Martial law’s forgotten lesson

Last  Sept. 21 we celebrated the International Day of Peace. Ironically, this coincided with the commemoration of the declaration of martial law on Sept. 21, 1972. The two events are contradictory.

It is said that if we do not learn from history we are doomed to repeat it. We seem not to have learned the lesson from the past that Marcos destroyed the peace in our country by disregarding and violating human rights.

I myself grew up in a country that was torn by a war launched by the fascist regime of Hitler. Some of our people in Holland even collaborated with the regime, but many young men and women joined the underground movement that fought it. After the war, as a young boy I witnessed how the collaborators were treated as traitors and were rounded up and put in detention camps for years.

During the martial law years, after I was deported by Marcos for my involvement in the labor movement, I joined the underground movement which resisted the violations of human rights. But there were plenty of Filipinos who collaborated with Marcos, including bishops of the Catholic Church who adopted an official policy of critical collaboration with Marcos. Those people were traitors and should have been dealt with accordingly. After Edsa they should have been rounded up and put in prison, but we allowed them to carry on with their corruption up to this time. If it were not for the activists of the underground movement, Edsa never would have happened and Marcos could not have been ousted. The International Day of Peace could have been a meaningful celebration for us. We have learned that peace is something very elusive.

What is peace really? Peace is a gift from God. Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God, was sent into the world to bring back peace. On the day of his birth the angels sang: “Peace to all men of good will!” Whenever Jesus met people, he always greeted them with the words: “Peace be with you!” And when they would part, he would say: “Go in Peace!”

Jesus made it very clear also who God is and where we can find Him. He is not somebody out there in the sky. He is inside us, in our heart and in our mind. If we contemplate on that reality we really can find God and real peace, too. In Holland we have an adage that says: “Work for a better world and start with yourself.” We have to find peace—first in ourselves, and then we make peace with others. Peace is something that we have to put to work.

Give peace a chance! Let us join the protest movement against war in the world and war in our country. Let us fight the war against insurgency in Mindanao, and negotiate peace with our Muslim brothers in the South and with our Christian brothers and sisters in the mountains in order to put an end to the killing of so many innocent victims of this insane conflicts. Let us continue to fight the war on corruption against our government officials, have them arrested and dealt with immediately. Peace to all of us!

—ARNOLD VAN VUGT, O.Carm. associate,

nolvanvugt@gmail.com