma at that time, Yadana was a project of the military junta which was the project’s biggest beneficiary. Construction and militarization caused the displacement of communities and the destruction of ecological diversity. Forced labor was imposed.

In 1992, Ka Hsaw Wa met visiting American law student Katie Redford who had entered to Burma to investigate human rights abuses.

They worked together and founded EarthRights International in 1995. They also became husband and wife.

One of EarthRights’ first urgent tasks was to file a case in the United States against Unocal. EarthRights accused Unocal of complicity with the military in committing environmental and human rights abuses.

The litigation took almost 10 years but there was victory at the end of the pipeline, so to speak. Unocal compensated the victims—petitioners who then committed part of the funds for humanitarian purposes.

Back to school

With that victory, a message and a warning had been delivered to Burma’s military government and foreign investors.

Inspired, Ka Hsaw Wa set out to investigate more projects in Burma and the larger Mekong region. Megadams and the Shwe natural gas pipeline were put on the watch list.

Despite the work, Ka Hsaw Wa found time to continue his education. “I was only a high school graduate when I left Burma,” he said.

He earned a bachelor’s degree equivalent from Vermont State University in the United States in 2003 and a master’s degree in intercultural leadership management from the School for International Training in Vermont in 2006. He used his new knowledge to further his causes.

Ka Hsaw Wa said he was once among those who had lobbied for economic sanctions against Burma. However, “because of those sanctions many lost their jobs.”

He said he would not oppose the coming election, hoping for “some kind of change.”

EarthRights

Ka Hsaw Wa is presently the director of EarthRights, which has offices in Thailand and the United States.

EarthRights is the meeting of human rights and the environment, combining the power of the law and the power of the people.

EarthRights Schools have been established in Thailand to train the young from Burma and other countries to be agents of change.

Of democracy leader and Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese icon who has been under house arrest for almost two decades, Ka Hsaw Wa said: “She cannot give up.”

Asked if it would be better for her to leave Burma, he said: “No, the people’s spirit will die if she does.”

Pining for home

A proud member of the Karen tribe (one of the three major cultural groups in Burma), Ka Hsaw Wa is sometimes referred to as the “White Elephant.”

Very energetic and articulate, he would make a strong leader in his country.

He said he pined to go home to a free Burma. The longing was evident. His mother had visited him in Thailand, he said, but his father passed away without them seeing each other again.

“I miss speaking my language,” he said. “I miss eating food with my people.”

RM Awardee Deep Joshi of India:Using head and heart to fight poverty

Philippine Daily Inquirer/Feature
by Ma. Ceres P. Doyo

MANILA, Philippines—“IF ALL YOU HAVE are bleeding hearts, it wouldn’t work. If you only have heads, then you are going to dictate solutions which do not touch the human chord.”

Words to remember from India’s Deep Joshi, one of the six recipients of this year’s Ramon Magsaysay Award.

Development workers, civil society advocates, and social activists take heed. You need both head and heart in order to truly serve. You need both empathy and knowledge in order to be effective.

The Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation is honoring Joshi, 62, “for his vision and leadership in bringing professionalism to the NGO movement in India and in truly combining ’head and heart’ in the transformative work of rural development.”

Joshi and the five other winners of this year’s Ramon Magsaysay Award were conferred the prizes on Monday afternoon at the Cultural Center of the Philippines. The five other awardees were Krisana Kraisintu of Thailand, Yu Xiaogang of China, Antonio Oposa Jr. of the Philippines, Ma Jun of China, and Ka Hsaw Wa of Burma (Myanmar), who each received medallions bearing the likeness of the late former President Magsaysay.

Giving and receiving

Joshi has blazed a trail in professionalizing development work especially among the rural poor of Central India through Pradan, a nonprofit organization he and his colleagues established in 1983.

“We thought of a name first, before we gave (the acronym) a meaning,” Joshi said in an interview. It is a practice also common among civil society groups in the Philippines.

The acronym Pradan stands for Professional Assistance for Development Action. But the word has a composite meaning of giving and receiving.

Pradan is a “school” in the service of grassroots communities. Good intentions alone would not qualify one to immerse in communities to effect change. One has to undergo formation to prepare one to serve effectively.

Pradan provides that formation, a learning experience for both head and heart that combines both theory and actual practice. University graduates from all over India who are filled with idealism make for great recruits.

In Pradan, they are groomed to do grassroots work and are guided in the field. Professionalism is key for Pradanites.

“I have received so much,” Joshi said. “I must give back to society.”

Raised in a remote village in Uttarahand in the Himalayas, Joshi was able to go beyond his village confines and earn a degree from National Institute of Technology in Allahabad and two master’s degrees—in engineering and management—at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

A vocation

He asked himself why highly educated people like him would want to devote their lives to village people and projects.

What is stopping them? Well, Joshi showed there was none to stop him. Instead of opting for a high-paying career, Joshi chose development work.

“Development work is considered intellectually inferior,” he said, “unlike science, industry or diplomacy. We want to prove that it is both a challenge and a noble choice.”

It is a calling, he added. “It is not just volunteerism, it is a vocation.”

Pradan’s programs are two-pronged—training of professionals and reducing poverty in communities. The latter takes many forms. And so Pradan must pick and train some of the best and brightest from all fields.

Empowering the poor

Pradan is not just a training ground. It works directly with India’s poorest communities, tribals among them, empowering them with technical and networking skills, project management and implementation.

Pradan helps income generating projects become profitable and sustainable. It organizes women’s self-help groups whether through spinning, agriculture, silkworm raising, micro-enterprises, dairy production or poultry raising.

People are taught how to farm productively through better farming practices. Livelihood projects must be based on sound management of natural resources.

Part of the training of Pradan’s apprentices is living with poor families. Joshi is pleased to say that many of the idealistic university recruits have stayed on with Pradan for many years. Those who have moved on join similar concerns, bringing with them what they have learned.

Great education

“It’s a great education that no university can provide,” Joshi said. There are plans for Pradan to partner with an educational institution.

Over the years, Pradan has reached over 170,000 families in over 3,000 villages in India’s poorest states. Over a thousand trainees have gone through apprenticeship. Pradan has more than 300 professionals on its staff, most of them spread out across India.Pradan also works with government. “India has a large rural development budget,” Joshi said. This is due to India’s economic growth in the last few years.

In the state of Madhya Pradesh, Pradan works with the state’s District Poverty Initiatives. Government funds could be used for infrastructure that supports livelihood programs.

Joshi said that two-thirds of Pradan’s funding came from trusts, while one-third comes from the government.

Corporate responsibility

Having been in development work for a long time, Joshi knows a lot about funding sources. What does he think of corporate funding and the so-called corporate social responsibility?

He said: “We wish that companies would share some of their wealth with the marginalized. But if the approach is one whereby they expect some kind of return, like visibility or fame from their investment in poor people, then it is not good. To me, philanthropy and social responsibility means you do something which society needs, not what will bring you a good name and fame.”

Money is not enough, Joshi emphasized. “More important is, what is this money supposed to do?”

Although Joshi has retired at the policy-prescribed age, a move that shows his professionalism, he has stayed on in Pradan as an adviser upon the insistence of his colleagues. It is their turn to give back, just as Joshi had given back a hundredfold.

RM awardee Krisana Kraisintu: Cheap drugs for poorest

Philippine Daily Inquirer/Feautre/by Ma. Ceres P. Doyo

MANILA, Philippines—Thai pharmacist Krisana Kraisintu vividly remembers coming to the Philippines many years ago and visiting a large Filipino-owned drug manufacturing facility.

Someone generously shared with her the formula for a tuberculosis medicine that she took back to her home country and worked on so that the sick poor could avail of it.

It was a display of Filipino generosity Kraisintu would never forget and she often mentions it. She wishes she knew who it was in Unilab that gave her the formula.

But Kraisintu’s own generosity is evident as she continues to share her expertise and live a life of service in order to help not just the people of Thailand but also many poor African countries where diseases, particularly HIV-AIDS, threaten the lives of a staggering number of the population.

Kraisintu, 57, is one of the six recipients of the Ramon Magsaysay Awards for 2009 who will be honored on Monday. The feisty pharmacist is being hailed “for placing pharmaceutical rigor at the service of patients, through her untiring and fearless dedication to producing much-needed generic drugs in Thailand and elsewhere in the world.”

“A crime against humanity and a holocaust of the poor.” This is how Kraisintu considers the high cost of medicines that are beyond the reach of the poor.

A daughter of a doctor-father and a nurse-mother, Kraisintu was drawn to the field of health and medicine. Kraisintu saw that the scourge of HIV-AIDS could be reversed if only antiretroviral drugs could be made cheaper.

She played a pivotal role in saving many lives, babies especially. Kraisintu credits compatriot Meechai Vairavadya, a Ramon Magsaysay awardee in 1994 for his work on HIV-AIDS prevention.

Kraisintu made a complimentary groundbreaking effort by using science to reverse the AIDS pandemic through cheaper drugs for those already infected with HIV.

Women and HIV-AIDS

“I used to be a member of a political party,” Kraisintu tells the Inquirer. But she had a falling out with one of the leaders because of his contemptuous attitude toward women who were in the flesh industry and who were vulnerable to HIV-AIDS.

Armed with her doctorate in pharmaceutical chemistry from Bath University in England, Kraisintu buckled down to work. She joined the Government Pharmaceutical Organization (GPO) in 1983 and led its research department in producing many generic medicines for a wide range of illnesses.

“I am a pharmacist, not a pharmacologist,” Kraisintu explains.

With Thailand facing the threat of the HIV-AIDS epidemic, Kraisintu saw the need for research in order to develop cheap generic antiretroviral (ARV) drugs.

She faced daunting problems: Lack of government support, skeptical colleagues and lawsuits from drug companies. Alone but undeterred, she worked in a windowless lab to find the formula.

Drug cocktail

In 1995, the pharmacist successfully came up with the world’s first generic ARV, a generic AZT (zidovudine) for HIV that reduces the risk of mother-to-baby HIV transmission.

It was not roses after that. Kraisintu had to face major legal battles to produce the second generic ARV drug (didanosine).

Undaunted, Kraisintu and her team even came up with a drug cocktail known as GPO-VIR, which was 18 times cheaper than the nongeneric AIDS pills.

GPO, Kraisintu is proud to say, produces seven types of ARVs. The production output is enough for a year for 150,000 patients in Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam.

Sub-Saharan Africa

Kraisintu has left the GPO in able hands in order to further spread the good news of generics elsewhere in the world.

In 2002, she went to the sub-Saharan Africa region, the hardest hit by the AIDS pandemic. In all, 13 African countries have benefited from this bold Asian woman’s efforts.

The Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation notes Kraisintu’s courage amidst obstacles.

She “worked in zones of armed conflict, traveled to remote locations and contended with grossly inadequate facilities. In war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo, she set up a pharmaceutical factory that was able to produce generic ARVs after three years,” the foundation says.

In Tanzania, Kraisintu upgraded an old facility to produce not only ARVs but cheap anti-malarial drugs as well. Those who learned under her were not necessarily trained scientists.

“Even drivers could make suppositories,” she notes, adding that administering medicines through suppositories is very effective.

Kraisintu has served as consultant for a nonprofit European organization involved in local production and distribution of medicines in Africa. She is honorary dean of the Faculty of Oriental Medicines in Rangsit University and visiting professor at the Ubon Rajathenne University in Thailand.

She is also visiting professor at the Harbin Institute of Technology in China. She has received numerous awards and honorary degrees.

She has pursued research on and promotion of herbal medicines in modern forms. Early this year, she formed a partnership with the Ubon Rajathanee University and set up a production unit to manufacture traditional herbal products from 78 medicinal plants.

And what can she say about multinational drug companies lording it over poor nations?

“Let’s admit it, we walk in parallel, we will never meet,” she says. “Do you know that despite the recession, the drug companies continue to have the highest profit?”

It’s because people will always need medicines, she explains.

Lioness

Citing the importance of technology transfer, Kraisintu offers advice regarding production of generic medicines vis-à-vis obstacles from multinationals.

“The government must enforce compulsory licensing of any drug that is patented,” she says. Political will, in other words.

Although she comes from a family of means, the unmarried Kraisintu prefers to live simply. She considers herself a very happy woman.

“I learned to be very patient in Africa,” Kraisintu muses.

She has been called Simba Jike (Swahili for lioness) by East Africans. She laughs heartily and says, “Sometimes they call me Mama Tough.”

RM award for China's water guardians

Philippine Daily Inquirer/Feature
by Ma. Ceres P. Doyo

MANILA, Philippines—Two Chinese activists who have literally immersed themselves in turbulent waters are among this year’s six Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation awardees.

Working separately and through different means, Ma Jun and Yu Xiaogang have devoted their lives to reversing the threat to China’s water systems, for many the source of life and livelihood.

Ma, 41, a former journalist, is being honored by the RMAF for “harnessing the technology and power of information to address China’s water crisis, and mobilizing pragmatic, multisectoral and collaborative efforts to ensure sustainable benefits for China’s environment and society.”

Yu, 58, is being recognized “for fusing the knowledge and tools of social science with a deep sense of social justice, in assisting dam-affected communities in China to shape the development projects that impact their natural environment and their lives.”

As a Beijing-based journalist working with Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post, Ma Jun traveled extensively around China and saw how the country’s vaunted economic boom was threatening to destroy its water systems. He witnessed the torrential floods caused by the overflowing of the Yangtze River and other catastrophes.

Ma used his pen to raise the alarm and in 1999 published his book, “China’s Water Crisis.”

The book, with a chapter each devoted to the seven main water basins of China, opened people’s eyes to the problem and provided a way for many to get involved.

The main message of Ma’s book, hailed as China’s “first great environmental call to arms,” was: If we don’t change the way we use and manage our water sources, we will be facing a water crisis.

“People used to say, let’s get rich first. No, we must make space for the environment. We must try to live within our means and use water more efficiently,” he says in an interview.

Water pollution map

It was no surprise that Ma the journalist became a full-time environmentalist. In 2006, he founded the nongovernmental Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs (IPEA) and launched the “China Water Pollution Map,” the first public database of its kind in China which monitors the current state of bodies of water.

In 2006, Ma was voted one of “Time’s 100, the People Who Shape Our World,” (which included the Philippine Daily Inquirer’s founder Eugenia Duran-Apostol).

On Saturday, the Magsaysay laureate went on a tour of the Pasig River and saw for himself how Metro Manila’s main water system is close to death because of pollution.

Factory of the world

According to Ma, the four challenges relating to water are pollution, dwindling supply, flooding and threats to the ecosystem.

“Modern farming is one source of pollution,” says Ma, and also blames rapid industrialization and globalization.

“China is indeed becoming the true factory of the world. And we dump pollution in our own backyard,” he says.

But he notes that the Chinese government is now “making concessions to nature.”

The IPEA, the group that Ma founded, conscientiously makes a list of corporate violators, which is taken seriously by everyone concerned.

Ma says transnationals like General Electric, Wal-Mart and Nike are using IPEA database to track the performance of their China suppliers.

Continuous research and data-gathering are part of IPEA’s work. The group has formed the Green Choice Alliance which makes companies commit to non-polluting methods and products.

85,000 dams

If Ma is focused mainly on threatened life-giving bodies of water, Yu Xiaogang has zeroed in on the water-harnessing projects that threaten to destroy lives, livelihood and habitats.

Yu grew up in Yunnan province, a place of tremendous beauty because of its mountains, rivers and lakes. The province has nine lakes and is drained by three of the world’s largest rivers—the Nu, the Yangtze and the Mekong.

But mystic landscapes of lakes and rivers threaten to become just a memory because of China’s staggering dam-building program to feed its mammoth energy needs.

Where there used to be mighty raging or smooth flowing rivers, there are now monstrous structures that control the waters.

Dams, supposedly the harbingers of progress have, in fact, brought doom and gloom to many natural habitats and cultural heritage sites.

China had, at last count, 85,000 dams, or 46 percent of the world's total.

The Three Gorges Dam, spanning the Yangtze and touted as the largest electricity-generating plant in the world, will be opening this year.

Dams, the threat they pose and the havoc they cause, are the primary concern of Yu, founder and director of Green Watershed. Begun in 2002, this non-profit NGO developed an integrated watershed management program in the Lashi Lake area in Yunnan.

Dams for whom?

While doing post-graduate research on the impact of the Manwan hydroelectric project, Yu discovered and documented its adverse impact on the area’s inhabitants.

Yu stirred a hornet’s nest, causing the government to investigate and act to remedy the dam’s destructive effects.

In the Lashi Lake area of Yunnan, a dam project diverted 40 percent of the lake’s waters, flooded farmlands and destroyed the people’s livelihood.

Green Watershed organized the Watershed Management Committee and mobilized people to engage in irrigation, fishery, microcredit and training in watershed protection and biodiversity conservation.

The Lashi project was so successful it became a model for participatory management. It even received a citation from the government.

Encouraged, Yu has expanded his campaign into other dam sites and other advocacies. Green Watershed has conducted research, organized forums and enlisted the help of the mass media.

In 2008, Yu initiated Green Banking, a coalition of environmental NGOs that confers the “Green Banking Innovation Award” to banks and financial institutions that include the environment in their corporate agenda.

Dam project stopped

When the government announced a project to build 13 dams on the Nu River, Green Watershed organized public debates. It argued that the dam would displace 50,000 people and affect a Unesco World Heritage nature site. The project has been put on hold by Premier Wen Jiabao.

Yu insists that communities and ecosystems need not be sacrificed on the altar of development.

“Thirty years ago, dams were for agriculture. Now it is for electricity, for profit. There are now so many dams in China and, for some, the market has not even been identified,” he says in an interview.

In campaigning against this proclivity for building dams for dams’ sake, Yu and his fellows have taken the first steps in the “Long March” toward a truly sustainable future.

OFWs’ quest for healing

Father Robert Reyes, the so-called “running priest” who is now working with a human rights group in Hong Kong has come out with a collection of his reflections on his late younger brother Vincent who died of lung cancer in 2004 at the age of 47. A case has been filed against a giant tobacco company which must answer for the illness and death that cigarettes have caused and which Reyes is pursuing on behalf of his brother. But that is another story.

The book, “Vincent, Dying and Living” contains personal reflections, recollections as Robert accompanied his brother in battle. The last and third portion of the book is a collection of stories of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) in Hong Kong whom Fr. Reyes had met and ministered to in their illness. He was present to a number of them in the last days of their lives. The stories were written by the OFWs themselves, some in Filipino.



He writes: “This book is a compilation of stories and reflections on various themes related to living and dying. First, it is about my personal experiences as a caregiver to a brother struggling through a life-threatening disease, as a son who also had to support aging parents through difficult times, a brother-in-law, and an uncle who had to begin understanding deep, delicate and unspoken issues…

“Second, it is about my journeying with persons, mostly struggling with cancer, who have shared their deepest thoughts and feelings about life. Third, it is about how I saw parallels between the journeys of the dying and my own journey that now constitutes a new and different spiritual outlook, rather uncharacteristic of my former aggressive and rather confrontational ways.”

In this book one could see another side of Fr. Reyes, a private, intimate side that provides contrast to his headline-grabbing public persona and advocacies. But the two sides could not really be separated. “Nine days after Vincent’s death,” Fr. Reyes writes, “I participated in the Philippine Cancer Society’s first ‘Relay for Life’…I led Team Vincent…in an all night run. A fitting theme was bannered on a tarpaulin streamer with Vincent’s picture and the words ‘Life spent together is a life well spent.’”

Through all the stories—his own and the stories of others—Fr. Reyes tries to find a unifying thread in the testimonies of both survivors and caregivers “as both confront the urgent and vital reality of death which has led them to a deeper and more fruitful appreciation of life.”

In Hong Kong, Fr. Reyes has shepherded a small community called Buhay Ka which stands for buo, bukas at laging handang umalalay sa kapwa (whole, open and always ready to be of service to others). These are mostly OFWs who are cancer survivors who also minister to one another and most especially to their fellow OFWs who are very ill.

“Those whose dying I have the sacred opportunity to witness showed and shared with me something that ought to prepare me when my time comes,” Fr. Reyes reflects. “Their dying does not end in the black nothingness of death. As their breaths seem to fade, something so delicately beautiful begins. As their breathing weakens and the air begins to thin out into a delicate whiff, a meeting, a blending, a union of soul and soul takes place. ‘Air’ that walked the earth and blessed it with its peculiar exuberance and color now meets its Source, its life. It has always breathed from and with this Source, and now it breathes constantly, deeply, completely, and infinitely.”

Many OFWs in Hong Kong, mostly domestic helpers (DH), remain in Hong Kong even after the diagnosis of cancer. It is because therapy is relatively cheap. One could avail of this as long as one is employed. If they go home to the Philippines, they think they would just be a burden to their families, so why not stay on? Some compassionate employers let their ailing DHs stay so that their visas will not be revoked. OFWs who must leave their jobs are taken care of by fellow OFWs who take turns in nursing them to health and even raise funds for them. It is love of neighbor at its best.

The stories are heart-rending but also inspiring. There was Armyn who had just come for the Philippines when she discovered she was pregnant and had breast cancer. She chose to carry the baby up to seven months before undergoing chemotherapy.

There was Carmen who had cancer of the cervix and had to undergo chemotherapy and radiotherapy. There was musician Chito who suffered a stroke. Gemma, despite her breast cancer, had to go on working even after her surgery and while waiting for her replacement to arrive.

In 2007 Luzviminda learned she had leukemia. She had understanding employers who let her stay on but without a salary, just so her visa would don’t not be revoked.

Carmen did not get sick in Hong Kong but she ministered to the sick, among them, Lydia who had breast cancer. A different tragedy struck Carmen. She lost her son to a killer. “Before I left Davao, I went to see the murderer of my son. I asked him why killed my son. His answer was strange and infuriating. ‘I don’t know your son. I don’t know why I killed your son.’

“I now appreciate Lydia and others who are there to journey with me through my grief. I never expected to be on the receiving end. This time I cry and look for a shoulder to lean on…We are members of the human family which has to become a community of caring and compassion. OFWs in Hong Kong become better persons when they learn to think and care for others. It is life-giving.”

The book is available at Popular Bookstore on T. Morato, QC.

Hidden cameras and Cory’s huge suitcase

If you were one of those who visited Ninoy Aquino during the eight years (1972 to 1980) that he was in military prison, chances are a photograph of yourself was among the hundreds that the military studied and kept in their dossiers for whatever purpose they might have served.

And chances are your photo is now in the archives of Ninoy’s widow, former President Corazon Aquino, who passed away on Aug. 1 and had a massive send-off that could rival Ninoy’s. Hadn’t Cory sent you a copy when she was alive?

During her presidency that started after the 1986 People Power Revolt that toppled the Marcos dictatorship, President Aquino received a stack of photographs from the military. Many of the original copies the military gave her had notes on the back, she told me during an interview some years ago. She had not asked for the photos, she had never seen them before.


“There were hundreds of these photographs,” she said when I showed her an enlarged copy she had sent a nun friend some years ago. Yes, she remembered having sent it, along with a letter, a frame and medicine, and being thanked warmly for it.

Cory recalled then that every person who visited Ninoy in prison had first to be put on a list and go through a process of approval. During visits, visitors had to be thoroughly frisked, groped, if not almost undressed and, of course, photographed without their being aware of it. Ninoy’s family and friends had to endure this demeaning process. The nervous ones could not help wondering what the repercussions of the visits might be on them.

Receiving the photos from the military when she was President was a surprise for Cory, the photos having come from the institution that held Ninoy in custody and was suspected of having had something to do with her husband’s assassination upon his return from exile in 1983. But beholding the black and white images must have been also disconcerting to say the least, if not utterly painful. Among the previously unpublished photos were those of the bloodied and dead Ninoy taken by military photographers when his body arrived in the military camp. These looked utterly raw, so unlike those taken at the tarmac that, by now, most Filipinos have memorized and framed in their memories.

The military photos taken in prison show the Aquino family during regular visits with Ninoy. Friends who came had to contend with flashbulbs and telephoto lenses. And what about cameras, hidden and unhidden, and bugging devices?

Ms Aquino recalled the first time she came for a conjugal visit. Ninoy’s room was about 4 X 5 square yards. “On the first scheduled conjugal visit, I arrived in Fort Bonifacio lugging a new suitcase. Ninoy was surprised and teased me, ‘Why the big suitcase? Cory, you’re staying here only one night, not one week.’

“I said nothing and instead opened my suitcase and took out a dark blue towel and some rubber bands. I then asked Ninoy to cover the camera with the towel and secure it with the rubber bands. Then I brought out a dark blue sheet and a roll of masking tape.

“Ninoy and I then proceeded to cover the entire one-way mirror with the sheet and stuck the sheet to the wall using a lot of masking tape. We knew there were electronic bugs to record all our conversations but unfortunately neither Ninoy nor I knew anything about debugging a room.

“Heaven knows how many hundreds of cassette tapes (were) in the possession of the military, recording all the Ninoy and Cory conversations!”

Some of the photographs Cory Aquino received from the military were used in the coffee-table book “Ninoy: Ideals and Ideologies.” The book contains rare photographs complemented by Ninoy’s own words expressing “the ideals that he fought, lived and died for.”

Many of the photographs remain unpublished. But, after her term was over, Cory went over the photographs and had many of them reproduced so she could send them to friends who were in the photos.

Among these photos was that of Ninoy being greeted by Sr. Christine Tan, RGS with a buss. With her were activist Maria Feria and Amparo Castro, the wife of lawyer Dakila Castro. Cory sent a copy each to the women visitors in the photos.

Sr. Christine Tan, a Good Shepherd nun who lived among the poor and who died in 2003, was a close friend of Ninoy and Cory and stood by them during the dark days of the dictatorship. Cory appointed her as one of the drafters of the 1987 Constitution.

“I was not aware that we were being photographed,” Feria told the Inquirer.

“This was at the amphitheater,” Cory said when shown the photo, “the place where Ninoy received visitors.” How could she forget?

Neither had she forgotten the true friends who visited and stood by them. The photographs that the military had unearthed for her helped her remember.

* * *

There will be a 10 a.m. Mass at St. Scholastica’s College on Friday, the 26th anniversary of Ninoys assassination. This will be followed by lunch and viewing of Cory’s paintings and memorabilia at the SSC Museum and Archives. To be displayed are two dresses Cory wore when she was president.

When her presidency was over, Cory gave away many of her clothes. She sent some to Sr. Christine to give away. I asked Sr. Christine for some and she gave me three. I gave a set to my editor in chief. The ones I kept were a red linen Auggie Cordero skirt and jacket and a two-piece beige Neiman Marcus size 14. I have donated them to the archives-museum.

Bad bananas and collateral damage

I do not understand why there are people who vigorously defend aerial spraying of banana plantations even though it adversely affects communities that live and farm in the vicinity of these plantations. I do not understand why they do not realize that what is poisonous and deadly for pests and fungi in bananas is also poisonous and deadly for human beings, farm animals and plants. I do not understand why they do not want to use safer methods which are just as effective and are being used in places where aerial spraying is banned.

The banana growers and exporters who insist on this practice to save on costs and get higher profits might soon find themselves the victims of the toxic fallout of their own making. Lobby groups abroad that are sympathetic to the anti-aerial spraying advocates here might just raise a howl and expose the real cost of these bananas in terms of collateral damage on human lives and the environment. Who would like to buy and eat bananas that are produced in this manner? Consumers are now more discriminating.



In May 2009 the Department of Health released its study (“Health and Environmental Assessment of Sitio Camocaan, Hagonoy, Davao del Sur”) which showed that residents exposed to the spray were found to have pesticide traces in their blood. Air and soil outside plantation boundaries were also found to be contaminated. The study recommended banning aerial spraying and a shift to organic methods.

The DOH has no hidden interest here. Its interest is the health of Filipinos. (Read Sec. 15 and 16 of the 1987 Constitution.) Those who question the DOH’s findings have gone bananas.

I wrote about the subject of bananas a few days ago but I write about it again with the faint hope that something could be done about the toxic rain in places where there are vast plantations that produce Cavendish bananas for export. These long, green bananas have a long shelf life but rate low in the Filipinos’ taste department.

Am not against bananas. I eat a lot of native bananas. The yellower, the better. I read somewhere that ripe yellow bananas with dark spots contain very high immune system-boosting properties. I used to have banana plants in my backyard. They bore big yellow fruits a lot of which I had to give away as I couldn’t eat all of them. I even made vinegar out of them.

“We are not bananas. We are not pests.” This is the cry of communities near banana plantations in Mindanao who have to suffer the adverse effects of regular toxic aerial spraying.

Imagine yourself sipping coffee under the open sky when suddenly something lands in your cup. Imagine yourself a child on your way to school and getting sprayed with pesticides. Farmers working on their small farms and people doing their daily chores are among those who suffer indirect hits and have to run for cover when airplanes unleash pesticides on vast banana plantations. While they are not the intended targets, there is no way they can avoid getting hit by the airplanes’ toxic load.

People who live with constant spraying complain of respiratory and skin ailments. They worry about their farm animals, their edible plants and water sources that catch their share of the toxic rain. And who knows what genetic mutations can arise for all this?

When will this stop?

The National Task Force Against Aerial Spray composed of 14 legal, environmental, church and women’s groups is leading the campaign to ban aerial spraying. The Mamamayan Ayaw sa Aerial Spraying (MAAS), a member of the task force, is composed of residents who are directly affected. “We are not squatters,” MAAS’s Cecille Moran, 46, told the Inquirer. “We own our farms and grow food as a means of livelihood.” Many families who live in-between plantations are exposed to constant spraying, she said. Fruit trees and farm animals have died. Malunggay trees have withered.

Aerial spraying is not the only way to fight pests. There are other ways, among them manual and boom spraying but banana plantation owners prefer the aerial method in order to cut costs.

Davao City is not the only place in Mindanao that has to put up with aerial spraying. Davao City’s feisty mayor Rodrigo Duterte is a vocal anti-aerial spraying advocate, and the local government had passed an ordinance against it. But the Philippine Banana Growers and Exporters Association (PBGEA) challenged the ordinance in court because it supposedly violated their right to property.

MAAS got a favorable decision but PBGEA elevated the case to the Court of Appeals. Meanwhile, aerial spraying continues.

In the Philippines, exporters of Cavendish bananas use the aerial spraying method to kill the Sigatoka fungus. Aerial bombardment hits not just the intended targets but human and non-humans as well that happen to be within the range of the toxic drift which reaches 3.2 kms. on the average.

MAAS said that the tridemorph and chlorothalonil fungicides used in the Philippines are banned in other countries. Animal studies have shown that the fungicide mancozeb could cause cancer. In her ground breaking 1962 book “Silent Spring”, Rachel Carson warned against this “amazing rain of death.”

The provincial government of Bukidnon banned aerial spraying way back in 2001 and North Cotabao in 2004 and banana plantations there have thrived without the aerial spray. Sen. Miguel Zubiri and Rep. Rufus Rodriguez have filed bills to ban aerial spraying in the entire country.

Anti-spraying advocates have an on-line petition at www.dirtybananas.org.