No place for apathy
by Ilang-Ilang Quijano
It was in 2003 when I first covered a fact-finding mission on human rights violations (HRVs). I was months into what was then the newly established progressive media venture, Pinoy Weekly. The grisly human rights record of the Arroyo administration was just beginning; so was my journalism “career”.
I can no longer recall the facts surrounding the mission, except that it was held in the province of Camarines Sur and led by the human rights group Karapatan in Bicol. But I can still recall certain images and impressions.
A hole dug a meter deep into the earth, just big enough to hold a grown man in the fetal position (it turned out to be the grave of a farmer accused by soldiers of being a rebel, shot in the head after being made to crawl in). A beautiful limestone island that one night was besieged by armed men claiming to be rebels but which the villagers suspected to be soldiers (when asked, the village chief said that the harassment started when they denied a foreign company access to the island’s rich mineral deposits). A rally at the Army headquarters by human rights groups, which were chased away with stones by anti-communists.
At that time, HRVs were barely being reported. “Barely being reported” is not the same as barely happening. Long before the “culture of impunity” became a by-word, it was “state terrorism” or “fascism.” Whatever term one chose to describe the spate of HRVs, it was definitely a constant reality especially in far-flung rural areas, whether the media reported it or not. As a young, progressive writer with all the journalistic freedom in the world, I of course reported on it.
When HRVs intensified, and started in a systematic way to victimize not only farmers but also students, priests, lawyers, trade union leaders, government employees, human rights defenders, and journalists, the mainstream media stepped up its human rights reporting. If the past decade saw the best of human rights reporting, it was because it was the worst of times for human rights. Such is the irony of journalism—it thrives on tragedy and injustice.
We in Pinoy Weekly reported on tragedies and injustices as well. But we focused on the marginalized sectors of society, on their issues, rights, and struggles that are often underreported or even misrepresented by the mainstream media. So as we did stories on extra-judicial killings, enforced disappearances or torture, we at the same time wrote stories that put these HRVs in context.
Why were so many people getting killed, abducted, or tortured in the first place? I’ve learned through years of reporting that it is because so many people are oppressed and fighting for their rights to land, to decent wages and working conditions, to education, to health, to housing, to free expression, and other basic rights they are deprived of. The victims of extra-judicial killings, enforced disappearances or torture have had their rights violated—and most weren’t taking it sitting down—before the motorcycle-riding assassins or raiding teams came for them.
As a journalist, I did not take it for granted that most victims of HRVs are activists. I consider myself as an activist, and would not appreciate it if the label would mean that I would be treated in news stories as just another statistic. I took care to find out: what were their advocacies, their dreams? What did they do to earn the government’s ire?
In 2008, for a photo documentary project I followed around Nuki, the teenage son of forcibly disappeared National Democratic Front consultant Prudencio Calubid and his wife Celina Palma. Nuki showed me a cell phone video that he had surreptitiously taken of his father. He seemed like a kindly old man, working away at a wooden desk. Since the disappearance of his parents in 2006, Nuki has not just been searching for them, but also for the significance of his father’s life, whom he knew to be a good man, undeserving of his fate.
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