“There are mothers crying for missing children, children who once were there and are no more,” Rep. Teodoro Locsin Jr. told the “Summit on Extrajudicial Killings and Enforced Disappearances.” And “persistence in search might ironically be rewarded with permanent disappearance of the victim” in a country that resembles Argentina of the “Dirty War.”
Initiatives like the Summit bring, albeit slowly, accountability to a regime in “total denial,” to borrow UN Special Rapporteur Philip Alston’s words. So do studies like “Experiences of Cebu Women in Armed Conflicts.”
“Men may be the combatants,” writes University of San Carlos anthropologist Leny Ocasiones in Philippine Quarterly of Culture & Society. But “women and children endure a tortured existence ... Not enough is being done to protect them. Only now have we begun to document the problem.”
The study analyzes insurgency’s impact, over two decades, on 16 upland women in three towns of Cebu province: Danao, Tuburan and Asturias. The long-running insurgency, pervasive poverty and military response could make those three “Any Town.”
“Armed conflict has profound impacts on women, distinct from men,” the study found. Women found “creative ways to survive and resist massive disruption in their societies.” But let the women speak for themselves.
Generosa and husband Arnold were grinding corn when paramilitary men (Civilian Home Defense Force) arrived. They beat up Arnold to wring information on movements of the New People’s Army (NPA). Generosa protested when they took him to Tuburan. “If you insist we leave him here, we will kill him first,” was the reply.
“If he’s an NPA [guerrilla], would he have the calloused hands and feet of a farmer?” she told a Captain Jorgio in the camp. Arnold had human rights, she added. “You always cite human rights as a reason. What if I shoot him?” Generosa replied: “Shoot him. You think nobody will look for him?”
Arnold was released after 18 days. To dodge further abuse, they resettled in Mindanao as laborers. They relocated thrice. And malaria plagued the whole family. “They returned ... after three years still bearing the scars inflicted by armed conflict.”
“The experiences of Tanya, Prancing, Freda and Anita were similar to Generosa,” the study notes. “They believed that the best way to survive was by maintaining family strength even by becoming refugees.”
“Loss of property and livelihood were the effects of armed conflict on Veronica, Venecia, Tanya and Divina.” Following an ambush, the military forced the whole community to evacuate. “If you’re still around when we come back, we’ll use ‘juez de cochillo’ [‘judgment of the knife’],” Veronica recalls being told.
They fled. “Our children helped by making charcoal out of coconut husks. They sold them for 30 centavos a kilo.” They found their homes ransacked on return. “We never felt settled again on our farm because of the threats,” Tanya recalled.
Conflict takes a toll on family relations. Erlinda, Trining, Venecia and Luisa faced “alienation” when they got involved with the rebels. Their children protested their absence and exposure to danger. And Waldo, the husband of Flora, who was pregnant, disappeared. She lost the child.
Nonetheless, soldiers periodically pressured Flora to confess that Waldo joined the NPA. “Their eyes, meanwhile, would roam looking for a chicken” to roast. Failing that, they’d accuse her: “You’re just like the others, depriving us of food while giving it generously to the NPA.”
“I was furious. I answered them back,” Flora said. “I hated it when I was telling the truth and they would question it.” Waldo has never been found. “Since the abduction of my husband ... it’s only my hair that does not feel pain at all… But I have to work on the farm so my family will survive.”
Government seeks to win hearts and minds of people. That’s the official line. This tack would deny insurgents “the water they swim in,” the old Mao image held. But instances of abuse after abuse, by ill-disciplined troops, persist.
They burned Divina’s house even while her husband and two sons were inside. “But they took the pig that Divina’s family was raising to sell and pay for future emergencies,” the study reports. “‘You’re dead, Erlinda, you’re dead’ rang in my ears after my daughter and I were interrogated,” another said.
“Living with shattered lives and dreams, their survival is a statement ... that these women prevail despite all the abuses they received,” the study adds.
Of 16 study participants, 14 suffered from various illnesses. Nine were afflicted with post-traumatic stress disorder. Marina, Erlinda, Venecia and Tanya bolt up, midnights, dreaming they heard guns cocked. Divina and Luisa still tremble when they hear helicopters. Linda and Flora couldn’t review the “Culture & Society” transcript. “They no longer wanted to be reminded of what happened.”
Correct or not, “victims of extrajudicial killings are perceived to belong to the CPP-NPA [Communist Party of the Philippines-NPA] while the perpetrators, to the AFP [Armed Forces of the Philippines],” Cristina Montiel of Ateneo de Manila University’s psychology department told the Summit. Perpetrators must be made to account if we are to “achieve a Philippine state free of blood-letting and respectful of the rule of law.”
“Government must devise ways to implement the doctrine of command responsibility” for human right abuses, constitutionalist Fr. Joaquin Bernas, SJ, suggested at the Summit. Congress could draft such a bill and the President could certify it as urgent.
Will they listen to the voices of these shattered women? Upon prodding of the military, the Philippines refused to sign the Treaty of Rome which explicitly spells out command responsibility. This is a government, Locsin noted, whose “first and last resort is to do nothing until the problem is buried with the last activist.”
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Email: juanlmercado@gmail.com
