Fast-forward to April 2010. Acting Department of Justice Secretary dismisses the charges against Maguindanao Governor Zaldy Ampatuan and Vice Governor Akmad Ampatuan, brother and uncle of Mayor Andal Ampatuan, Jr., less than six months after the carnage.
November 29, 2009
If I were asked to describe everything that transpired within this week in just one word, it would definitely be "disturbing." So disturbing to the point that I cannot even come up with a word which could aptly describe the horror, the sadness, the anger that seeps right into my psyche. Even before the primetime news went into broadcast, my classmate Terry's Facebook shoutout already spelled out initially what had happened. All he said was that two lawyers were among those killed in election-related violence in Maguindanao. The strongest emotion I was able to muster then was sadness and sympathy for their bereaved families.
The 6PM news however brought vividness and drama which Terry's Facebook shoutout obviously could not properly illustrate. Corpses, bodies of what used to be living, breathing, vibrant people, littered a grassy hillside. The pictures were monochromatic and some were pixellated, sheer giveaways that the images were too violent to be shown in their original state for national TV. Torsos were exposed and still fingers had become new landing posts for flies. Some of the bodies were mutilated whereas some of the faces were mangled beyond recognition, even for their closest friends and kin to identify. One dead woman had her blouse hiked up to her chest to expose a swollen belly as if to testify that a fetus had started the earlier hours of a set of 24, initially enjoying the warmth in his mother's womb then all of a sudden losing grasp of air, food and life. The bodies scattered in the hillside were covered with mere banana leaves, an attempt to give the dead the least bit of respect and courtesy.
Everything else passed before me like a blur. I was angry, raging, furious and at the same time seriously disturbed and unhinged. Come election time, stories about intimidation and some form of election-related violence start to pile up like a stack of papers but nothing has been as bloody, as violent, as brutal, as hair-raising as the massacre in Maguindanao. One of my best friends who now lives in Finland reacted to my earlier shoutout about not getting the Maguindanao events out of my head. She said a couple of her Polish friends were excited at the prospect of visiting the Philippines after she had practically bragged her head about her country of origin. If I were in her place, I would say the same thing. I do hail from a beautiful country and my people also have their share of traits which should earn them a spotlight in the global stage. When the news broke out in Finland, her friends started having second thoughts and decided to forego a visit, the bloody mess in Maguindanao having done its job effectively of stripping away at the Philippines' international reputation, further destroying whatever good image we had left in the international eye. And it all came nipping at the heels of Efren Penaflorida's CNN triumph.
The Philippines' international reputation was the least of my worries. After all, if matters ain't harmonized within in the homefront, no amount of PR could fix the mess and the stench would certainly reek beyond our borders. I was more concerned with the answer to the question "Why?"
Why would anyone want to kill more than 50 unarmmed people? Why would anybody want to violate these women, these wives, these sisters, these mothers before dealing them a cruel blow of death? Why murder journalists and people's lawyers who were merely doing their jobs, noble professions that they were? Why should their untimely execution be as horrible and unforgettable as this?
Why? Has our system of morality declined to a point so low that human life is given this scant a value? Some sinister mind hatched this plan and saw through its execution like an invisible hand. Those who saw it done, whatever their reasons for doing so were, did carry out the orders in a manner so sadistic, the hillside still cries for those who perished and laments for the lives that could have been. To be riddled with bullets, to have corpses mutilated, to tear faces to pieces, to hurl bodies and vehicles into mass graves and pound them into a mound twisted flesh and metal...I could go on and on and anybody would certainly agree with me that this is indeed no way to die, no matter how horrible one lives his life on this planet. Looking at the Maguindanao massacre, a person's life has become something like loose change thrown around casually when no longer needed. Cambodia no longer earns the distinction of being called the land of the "Killing Fields." The Philippines just had to share the grisly honor. And that is, in my world, enraging and disturbing.
Why? Have our priorities been altered so radically that political positions are afforded with such high a regard that it has become the end-all and be-all for the country's so-called public servants, that one is willing to lose his sense of right and wrong in exchange for a political position? Souls have been sold and lives have been lost all in the grand name of politics. To stand at the helm of power and to have everything within your fingertips is maybe perhaps indeed a cause worthy of death. However I certainly hope that I never would come within a thousand meter radius of understanding such a twisted concept of what is worth shooting fifty lives to a bloody, mangled end. It is not only lives which have been lost in this deadly exercise. It is the also the real value, the real meaning underlying the word "politics." Common good, conciliation, the people...they have all floated down the River Styx toward a land that time has forgotten. And that is, in my world, infuriating and disarming.
Why? Has justice become a fable, a dream, an illusion that we can yak about it all the time like parrots and yet never fully taste its sweetness? Has it become a myth, something that ranks among the halls of Valhalla, something we can gawk at with mouths hanging agape like brainless fools, something we strive so hard to reach yet we can never ever quite attain no matter how hard we try? Has justice become so elusive to the point that spirited Diana herself could never touch even its heels with her golden arrows? Is it a dying man, grasping at the fading light, groping in the darkness for any warm hand it could wrap its fingers on? The blind-folded lady still stands proud like royalty as she holds aloft the scales which have now come to be regarded as one big joke, her formerly gleaming sword slowly yielding to the slow decay of truth and morality in this country. It is not too difficult to imagine the same lady on her knees, cowering, hands tied with what formerly was her blindfold. Such a sad sight but in the light of the Maguindanao massacre, it sure is a reality. And that, in my world, is harrowing and heart wrenching.
It is quite easy to simmer in the cauldron that is anger and feel the steam rush out of all my possible foramina. But what should take less effort, what should easily come as a snap is second-nature to one's fingers is remembering. Throughout history, Filipinos have exhibited what seems to be short-term memory. We find it very easy - or convenient, as the case may be - to let certain milestones, certain experiences drift with the wind. This is akin to the expression "ningas cogon," in reference to the fury with which fire consumes cogon grass and then, almost immediately, dies out to nothing but white smoke and ashes. Maybe, to be extremely positive or altruistic about it, we innately are very forgiving as a nation, choosing to move on to the next square in chess board. But the purging seems to be absolute as what flows down the river of forgetfulness also includes the lessons which should have been learned, those which should have been carried with us as we take the next step forward towards tomorrow. That, in my world, is not how things should be.
In my world, death is not an eraser. It is a hallmark, a beacon, an obelisk etched to every corner with all the names of those who are to be remembered because their lives were either stories to be told for generations or tales awaiting a just ending, a lighthouse which will shine even in the darkest night on Earth. In my world, the horizon will be dotted by such reminders of the work that needs to be done - not out of sheer rage or seething revenge but because it is what is right, it is what is just.
In my world, the fifty people whose lives were deemed lost still inhabit the hilly slopes of Maguindanao, crooked fingers not only pointing at those who carry the scythe but also to those who have chosen to bury them via the backhoes of forgetfulness. In my world, they are not dead.
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