The stories of Pinang and Marawiya are among those featured in a video produced by the Mindanao Commission on Women. Written and directed by Charina Sanz and Ferdie Cabrera,  the video also shows the various  initiatives of Moro women in ensuring their participation and representation during formal peace negotiations and the protection of women’s human rights during conflict. Watch the video.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZh4uBMIuwI&feature=share

The baby was wrapped inside a woven mat being carried in the arms of an uncle, her body shrouded in white linen in accordance with Islamic tradition. Her mother, Tot, heaved muffled sobs a few seats away, her right palm shielding her eyes, as her three children looked on. Still mute with grief, she could not bring herself to be near Zaida and would rather watch her seven-month-old baby from a distance.

Zaida died an hour before noon inside the Dulawan school clinic where she was rushed in the morning already weak from a night of diarrhea. Her family are evacuees from Barangay Ganta who sought refuge in the poblacion here when mortar shelling pounded their village last April.

It would be the first time the Ponso family would be going home since they sought refuge in Datu Piang, intending not to stay for long, but only to bury little Zaida before sundown. “The last time we were on this river, riding a pumpboat like this, the night was so dark,” said a woman on the boat, her name is Bai Didu, Tot’s aunt.

On this bright June afternoon, the waters of the Rio Grande de Mindanao, also known as Pulangi, flows rapidly in a timeless cadence southwards towards Cotabato City. Clumps of hyacinths drift along the water while here and there are bamboo stands growing on the river banks, their leaves framing the water in delicate arches.

The historic Rio de Grande is a long stretch of water running all the way from Bukidnon to the mouth of the Moro Gulf that is laden with stories of war, glory, violence and power. In these areas along the river once called Dulawan, the brave Rajah Buayan, a descendant of Shariff Mohammed Kabungsuwan who brought Islam in these parts, was once lord.

Dulawan, once an important trading center, had since been renamed Datu Piang, which is now host to about 30,000 internally-displaced persons fleeing from military offensives against Umbra Amberil Kato, a renegade commander of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front’s 105th base command.

In the journey upriver, every village the boat had passed is abandoned. No life seems to stir except for some ducks pecking on corn cobs, a dog swimming across the river, and a man bathing in solo on the river banks.

“Over there,” a man on the boat exclaimed pointing at a field, “just a week ago, soldiers and rebels fought, exchanging gunfire from both sides of the river.”

Everyone on board fell quiet at this, gripped with a sense of fear. Danger seems to lurk at every river bend, from the shrubs up to the wide plains across. On a boat trip like this, a bomb fell from a military plane killing the Mandi family in October last year who had just evacuated their home in Barangay Tee which is another village in Datu Piang.

Since August last year following the collapse of the peace talks between the Philippine government and the MILF, the waves of evacuations have not ceased. Residents kept fleeing several towns in Maguindanao, North Cotabato and the two Lanao provinces where the military had launched offensives against three renegade MILF commanders blamed for alleged attacks on civilian communities.

The fighting escalated after the Supreme Court restrained and later declared unconstitutional the signing of the Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain (MOA-AD) that would have signaled a peace deal resolving the thirty-year conflict.

In the ensuing “low intensity” guerilla war, the toll has been high for civilians who fled their homes from mortar shelling and aerial bombardment. More than 600,000 civilians were displaced last year, “the largest displacement in the world,” according to the Geneva-based Internal Displacement Monitoring Center.

From the start of the war, over a hundred civilians had already died, most of them dying in the evacuation centers due to hunger, illness and deprivation. About a quarter of the deaths are children. Shortage of food, medicines, potable water and poor shelter conditions, such as lack of tents that would have shielded babies from the sun’s heat, rain and the night cold, are usually the causes of the deaths.

“No wonder the baby died,” said one onlooker, pointing at the family’s makeshift tent at the back of the Notre Dame of Dulawan school grounds. “How could a baby withstand the monsoon rains with only a tarpaulin as roof and without walls to shield the children.”

Zaida died quietly that morning. There is none of the wailing, only hushed whispers, yet one remembers for long the images of restrained grief and sorrow of her parents. She was lying on the middle of the bed, her still warm body swathed in a baby blue blanket, her eyes in a fixed gaze which her grandmother gently shut closed while caressing her face.

Then there on one corner of the room was the father, Nasser, who was crouched on a bed in a fetal position, his head facing the wall, his body contorting in pain and despair. The mother, Tot, was nowhere in sight. She rushed out of the room in anguished silence soon after the baby died.

Later, the grandmother covered Zaida in white linen handed to her by Datu Piang’s parish priest, Fr. Eduardo Vasquez of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, who had readied several rolls “because of so many deaths that come one after another,” he said. It is a Muslim practice to shroud the dead in white.

Soon, an uncle carried Zaida now wrapped inside a mat towards the makeshift tent and laid her down on the bamboo floor where the women were waiting. They gathered around the baby and cleansed her with water, dusted her with powder and adorned her with her finest clothes in a tender, caring ritual.

After the pandita arrived and blessed the baby with a prayer, the family and their kin then headed towards the river on foot under the noon day sun, passing through the streets of Datu Piang poblacion where another death such as this one goes unnoticed.

“Sometimes, I wonder what sins do we have why our babies die, why are we always on the run?” asked Bai Didu. It is the same question that lingers in the minds of countless other displaced civilians caught in a protracted war with no end in sight not unless, peace process analysts say, a ceasefire is declared or in the long-term a political settlement is negotiated that would address the Moro people’s historical grievances and clamor for justice.

“I had lost my father when I was eleven. He died in the forest where we were hiding from the Ilagas (a dreaded vigilantes group) during the 1970s,” she continued. Bai Didu’s face is creased with lines that had borne the grief from a lifetime of losing love ones dying from hunger and disease in a vicious cycle of war and conflict. “Much later in another evacuation in Buluan, Maguindanao, it was my mother who died.”

Stories of displacements and violence such as these are embedded in the collective memory of families living along the Rio de Grande. Each generation has their own story in an unending saga of conflict that Mindanao historians say are rooted on discriminatory land laws and flawed settler colonialism policies.

To the Ponso family, Zaida’s death marks another episode in a continuing narrative.

The boat suddenly jerked. A log floating on the river almost hit it and were it not for the boatman hastily steering the boat away, it would have capsized. After another half-hour, the boat finally cruised to a stop.

From the river, a small procession that included the baby’s father, mother, three young siblings, uncle, aunts, cousins, a barangay kagawad (councilor), a journalist, and Fr. Vasquez walked towards the village center.

A school stands in the middle with a streamer posted “Barangay Ganta Evacuation Center” but there is no one around. Nearby are some trees that lie fallen on the ground.

“Casualties,” a villager said, “from a howitzer bomb.”

Now on single file, the group walked towards a wide open field past through cogon grasses and a row of trees until reaching a large, deep muddy pit. Everyone removed their slippers and shoes, and sloshed through the mud on barefoot. Then to reach the other side, everyone had to clamber up a rickety bamboo pole serving as bridge over a small creek.

Another half kilometer of walking and finally there, not far away, is a cluster of nipa huts. “This is where we live,” exclaimed the baby’s uncle who had carried Zaida in his arms all the way from Datu Piang.

Without losing time, the preparation and rituals of burial begin. The men ripped out four slats of coco lumber from the benches to be used for burial while the others started digging a shallow grave.

Once the grave had been readied, the uncle unwrapped the mat and gently lifted the baby Zaida, whose white linen is now stained with a few specks of blood. He laid her down in another hole dug inside the earth, firmly placed the wooden slats over the grave and the mat over it, and finally covered it with soil.

The pandita then sprinkled water over the soil and knelt on the ground, praying over the grave as two men, one on each side, held a blanket over him, swaying it to and fro.

He began to open a page of the Koran and chanted a prayer, his melancholic voice sailing through the vast open field where only the wind stirs. In the distance, there is a kite flying.

Baby Zaida is finally laid to rest.

The mourners proceeded to her family’s hut that consists of only one tiny room abandoned since April. Only a cat lives there now whose left eye is soaked with dry blood and looks famished. Besides the cat, there is only a worn-out baby hammock and a broken jar that spoke of how the family lived in squalor and deprivation.

“That is for the children so they could see the fields,” the father, Nasser, finally spoke, proudly pointing at a small window.

He then led us towards the back of the hut and showed a large crater on the ground. The men debated whether it came from a 105 or a 155 howitzer but on that day of the shelling sometime last April, the teenage boy Yusof was almost hit.

“It was a miracle he escaped,” his father said. But shrapnels of the bomb hit the side of the nipa hut and damaged a part. So scared of the bombs, the Ponso family fled their home to protect the children only to face tragedy later on in an evacuation camp when death struck Zaida.

Soon, it would be sundown and everyone prepared to leave. Just then, an old woman hobbled her way across the field, holding a cane, her back hunched, and struggled to walk fast. The moment she saw her son, Nasser, she wept and kissed her grandchildren.

It was only then she learned that her granddaughter Zaida was already gone. But she came too late for the burial.

“That’s Balyen,” said Bai Didu. “She chose to stay behind because she’s too weak and frail to be able to join us in the journey and live in an evacuation camp. She told us she’d rather die here.”

Once again, the family bade goodbye to Balyen who stood in the fields, watching her children and grandchildren leave, until they are no longer in sight. “That is how cruel war is particularly so for the very young and the very old,” Bai Didu said.

It was late afternoon when finally the boat arrived in the poblacion of Datu Piang. The family started making their way back to their life in the evacuation center, the couple’s two children carried on each of their backs and one walking while holding her mother’s hand.

“Sukran,” Nasser and Tot thanked everyone, extending their hands in gratitude. This time, their faces brightened. It was the only time they had ever smiled. (Charina Sanz, Mindanews; June 28, 2009)

Photo by Rene Lumawag

Munai, Lanao del Norte – Almost lifeless, Baby Hamda was lying peacefully on a mat, his eyes closed, his tiny fingers curled stiff, pale almost bluish. His mother, Meriam Mecaranda, slept by his side, her face one of resignation, as if waiting for the hour when death may strike her little one.

“It has been days already like this, the baby would often stop breathing. But just when we think he is dead, he would come back to life,” said a woman in the adjoining makeshift shelter.

Meriam roused herself from sleep, surprised to see a group of journalists crowding around their packed quarters inside a market stall here turned evacuation center in poblacion Munai.

Cradling him in her arms, she gently tapped the baby’s cheeks several times to wake him up, as if checking whether there remains life within the little bundle. The baby remained motionless.

“The baby is dead,” someone frantically shouted. The crowd fell silent, waiting with bated breath, some had tears in their eyes.

Baby Hamda is just 28 days old. Ever since the day he was born in early October inside the Munai evacuation camp, “nag-aagaw buhay siya lagi,” caught in a constant struggle between life and death, said the woman in the adjoining makeshift.

But just as all seemed without hope, the baby suddenly stirred back to life, breathing once again.

Everyone heaved a sigh of relief. Journalists clicked on their cameras to capture what seemed to be a moment of light prevailing over death’s shadows.

Then, unexpectedly, the baby seemed to go lifeless again.

“We could not just watch and wait for him to die here,” an anxious voice exclaimed.

It was the voice of Fr. Eduardo “Ponpon” Vasquez, head of I-watch, the video documentation arm of the Oblate Media and a GMA-7 stringer, who is then taking footage of the ongoing drama.

Vasquez was with a team of journalists who was going around evacuation centers from North Cotabato to Maguindanao to Lanao del Sur and now, on their fourth day on the road and the last leg, here in Lanao del Norte. The media tour from October 27 to 31 was hosted by the Mindanao Peoples Caucus.

While it was always the stories of dying children that gripped them wherever they go, nothing is as compelling as the stark image of Baby Hamda withering gradually before their eyes. For the team that included veteran photojournalist Rene Lumawag who was the first to chance upon the baby, it is time to lay down their pens and cameras.

“We’re bringing him to the hospital. Any moment now he will die,” said Vasquez who brought the mother and baby in his pick-up joining a four-vehicle convoy led by Mindanews.

Th baby was first brought to a hospital in Kauswagan, Lanao del Norte but had to be transferred to Iligan City for better facilities upon the advice of the attending doctor who suspected the baby to be suffering from severe pneumonia.

“He only has a 50-50 chance of survival,” said Dr. Arman Colao of the Kauswagan district hospital.

Many not as fortunate

While a miracle may have saved Baby Hamda’s life that day, many other infants and children in about 150 evacuation centers scattered all over Central Mindanao were not as fortunate.

As the three-month-old military offensives against three out of 16 base commands of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) drag on, the war is already exacting a heavy toll on civilians particularly children.

Already, there are 56 internally displaced persons (IDPs) who have died in Maguindanao and Shariff Kabunsuan, 38 of whom due to illness and 18 from actual encounters, according to the Department of Health in the Autonomous Region for Muslim Mindanao (DOH-ARMM) in a November 4 report.

About 21 of the reported deaths caused by illness were ages five years old and below. Diarrhea is the number one leading cause of death among IDPs.

At the Munai evacuation center here alone, 11 evacuees have already died since August 18, seven of them children, mostly due to pneumonia and measles, according to Raissa Ariraya, a midwife at the Munai Municipal Health Center here.

Inside the health center here, among those confined were children evacuees Emran Balabagan, 7, from Sitio Dilabagen West, Barangay Bacolod and Suraini Banglan, 1, from Barangay Ramayen, who were being treated for nausea, diarrhea and fever.

But seven imams (religious leaders) said that there were already 30 deaths since evacuations started on August 18. They also said that out of 26 barangays in Munai, 21 of them are now “ghost towns” due to military offensives in pursuit of MILF renegade commander Abdurahman Macapaar alias Kumander Bravo.

In Datu Piang and Mamasapano, Maguindanao, Mindanews earlier reported that at least 43 evacuees have already died, 23 of them children, citing records from the town hall and the rural health unit.

While at Datu Piang poblacion during the first leg of the media tour on October 27, Mindanews chanced upon 16-year-old Raiz Adteg who was carrying an umbrella over the body of his baby sister, one-year-old Anariza, who died that morning at the plaza turned evacuation center.

Raiz was on his way to bury Anariza whose body was wrapped in a “malong” and a mat tied on two bamboo poles carried by his uncle and cousin. He said that they had no money to buy medicine that was why his baby sister died.

At a gazebo inside the Datu Piang town plaza, a father shared his story, on how he lost his only two children, Jamir, 3, and Jamiha, 1. Merin Hardeng from Barangay Irian, Datu Saudi Ampatuan recalled that the kids had been sick and had already been treated. But on the third day, Jamir died. On the following day, they also lost the baby girl, Jamiha, just when the family came home from burying Jamir.

Lawyer Zainudin Malang, director of the MoroLaw Center who joined the journalists in the five-day tour, called on international humanitarian organizations such as the International Committee of the Red Cross to “immediately attend to dying infants and children.”

Malang asserted that there should also be strict observance of the United Nation’s High Commission on Human Rights Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement where IDPs should be provided “safety, nutrition, health and hygiene and that members of the same family should not be separated.”

Worried about the looming humanitarian crisis, Malang bared plans among Moro CSOs to establish a refugee, human rights and media secretariate to monitor the worsening plight of IDPs and rising number of human rights violations.

The Amnesty International (AI) reported that there are already about 610,000 people displaced in the last two months of fighting in Mindanao. The report entitled “Shattered Peace in Mindanao: The Human Cost of Conflict in the Philippines” was released late October.

Mindanao-wide CSOs have also called on the United Nations to intervene and put the peace process between the Philippine government and MILF back on track to stop the war.

The peace process collapsed when the  Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain (MOA-AD) was supposed to have been formally signed on August 5 in Putrajaya, Malaysia. by the chairs of the government and the MILF peace panels. A temporary restraining order issued by the Supreme Court on August 4 however stopped the government peace panel chair and the Foreign Affairs secretary from signing.

On October 14, the Supreme Court voted 8-7 declaring the MOA-AD unconstitutional.

Dwight Zabala, project consultant of the UNICEF’s Mindanao Desk based in Cotabato City, said that children IDPs should be accorded the rights to adequate food, health, play, leisure and other rights mandated under the UN Convention on the Rights of Children.

“They should also be protected from abuse, neglect and exploitation,” he added.

Zabala said that in response to the humanitarian crisis, they have set up a “child protection network” in Central Mindanao composed of 10 local and international non-government organizations. The network includes Mindanao Tulong Bakwet, Kadtuntaya Foundation Inc., Nonviolent Peaceforce, United Youth for Peace and Development (UNYPAD), United Youth of the Philippines (UNYPHIL)-Women, Oblates of Mary Immaculate-Integrated Rehabilitation Program (OMI-IRP), KAWAGIB Moro Human Rights Organization, Bangsamoro Development Agency (BDA), and Community and Family Services International (CFSI).

The network is engaged in monitoring and documentation of grave child rights violations in situations of armed conflict including the killings of children. The monitoring system is in accordance with the UN Security Council Resolution 1612 passed in 2005.

Among the killings that had been documented were the September 8 bombing in Datu Piang, Maguindanao that killed four children – Bailyn, 9; Zukarudin, 7; Adtayan, 5 and Faidza, 2 – of the Manuggal-Mandi family. A bomb dropped from a military helicopter exploded near the boat they were riding in Barangay Butalo, Datu Piang, Maguindanao that also killed their father and 18-year-old pregnant sister, Aida.

They child protection network also set in place a system of identification and registration of separate and unaccompanied children caught in the conflict.

As for Baby Hamda, doctors have pronounced him out of danger and he is now back at the Munai evacuation center, a week after journalists intervened and brought him to the hospital on October 30.

But once back inside evacuation centers, sick IDP children however recover slowly even after receiving treatment due to renewed exposure to health hazards, according to a DOH-ARMM report.

Until perhaps Baby Hamda finally gets home, the struggle to survive for him and countless more other children evacuees continues. 7 November 2008, Mindanews

Photo by AKP Images

DATU PIANG, Maguindanao — In the afternoon rain, Raiz Adteg, 16, walked somberly on his way to bury his baby sister, one-year-old Anariza, who died from diarrhea that morning at the evacuation center in the town plaza here.

To shield his sister from the pounding rain, Adteg held a tiny red umbrella over her body, dead only for four hours and wrapped in a malong (ethnic cloth) and a mat tied on each end of two bamboo poles carried on the shoulders of an uncle and cousin.

“We had no money to buy medicine,” he said in hushed tone, his young face dazed and uncomprehending. 

It has been more than a month now after Adteg’s family fled their home in Barangay (village) Magaslong due to military offensives against three of 16 Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) base commands in Central Mindanao.

The offensive is still part of the fighting that escalated after the Supreme Court restrained the signing of the Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain (MOA-AD) in Putrajaya, Malaysia in August.

Two months later on October 14, the Supreme Court ruled the MOA-AD as unconstitutional, saying that many provisions in the agreement depart from the present Constitution.

Government says it would talk again peace with the MILF but only if it surrenders its wanted commanders. But the MILF says it could no longer control its field commanders wanting to retaliate the shelving of the agreement that would have created the Bangsamoro Juridical Entity.

“The war should stop. We want to go home,” said Adteg’s uncle as the trio marched briskly towards the cemetery. Soon, it will be the mid-afternoon prayer and, in accordance with the Muslim ritual of burial, the dead should be buried at least before sundown.

In this historic town that lies along the famed Rio Grande de Mindanao, Anariza’s death passed unnoticed but eloquently spoke of the anguish and helplessness of more than 10,000 families who have sought refuge here since fighting began in early August.

Fifty-six internally displaced persons (IDPs) have already died in Maguindanao, 38 of whom due to illness and 18 from actual encounters since fighting between government and the MILF escalated in August, according to the Department of Health in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (DOH-ARMM).

In a November 4 report, DOH-ARMM also reported that about 21 of the recorded deaths caused by illness were ages five years old and below. Diarrhea is the number one leading cause of death among IDPs.

The statistics included siblings Jamir, 3, and Jamiha, 1 whose father Merin Hardeng from Barangay Irian, Datu Saudi Ampatuan is still at a loss for words until now. He could barely remember the exact date in October when they died almost within the same day. “It is painful to lose your children,” he said.

Crisis

The rising death toll of infants and children and increase in the number of IDPs underscore the unfolding humanitarian crisis in the provinces of Maguindanao, North Cotabato, Lanao Del Sur and Lanao Del Norte.

The National Disaster Coordinating Council (NDCC) as of November 6 reported that 75,931 families or 375,864 persons are affected by the ongoing offensives.

NDCC also declared apart from Maguindanao the municipalities of Libungan in Cotabato and Tangkal, Linamon, Kauswagan, Munai, and Kolambugan, Lanao Del Norte under a state of calamity.

The Amnesty International (AI) reported in late October that fighting in Mindanao in the last two months has already displaced 610,000 people.

In its report entitled “Shattered Peace in Mindanao: The Human Cost of Conflict in the Philippines,” AI noted that although the total number of currently displaced people reached almost 400,000, more than two-thirds chose to stay with their relatives than in any of the 150 IDP centers provided by the government. More than one-fourth of the 610,000 recorded IDPs have gone back to their villages.

In the poblacion (town plaza) here alone, some 28 evacuation centers made of blue sack tarpaulins have arisen, making the town look more like a “tent center.”

Datu Piang hosts IDPs not only from its 20 barangays but also from nearby Datu Saudi Ampatuan, Maguindanao and Midsayap, Pikit and Aleosan towns of North Cotabato, said town official Musib Uy Tan.

“Moro evacuees feel safer here than going to Christian-dominated areas,” Tan said.

Major public buildings have been converted into evacuation centers including the Fourth Shariah Circuit Court, Bureau of Fire Protection, Local Civil Registry, Mubarak mosque, elementary and national high schools, the public library, the gym and even the fish landing.

At the fish landing here, pump boat drivers recalled massively ferrying families fleeing the fighting in the last two months. Each ride would cost PhP 500 (USD 10).

“But all is silent now. All those places over there are now ghost towns,” said pump boat driver Joel Paam, 22, pointing at the direction of barangays across the river.

But apart from fighting, evacuees still face the threat from flooding. Waters of the Rio Grande de Mindanao easily swell during the rains, similar to what happened in July and August forcing evacuees to transfer to higher grounds.

“Stop the war now. Life is too difficult here in the plaza,” said Farida Ginaet, 37, who joined a rally held by <i> bakwits, </i> a local term for evacuees, in front of the plaza gate.

“When will this war ever stop?” asked Farida, who raises her seven children on her own.

At a gazebo inside the plaza early last week, other mothers also raised the same question as they crowded a group of journalists whom they pleaded desperately to listen to their stories.

The journalists were participants to a media tour in late October going around conflict-affected areas in North Cotabato, Maguindanao, Lanao del Sur and Lanao del Norte hosted by the Mindanao Peoples Caucus.

An elderly woman came forward to say her house was burned by soldiers; another one said her eight-year-old son was wounded from splinters of a howitzer bomb. A young mother complained that the last time her family received food ration was during the Eid’l Fit’r in end-September where each family was given 25 kilos of rice. Help came only in trickles, she said.

“These all would stop if only the government will sign the MOA-AD,” said Syrian Baisangcupan, a community leader.

Moro civil society organizations and the MILF have sounded the alarm over what they describe as a looming “international humanitarian crisis” in the face of increasing military offensives.

Lawyer Zainudin Malang of the MoroLaw Center said that Moro CSOs will set up a refugee, human rights and media secretariat to monitor the worsening plight of IDPs and the alarming rise in number of human rights violations.

They also called on the United Nations to intervene and put pressure on both government and MILF to go back to the negotiating table. MILF, for its part, appealed for the UN to set up an observer post to monitor the situation in some 150 IDP centers all over Central Mindanao.

AI in its report echoed concerns over the plight of IDPs that had “prompted aid agencies to warn of a possible humanitarian crisis if plans were not put in place to provide for the needs of the local population amidst the possibility of an increase in fighting.”

AI also called for the Philippine government to adhere to the UN Guiding Principles for Internal Displacement specifically citing:

Principle 3(1) which states: “National authorities have the primary duty and responsibility to provide protection and humanitarian assistance to internally displaced persons” and;

Principle 24 (2) “Humanitarian assistance to internally displaced persons shall not be diverted, in particular for political or military reasons.” – 31 October 2008 – Philippine Human Rights Reporting Project

]]> http://charinasanzarate.wordpress.com/2009/01/09/civilians-search-for-end-to-war-in-central-mindanao/feed/ 0 charinasanz atecha http://charinasanzarate.wordpress.com/2009/01/09/the-road-to-pikit-grim-images-of-war/ http://charinasanzarate.wordpress.com/2009/01/09/the-road-to-pikit-grim-images-of-war/#comments Fri, 09 Jan 2009 08:57:40 +0000 Charina Sanz http://charinasanzarate.wordpress.com/?p=33 Continue reading →]]>

PIKIT, North Cotabato –Barefoot, five-year old Mohammad Guianalan has been walking on dusty roads since seven in the morning. In both his hands, he cradles a tiny black-feathered chicken, “his beloved pet,” his mother Amirah, says.

“He does not have any slippers,” Amirah explains.

Her two other children, Norhana, 3, and Sarah, 2, ride on board a
carabao-driven sled manned by their father packed with their
belongings: cooking pots, a plastic gallon for water, mat, pails, some
more chickens, a couple of goats in tow.

Amirah is worried. “We are scared of the buto-buto (explosions) .”

It is now an hour past noon. Here, along the road inside Pikit, little
Mohammad and his family, like scores of others, have been walking
since daybreak this morning to flee “loud explosions” that ripped
through their villages.

The road to the Pikit poblacion is filled with images such as these,
grim scenes of war, families on board carts, motorcycles, carabaos and
cattle. Most of them come from the barangays of Pagangan, Dualing,
Tapodoc, and Dungguan in Aleosan, and Kolambog in Pikit.

The Bantay Ceasefire reports an estimated 22,000 evacuees scattered
all over Pikit and Aleosan as of Sunday.

Inside the gym of the Immaculate Concepcion church here, there are
already about more than 800 people, mostly coming from Barangay
Tapodoc, who have sought shelter.

One of them is Robert Malagya, 19, who was wounded in the left leg,
hit by a bullet from strafing.

Now lying on a straw mat in one of the bleachers in the gym, he
remembers making his way in crossing Silik just before dusk last
Friday when he heard a burst of gunfire.

“At first, I thought it was just a stone that hit me. I was shocked to
see that I was hit by a bullet,” he said, showing his bandaged left
leg.

Fr. Gene Gilos, OMI, Pikit parish priest, said it is “heartbreaking”
to witness how the lives of these families have been disrupted. He
appeals for donation of food and supplies as the number of evacuees
rise by the minute.

***

Along the national highway, just a few minutes ride away from the
Pikit parish, a ten-wheeler truck rolls to a stop in front of an old
abandoned warehouse. The warehouse called Buisan has been converted
into an evacuation center where as of Sunday mid-afternoon, about 36
families had already sought refuge.

First to come down from the truck are the women and children. One
woman, who says she is 15 years old, stands with three small children
with her. “My husband stayed behind to look after our cattle,” she
says.

Next came an assortment of luggage, big boxes, and other household
items being unloaded from the truck.

Inside the warehouse, there is Asmiya Ison, 16, a second year student
in Silik high school, who just arrived with her family, still tired
from two days of walking all the way from her village in Barangay
Tapodoc.

She was in school last Friday morning, she said, writing a composition
for her Pilipino subject. “I never thought that within the day we
would have to leave our home,” she says.

At about ten in the morning, her classmates told her that they had to
leave as soon as possible as soldiers will soon be entering their
villages. “Papasok na ang mga sundalo,” she was told.

Asmiya then rushed back home to Barangay Tapodoc, which is an hour and
a half walk away, just in time to find her family waiting for her,
already preparing to leave.

“In my rush, I was able to bring with me only a pair of pants, a skirt
and two pieces of tandong (veil),” she says.

Inside her bag are two notebooks, a ball pen, and a few of her
compositions. There is one composition in Tagalog where she wrote
about the importance of education and how difficult it would be to be
both poor and uneducated.

“I want to be a teacher someday,” she smiles, shyly.

Thus she made sure not to forget her school records and an important
manila paper that was folded several times. It is her project called
“Mga Yaman Tao sa Asya” (Asia’s human resources) that also tackled
different government systems in Asia including traditional sultanates.

“Without this, my clearance will not be signed.” Asked how she
understands the conflict, she replies: “It is about fighting for
freedom.”

***

“Tabi, tabi kayo (Move, move over.)” A group of evacuees on the road
ahead are shouting, waving their arms as if in a warning. Just then,
clouds of dust swirl as a convoy of army trucks sped by.

“We are tired but we have to move on,” says 47-year-old Farida
Dimalangan who is from
Barangay Manaulanan. She says though that they had to stop for three
times to let the cattle take a dip on rice paddies along the way.
“Kawawa naman. They would die from the heat.”

A ten-wheeler truck passes by, picking up evacuees along the way. A
man, his name is Hadji Cosain Alba, a municipal councilor, is taking
command. It’s a pity, he says, that some of the evacuees could not
take the ride because they could not leave their cattle behind.

It is now half an hour past two in the afternoon. Dark clouds hover in
the horizon and the wind is getting moist. On the way to Barangay
Maulanan now which is about five kilometers away from Pikit poblacion,
the steady stream of evacuees start to dwindle.

By this time, at about three in the afternoon, the rains start to
fall. In the heavy downpour, many evacuees had to walk in the rain.
Some found banana leaves to protect themselves with.

A few more minutes of riding on rough roads, there is no longer anyone
in sight. Villages are abandoned. There are houses, a mosque here, a
chapel there, a day care center, but nothing stirred. Only silence.

The long stretch of road finally ended at crossing Silik, some 10
kilometers away from Pikit poblacion. In a waiting shed, there were
three men sitting on a bench.

“You can’t go any further. The ‘encounter site’ is just two kilometers
away from here,” one of the men said.

***

On the highway along Aleosan, in sitio Taguan, Barangay San Mateo, a
teenage girl holds a teddy bear in her arms. Her name is Michelle and
she is 17 years old.

Michelle is with her family and they are on their way to an evacuation
center. They had stopped for a while on the road, joining a handful of
people who are gazing in the distance, at the plains and rolling hills
before them.

There, at the far end, are the “targets,” one of the onlookers say,
presumably the villages where many of the evacuees come from. One man
points towards the barangay of Silik.

A few meters away along the highway, soldiers are seen patrolling the
area where a couple of howitzers stand menacingly on the ground. The air
is filled with the smell of gunpowder.

Once again, in the distance, a rumble of explosions could be heard.
(12 August 2008/Charina Sanz/MindaNews)

]]> http://charinasanzarate.wordpress.com/2009/01/09/the-road-to-pikit-grim-images-of-war/feed/ 0 charinasanz http://charinasanzarate.wordpress.com/2008/06/11/professor-octa-dinampo-warrior-of-the-light/ http://charinasanzarate.wordpress.com/2008/06/11/professor-octa-dinampo-warrior-of-the-light/#comments Wed, 11 Jun 2008 06:50:45 +0000 Charina Sanz http://charinasanzarate.wordpress.com/?p=26 Continue reading →]]> The abduction of Professor Octavio Dinampo of the Mindanao State University-Jolo (along with ABS-CBN’s Ces Drilon and her crew) had come as a shock to many of his friends and colleagues in the civil society network. But the shock immediately turned to grave concern when news reports have started implicating “Prof. Octa,” also chair of the Mindanao Peoples Caucus, to the kidnapping. For those who know the well-loved and respected professor and peace advocate, this mere insinuation is outrageous.

It was not too long ago that I had met “Prof. Octa” but he struck me as one of those kindred souls you meet once in a while, whom you know would be teacher and friend, no matter how brief the encounter is.

I met him when he gave a Bangsamoro situationer to one electoral conference I attended last year. The professor’s sharp insights, delivered with clarity and peppered with humor, dispelled the many warped notions, myths and stereotypes about the region and its people. I congratulated him on how well he put the issues in context in clear messages and punch lines. He also maintained a calm presence when rebuked by a clueless Manila-based participant, parrying her stings with his characteristic wit, depth of insight and dignified grace.

Prof Octa is also, for me, the epitome of the “mentor-teacher”, the sort who would check on his students how they are faring, and give them the moral boost when it is most needed. In my case, it is writing – although I never had the honor to be his student in class but, nonetheless, he would treat me just the same.

He would encourage me to write some more and go to Sulu, write more in-depth articles about the many issues in the place. “So many things here don’t get to see the light of media,” he told me. Whenever I would chance upon him, he would sometimes ask me what articles I am working on and could I please send him a copy? “Yes, Prof, I promise.”

“What a beautiful article,” Prof Octa, ever the encouraging teacher, texted me after I emailed him one time. When I tried to protest, he insisted, “I mean it really. I can tell a writer when I see and read one. A writer is one who writes, researches, interprets, teaches, exemplifies, and retells, according to my old notes.” For many struggling writers, these words from a teacher are like balm to the many self-doubts and ‘creative woundings’ one gets along the way while working on one’s craft.

Aside from writing, we would also briefly talk about spiritual journeys, about the transient passing of storms in one’s life, about “warriors of the light”. “In Islam, there is what we call the internal jihad of the soul,” he said as he patiently explained to me the many aspects of jihad.

He also shared some stories about Sulu, that despite how it is being perceived as “God forsaken”, it remains home to him. I could not help but relate to Prof. how, until now, we still grieve for Mindanews photojournalist Gene Boyd Lumawag who was killed after shooting the sunset at the Jolo pier. But from his stories, somehow I saw a glimpse of the man who has relentlessly been serving his island and people well with all his heart.

He would also speak proudly of lawyer Mary Ann Arnado, his former student at the MSU Marawi and now MPC secretary-general, for her peace advocacy commitment and leadership; and of friends and colleagues whom he admire for embracing causes with passion, “you mean, the ‘pure hearts,’ Prof?” I kidded him, who “thrive in the midst of blight.”

The last time I ran into him was in a conference in Davao City a couple of weeks ago. How I wished I talked to him some more while he was having coffee at the lobby. He commented how I seemed to look more peaceful now. I smiled. “It is because the storms have started to ease, Prof.”

I could only pray and hope that whatever storm Prof. Octa may be going through now, Insha Allah (‘God be willing’), he shall prevail with his deep reserves of faith, grace and inner strength. (Mindanews)

Ongoing since last week (May 21-23; May 26-28), Mindanews’s editors and writers have been going back to school, this time, to train for narrative reporting under Janet Steele, an American professor from George Washington University, and Andreas Harsono, an Indonesian journalist working for Pantau, a media training organization operating in Jakarta, Banda Aceh and Ende. (For more on this, see www.mindanews.com and clicked on the 1st Mindanao Summer Institute of Journalism icon). One writing exercise required of us was to use the “I” in a two-page double-spaced story. Below is my ‘attempt’ submitted last May 23:

“Mom, we need to bring Jackie to the doctor today. He looks weak.” My ten-year-old son Xandro cried out, his large brown eyes starting to get misty with tears, as he anxiously paced back and forth in front of me. I looked at him and asked, “Why, what happened?”

“Jackie is seven years old – but aren’t dogs supposed to live for ten years?” he asked, a silent plea in his voice, begging me to please do something, ‘not to let Jackie die’. Jackie is a dachshund and he first came to us seven years ago when Xandro was only three. My son, who is an only child, practically grew up with Jackie, his beloved playmate.

“Xandro, I know how you love Jackie very much. But sometimes, you just have to let go of those you love most. It could be pets, toys, even people you love,” I told him, suddenly not knowing why I am saying these things to him. My son had seen through many partings and it may be my way of telling him about the need for goodbyes, what they mean, and why, for good reason, there are times we have to leave and, in leaving, lose the people we love.

I sensed his pain, how I would have wanted to ease it for my child, and bear the burden myself. I would have wanted to say that “it’s alright, everything’s fine, I’ll take care of it, and as soon as the doctor would treat him, he’ll be running about again.” But deep inside me, I know that there are lessons he needs to learn by himself.

Xandro flicked his shaggy, straight hair to one side which he loves to do every so often – and how he looks so charming doing that especially so when he smiles. But right now, his face looked somber. My son knows what death is – three years ago, in fact, today, he lost his grandfather. I thought so that perhaps Xandro is being reminded of my father’s death and still mourned his loss – could it be that today it is Jackie he fears losing?

I got up and left to find Jackie. I found him lying on the floor near the dining table. He seemed tired and when I called his name, he raised his head and tried to wiggle his tail, but I would have to agree with Xandro, he is frail and life seemed to gradually leave him.

“Jackie, how are you feeling today?” I asked, tenderly stroking his head. I sighed, remembering how he survived, sustaining wounds and broken bones when he was hit by a passing car. Once, he came home bloodied from a deep wound – it was the time when Jackie still had a way of escaping from the house and nobody would ever notice – and I had to bring him to the pet emergency hospital for a surgery. That night, we kept a round-the-clock vigil and spoon-fed him with a dose of antibiotics and a water and sugar concoction. We thought he would die but in the morning, Jackie, ever the fighter, the survivor, bounced back to life.

This time though, I am no longer sure. “Jackie, you have been a good dog and you know that Xandro loves you very much and you served us well. But if you need to rest, it’s okay,” I whispered to him and caressed his head, looking into his eyes as he started to shut them close.

(Postscript: Once again, Jackie survived – and the vet just pronounced him out of danger.)

Wanderlust: “a strong or unconquerable longing for or impulse towards wandering“

Years back, while I was still teaching journalism and essay writing at the university, I chanced upon Salon.com‘s ‘Wanderlust’, a collection of wonderful, elegant prose dedicated to “putting the romance and the passion – the ‘unconquerable longing’ – back into travel writing,” as editor Don George wrote in the introduction. Ever since then, I was hooked and would often scour for travel articles written by Pico Iyer, Bruce Chatwin, Isabel Allende, and a few others more whose writing Salon.com had described as having that “combined sense of courage, passion and wonder.”

Back then, I could only dream about going out, exploring the world, and getting into travel writing as my life merely spun around the usual classroom and university work that went on for about five years. A so-called ‘quiet life’ as a teacher came more as a matter of choice so I would have more time to care for my little child at that time. I had just then left a job as a lawyer in a government office that required lots of travel time. The choice came one day when I was caught in a storm somewhere in a resort in Dipolog where I was attending a week-long conference, just when I needed to rush home to tend to my toddler who had a sudden bout of fever, and it took me all of two days to get to Davao. I took the first bus out but later on in my rush, as I embarked on the pier, I almost jumped into a ferry boat that was already slowly moving outwards to the sea. I would have made it, yet it would also have turned disastrous, were it not for a kindly stranger who stopped me in time by gently holding both my shoulders from behind me.

On my way home, as I trooped from the ferry boat to a tricycle then to another bus, I realized just how risky that leap would have been and all of a sudden it came to me that the job, pay and all-expense traveling were not worth it wherever there is a little child waiting for one’s return home. Being away from home and going on travel for long was no longer an easy option then. But often I would be filled with ‘unconquerable longing’ every time I would see glimpses of sunsets here and there, photographs of places that evoke a sense of being at the edge of the world, or at the beach whenever I would wade through the waters swimming up to where I could see that point in the horizon where the sea and the sky would meet, and all that could ever be heard is the silent symphony of one’s own breathing and the echo of waves.

In time I got settled in to a life of routine in the academe. Most Saturdays I would spend rummaging book sales at the mall and, with coffee from Dunkin Donuts, hie off for the rest of the day soaking on wonderful prose from my latest finds. My training had always been as a journalist, ever the ‘facts digger’ (borrowing from Tom Wolfe in ‘New Journalism’ ), yet often I would find myself on those Saturday afternoons lusting for the kind of lyrical, magical writings from such as those of Pico Iyer, V.S. Naipaul (and those written by his brother Shiva in ‘Unfinished Journey’), Resil Mojares in ‘House of Memory’, Joan Didion and the other masters of creative nonfiction, and all of those excellent pieces in Granta.

But as things would happen, life’s twists and turns would lead me to unexpected paths of living and thriving on day by day wanderlust, and I am just so grateful now for the many gifts of grace that keep turning up for me to see. From my hotel window in Cotabato, I saw a blue kite flying bravely in the afternoon rainstorm one day, and on another day, I watched entranced at Neruda’s ‘fiesta of sunset in the distant mountain tops’ coming into life. On a Saturday, we passed by the Baras bird sanctuary in Sultan Kudarat after doing some research for a land conflict study, where on a riverbank, I stood amazed to see such a multitude of egrets and herons coming home in the late afternoon while the nocturnal birds were getting ready to leave for hunting, filling me with wonder how so touching to see birds from the West to have found such a refuge in a landscape scarred by a memory of discord.

Then on a Sunday, just before twilight, I hurried up to my room to catch the sun setting in the horizon over Cotabato amidst a glorious feast of colors – from golden to crimson – that soon settled into a blue night, whereupon a solitary star began to twinkle above a mountain whose peak would glisten with green moss in the morning sun. From a nearby mosque, I heard the magrib call to prayer at six in the evening while a candle was being lighted before an image of the ‘Our Lady of Lourdes’ seen from the other side of the hotel. At times, I would prop myself up on the pillows, fling open the curtains and bask at the panorama of mountain and sky and rain and sunset, moving me to fall upon my knees in gratitude for all these blessings of wonder.

Sometime ago, I tried to write an essay that I never got to finish because it faltered for lack of voice and courage or so it was how I felt then. It was something about ‘hitting the right notes’ or being able to play music the way the heart would want it. “In writing, your whole instrument is yourself,” a mentor of mine recently said, and it takes a lot of self- and soul-work along the way to be able to let the words sing. Musing on this, I have a sense that perhaps, this time, I am finally getting the notes right in harmony, driven so by an eternal wanderlust that stirs a yearning to craft song, for which I could only have the Radiant One to thank for.

“In God’s own time, everything falls into its own perfect rhythm. . .”

Mae Hong Son's serene lake

Journeys along the Thailand-Burma Border

“I saw in their eyes something I was to see over and over- a burning desire to go , to move, to get under way, anyplace, away from any here.” – John Steinbeck in “The Urge to be Someplace Else”

And so it was that I found myself one cold December morning riding at the back of an open pickup truck, the wind on my face, up through the misty mountain trails of Mae Hong Son at the Thai-Burmese border. There we were all seated on a mat spread across the floor of the truck, shivering at every burst of moist wind that only gets chillier as we climbed our way up the slopes. To shield my face from the cold, I draped it with a shawl that I kept holding on tightly lest it gets blown about by the wind. Yet, after a while, I decided to let go of it gladly, no matter how biting the cold is, and let myself be swept in by the wind and sunshine, and the stirring beauty of mist and green.

There, before me, are verdant mountains rising up to the sky filled with ferns and pine trees, and here and there are bamboo groves lying hidden on patches of shadows swathed across the valley. As we moved deeper into the mountains, there would be more other shadows I would see and, too, I would learn that amidst this tender beauty, the forest has held secrets and borne witness to deep and abiding sorrows.

Moments before, we rode pass by villagers on single file hunched on the ground, their bodies in synchronized motion toiling the rice paddies, and every so often we see gaudily-painted Buddhist shrines on the roadside where smoke from burning incense sticks would waft through the air. We have set out from the town at eight in the morning, while it was still draped in slumber and fog, and as whiffs of mist drifted over on to the nearby lake and up across Wat Jong Kham and Wat Jong Klang, the twin temples of the Buddhist monks in saffron robes, some of whom as young as six or seven, whose heads are shaven, and who at nighttime would fly lanterns with lit candles shooting up into the sky in blazing flares to the cheers of the crowd.

Today is our fifth day on the road not yet halfway through our journey but now momentarily away from the dust and grime and the smell of roadside grease. From buses to motorbikes, tuk-tuks and minivans, we were riding all sorts of transport that gets one across Thailand, and just yesterday we flew in from Bangkok to Chang Mai then finally here to Mae Hong Son. The rush of time and tempo had caught me unprepared as with the swirl of images, words, scents, tastes, the hot chilies and green lime, all leaving my senses dazed in a state of stupor.

Hidden in a long and narrow valley, Mae Hong Son has been described in travel brochures as “the land of the three mists” and historically known as the most distant and until recently the most inaccessible province of the kingdom of Siam. From the plane, I looked down to see mountain tops in clouds of haze and I thought of Robert Conway’s “Lost Horizon” where lies the mythical paradise of “Shangri-la”. I closed my eyes as I also knew, from the stories told me, that tucked somewhere in this mountain resort town are the villages of Karen and Karenni ethnic refugees who escaped military offensives of the Myanmar government. We had been told stories of border-crossings, a forest filled with landmines and malaria mosquitoes, and as I gazed at the misty peaks below, I could not help wondering whether at that moment there are people making their way across the border, hiding in terror. There are twenty-one thousand Karenni refugees in Mae Hong Son and we are now heading towards one of their villages called Bam Nai Soi, just two kilometers away from the border of Burma.

Half an hour to the ride, and as we bounced through winding dirt roads, I leaned on my back and took a moment’s rest, my heart in grateful praise for this travel that had come unbidden and unexpectedly. How I came to be here and why is a gift of serendipity that came at a time when the ‘urge to be someplace else’ burned most strongly. I got a call from a colleague in late November if I would want to join a team to document the struggles of ethnic refugees from Burma – and would I want to write a story about it? I mumbled yes, of course, how would I not want to go, see for myself, write once again, a familiar yearning I know of so much rising in me. It’s been a while and I do get wistful at times, and the romance of reporting from the field is just so enchanting still. So off I go, hastily wiggling my way past out of tight schedules to slip just in time away from the whirl of Christmas merriment, and headed towards Bangkok on a midnight flight.

I woke up in the morning to find myself in another world, unaware of the magnitude of human suffering and wasted lives that I was to encounter in the coming days. Where long after listening to the stories, and after hearing tragedy spoken of so lightly, I am often left wondering how so the human heart can hold so much pain and not be broken.

-ooOOOoo-

“My life had always been one of fear and running.” Plar Wah speaks with a soft, gentle voice that bears no trace to the tragedies that he had faced. Even as we were passing through the lush fields of Mae Hong Son, my thoughts are constantly drawn towards Plar and the stories of the young Karen women whom I met just a few days before. Plar is the school headmaster at the Than Min Refugee Camp in Suan Phung district, Ratchaburi province where we first came soon after we arrived.

Here, inside the school’s main office at the camp, Plar searches his memory and remembers that day when he was three and there was fighting, burning and killing in his village. “We were running and my mother took hold of my hand. She was carrying my little brother on her back.” For a moment, he fell into silence and only the voices of schoolchildren reciting Karen words could be heard outside. “Then I stumbled and I could not run anymore,” he says, almost in a whisper. “There were only three of us left that day because the soldiers all killed my father, uncle and two brothers.” He heaved a deep sigh at this and I could sense him grappling still with the memory of this loss more than fifty years later.

“But I don’t hate them anymore, they who have killed my family,” he says breaking into a smile when I asked him how he seemed to be so at peace now. There is kindness in his angular face that he tilts to one side whenever he smiles, and which he does every so often even at the recollection of tragedy. “I am now safe here in the camp. I have found peace here and the emotional pains could no longer disturb me.” It is his faith and his love for his wife and children, he says, that are his constant sources of strength.

Soon, Plar will be leaving and is now merely counting the days when he will finally bade the camp goodbye as with many others who had lost all hope of ever going back home to Burma or that things would one day change. Inside the camp’s headquarters, I remembered seeing a news article tacked on the wall about Daniel Zu, a respected camp leader, who is now successfully resettled in Australia. He serves as an inspiration to others, I was told, a reminder that one day they too would be living their dream in another country. About four thousand refugees from the camp had already been resettled mostly to the US, Canada and Australia.

“What is there to go back home to? ” Plar says as he takes a deep breath. “They will only put me back to jail.” Then he told us in snapshot details how he served once as a Karen revolutionary soldier, then fleeing Burma in 1997, adjusting to life in the camp, and of that day he was summoned by a camp official so he could be trained as a teacher, then teaching Karen history to refugee students all these years until last year when he was made in charge as the camp school headmaster, and finally, how the day came when he learned that he was accepted in a resettlement program to Australia.

We stepped outside unto the heat of the noonday sun. Plar led us through a walk around the school area. Inside makeshift classrooms, children recite words and numbers aloud. Young teenage teachers, also refugees and who have been hurriedly trained to replace those who have left, point at words on the board using wooden sticks or scribble big, bold letters for the children to read. Turnovers are fast, Plar says, and soon, they too will leave like others before them and the camp shall have to train new teachers again.

“My desire now is for my children to go to school, with food and medicine,” he says. “Here it is not enough because we could not go outside the camp and we do not have equal rights like the Thai people. They call us the wild people.” He laughs at this but his face soon turned somber. “I just want to start a new life away from here,” he says.

Like Plar, most of the refugees simply wanted to find work and move on with their lives. They have been living in the camp for ten years now but Thai authorities still restrict their movements in going in and out of the camp. At most, they are allowed a temporary pass from one week to not more than a month. They are also banned from seeking employment. There are the daring ones though who would try their luck in finding work outside as illegal migrant workers. But many, mostly young women, return to the camps “broken in body and spirit,” says an official of the Karen Refugee Committee. If ever, there may be only about four percent who may make it successfully. “It is often heartbreaking to see these young girls being brought home from the cities either raped or beaten.” The camp has organized care groups of women, he says, who tend to the pains and wounds of the young.

And then just recently, the camp had suffered cutbacks on food supplies – soybean cakes, prawn paste and chili – due to budgetary constraints of a private aid agency. Notices about this announcement were posted on walls around the camp that were met, we were told, with anxiety from among the refugees. Being resettled then has remained the only option but that would also mean the spiriting away of the best Karen minds and skills. “How would then that bode on to the future of the Karen nation? Many of our teachers, doctors, professionals are all gone,” a senior Karen leader says.

Over at an open court, a little girl came about walking by with a tiny pink parasol over her head, a ribbon on her hair, her cheeks painted with thanaka powder. “You are very pretty. What’s your name?” I asked Aung Than, our guide and a camp board member, to translate for me. “I’m Lha Min Cho and I am six years old.” “So what do you want to be when you grow up?” I asked. “A teacher,” she curtly replied.

We continued our way this time towards the camp’s interior that is actually a shanty tenement of rows upon rows of bamboo huts. “What about you, Aung Than?”" I turned to him as we were walking. “Tell me about your dreams.” Aung, who was wearing a longyi, a traditional sarong, grew pensive. “I want to settle down with a beautiful family and children. And I also want to help my people.” It is the same dream shared by Eh Na, a Karen peace advocate of the Burma Issues, telling me how he wants to “build a big house for his family in my place in Karen state.” Aung and Eh Na are both in their mid-twenties and had fled their villages while as children and who were later on reared inside refugee camps. Many of those in their generation have only vague memories of their villages.

Eh Na though has written a poignant poem about returning one day to Kowthoolei which means “land without evil,” the Karen’s homeland. “In the river of Tenasserim,” he writes, “there are deep forests and mountains, with little streams flowing. . .I sit down and weep in a strange land, I miss my little bamboo house and my father’s paddy field…Now I am away from it, I never dream and wish, I do not know the reason why, but the smell of gunpowder and bloodshed and tears of the people. . .Oh God! All I want is to return to Tenasserim where there is no sound of guns and no nightmare.”

We soon passed through an alley of thatched huts, some of which look decrepit. There was filth in a few places and cobwebs hung from walls of wooden slats. Some of the houses though were festooned with shiny glittering “Merry Christmas” buntings as most of the Karen refugees in the camp are Christians although Burma is majority Buddhists. The Karens are the second largest ethnic minority group in Burma out of about a hundred or so.

Suddenly, as we were walking, I heard a choir of voices singing. I strained my ears to hear where the music was coming from and followed them to a hut. From the doorway, I peered inside to see what looked like a gloomy shack. In one corner was a raised dais where a scrawny child was seated, her blank eyes staring at me, as she scooped a handful of rice from a tin plate.

And there not far from her is a quintet of elderly women and men seated in a huddle on the floor, their heads bent over a tattered lyric sheet of chorale music. But then there was a stream of light filtering from a hole that gaped through a thatched roof overhead, illuminating them. They were singing a church hymn called “You are Welcome,” their voices melodic in varying tones of soprano, alto and bass. How in the midst of squalor, one stumbles upon this radiance, this beauty. We listened once again, captivated by the music that seemed like prayer floating through the camp on the wings of a gentle wind. Hope is kept alive in many ways, in the music and poems and art, and the faith that keeps springing forth from the rubble. I left with the plaintive strains of the music echoing in my heart. It lingered with me even as I finally went home.

-ooOOOoo-

“Shoot on Sight” is a video documentary produced by the human rights advocacy group, the Burma Issues. The opening scene showed actual video clips of terrified villagers running through the forest seeking cover behind trees as bursts of gunfire could be heard from a distance. The camera then zoomed in onto a mother cradling a baby in her arms. Suddenly, in the midst of running, she stopped to breastfeed her baby while squatting on the ground, her eyes gripped in fear.

The documentary was filmed by Saw Htoo Tawny of the Burma Issues whose earliest memories, he said, are very much like the one shown on film. He remembered being carried by his father on his shoulders as they moved about in the jungle for two years. Like everybody else, they escaped fighting that broke out in their village.

The film also captured in many ways the hauntingly common images shared by almost all Karen refugees we met, running in fear, burning of villages, and relatives being killed, scenes embedded in a collective memory of terror and violence. So is it with Tawny who dreamed of becoming a film maker one day and making a hit Hollywood movie like “Blood Diamonds,” that would tackle the plight of ethnic peoples in Burma, “so the world would know about our feelings, our struggles, our sufferings.”

“The real tragedy in Burma,” says one Karen activist, “is actually found in the heartlands of the ethnic villages which suffer the most from the brutality of the military junta.” Ethnic activists felt that the world’s attention is only focused on the struggles of the democratic rights opposition led by Aung San Suu Kyi as could be gleaned in last September’s monk-led protests. The “ethnic cleansing” that happens in the country sides, they say, do not even merit reportage from the international press despite the scale, magnitude and duration of nearly two decades of military atrocities.

For more than half a century now, the Karens have been waging a guerilla resistance struggle for autonomy led by the Karen National Union and its armed wing – the Karen National Liberation Army – against the Burman-led government. They are pushing for recognition of a 1947 agreement signed by the government that was supposed to grant them full autonomy at the end of a two-year transition period. In a complex chain of historical events, the successive military rule led by the Burmans had justified the quelling of the rebellion as basis for the military offensives and abusive control tactics that are aimed to terrorize and cow the people into submission. The Karen Human Rights Group reported the following range of tactics: “forced relocation, the destruction of villages, burning of crops, the rape of women and girls, planting of landmines and implementation of shoot on sight policies.” But then they also claim that the motive could be far more rapacious than counter-insurgency and that is control over resource-rich ethnic lands.

The military campaign which began since sixty years ago already forced hundreds and thousands of people to flee their villages into seeking refuge in the border areas. Some of the refugees have been living in the camps since the 1980s; many of the young Karen activists we met have in fact been either born outside Burma or had grown up in the camps. There are about a hundred and fifty thousand refugees housed in ten camps near the border inside Thailand, mostly coming from the Karen, Karenni and Shan states. Those who fled their villages but have chosen to brave it out in the jungles instead of crossing the border are called the “internally-displaced peoples, ” numbering to about more than half a million people. “We hope the world would also be concerned that we the ethnic peoples are being driven away from our lands, our villages burned, our men killed, our women raped,” says one refugee leader.

-ooOOOoo-

The mists have started to clear when finally we arrived at Bam Nai Soi. The village is a cluster of thatched huts nestled on the hills about twenty-six kilometers away from Mae Hong Son. Burma is just two kilometers away and the nearby camps have suffered several attacks from Burmese soldiers in the past. Because it is so close to the border, spies are known to be lurking everywhere in this mountain resort town. The moment we arrived at the airport, I could right away sense the fear and trepidation among those working with the refugees. “Be careful,” warned one development worker I met as we were pushing our baggage trolleys out towards the airport gate, “don’t go around talking to just anybody.”

But now, here inside a large hut where we were led soon after we alighted from the truck, we feel safe at the moment and far from the prying eyes of spies. When we arrived, we were met by young Karenni leaders of community-based organizations who shared to us their work, from community organizing to human rights advocacy, documentation and networking with other ethnic groups.

“The best way towards change is to change the mindset of the new generation,” says K.R, a twenty-five year old teacher who runs a leadership and management course in the camp. Most of them believe that education is a crucial tool in changing the system. “I also teach my students to find the courage to speak out,” he adds. “We Karennis are meek and gentle people and I hope that whatever I teach them would one day make a difference in the community.” (The Karenni is another ethnic group in Burma distinct from the Karens.)

He confidently explained how their course prepares young refugee students for employment or to take leadership roles in the future Burma. “We expect them to lead organizations, to take some roles in the community, and to work in the administration of a new government in Burma in the future.” K.R. had said these things with such conviction that leaves no doubt to the listener that one day Burma shall be free and the ethnic peoples can make their exodus back home.

The leadership course, he said, was set up to provide further education for high school students. It is non-academic but geared towards skills development. Subjects taught are conversational English; correspondence writing; human rights and democracy; organizational and financial management; social studies and computer skills. Under human rights and democracy, students learn basic concepts on law, constitution and democracy. “We need lots of human resource for education and health. We have a human resource problem brought in part by the resettlement of skilled individuals to other countries,” he says.

K.T.L who heads an environmental advocacy group is one of the graduates of the leadership course. He told us that he was once a student leader in high school but was forced to flee Burma when soldiers started looking for him. He later joined the armed guerilla movement as a combatant. ‘But I had to leave because jungle life is not meant for me. I was stricken with malaria.”

Discussions later drifted towards the struggles of the Karenni people in preserving their identity and culture while living as refugees inside Thailand. “In our state, we have our traditional knowledge, our traditional ways of maintaining the forest, but when we stay in refugees camps, that knowledge is gone, ” says K.T.L. “We do not have land for farming; no forest to hunt for food; we are not allowed to take food outside the camp when we become hungry. Our people have now become beggars.”

There is such dignified grace and passion in the way these young people spoke about their struggles for autonomous self-rule and democracy in Burma. Most of them were educated inside makeshift classrooms, and I could picture them in my mind reciting words and numbers just as the students in Than Min were. K.R., who is very articulate, is himself a refugee who was only five when he first came to the camp and like many others still remembers living in the jungle, hiding in the border, when the whole village was burned down.

“Culture has its ways of evolving, it never dies,” K.R. says emphatically, a point that his colleague T.R. has elaborated further. “Yes, but our culture had been destroyed,” T.R. says, “and there was disruption that was not of our own choosing.” Later on, the exchanges became more passionate but after a while K.R. had to excuse himself as he had to attend a school sports event inside the camp. When asked if he also considers resettlement, he replied, “for as long as refugees are still here, I will still be engaged in social work. If everybody goes, then I too will have to go.” Finally, he got up to leave, smiling, “Hope comes from what you do.”

The day after, we learned that tragedy had befallen the sports event. Whispers run through the village about a teenage boy having been killed. From a news article, we learned that he was shot dead by Thai security officials who had fired upon a crowd of young students on a peaceful protest against abuses of their rights. “This is the first time it happened although there had been riots in the past,” my development worker friend said. “But these things are bound to happen,” she says, where a sense of despair hovers in circumstances that restrict movement and speech.

It was late afternoon when we headed back to town. Hitching a ride with us were Ana who works in the camp and her friend, a lawyer from Mexico. I learned that Ana is a veteran doctor of an international aid agency and has been sent on assignment to many conflict areas since 1988 – from Africa to Kosovo to Congo. “So how is it working here?” I asked, raising my voice a bit louder to make myself be heard above the din of the motor engine. “It is different here,” she replied in her lilting Spanish accent, “maybe even worse.”

Burma may have no massive killings, she said, statistically, on a scale like Rwanda or Kosovo. “But there is deeper trauma on people when they have been away for too long, far from their homes, without any hope of ever going back. It has been fifteen or twenty years that they have been here.” She rested her back on a railing of the truck and folded her arms. Then she went on to say in hushed tones, “And there is little change over the years. In other places, the war stops, people go home, they move on with their lives. But not here where there seems to be no movement at all.”

We all became silent and for sometime only the humdrum of the engine could be heard as we descended the slopes. In the distance is a silhouette of yet another misty mountain. In my mind, I could almost see K.T.L., still barely sixteen, staggering in the forest, delirious with malaria fever, and ever so fearful about not stepping on a landmine. How he must have wailed to the mountains that, by now at the mere passage of time, must have kept a cavern of tears from refuge seekers who passed the same way, and how it must have been for him when he finally made it to the border camp.

I gazed down at the lush valley below. It is no longer cold now yet I am beguiled still by the paradox of beauty and shadows, and the epiphanies that come when one is elsewhere in someplace else, from an altitude of wide open spaces and clear skies, or in the radiance of a hymn and a shaft of light in a refugee camp, or upon encountering pilgrim souls who have nothing else but hope and the language of the soul – where then all of a sudden in a moment of stillness, one is bequeathed with a gift of luminosity that makes the befuddled heart clear, the paths known.

In the morning we are leaving and off to another border town, Mae Sot, which will be our last stop. Soon after in a week, I will be home on a midnight flight back to Manila, then afterwards, perhaps, to find myself once again on the road to some other wandering.

Then I glanced at Ana who had spent most of her life in war zones and refugee camps, and I wondered how she must have listened endlessly at the stories of refugees while tending to the broken and the wounded, or rescuing the dying who just came in from the other side of the border – and what would that be why a choice of life so embracing of human pathos? I never got to ask her this as she got off at a crossroad somewhere in the middle of the village and the town just before reaching the Doi Kong Mu temple.

“Fifteen years is just far too long,” I remembered her saying, her voice trailing off in the wind, so soft that I could barely hear her. Dusk had fallen by the time we got into town. We promised to meet for coffee that night but I never saw her again.

(To protect those who are in the border camps, initials to some of the names were used.)

It is with a voice of passion and quiet restraint that De Villa, chair of the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting PCRV), recounts in a dream-like sequence the images that still sear her memory. “And oh, the pandemonium, shouting, pushing, fist fights inside the polling precincts, gunshots.”

Electoral watchdogs have described the May 26 special polls in 13 Lanao del Sur towns as one the “dirtiest” in the country where rampant “elections for sale,” vote-buying and massive electoral irregularities and fraud were observed by volunteers.

“It is a remembering that will remain with me for a long, long time,” says De Villa who tells of her tug-of-war with one who was openly handing out envelopes with cash inside a polling precinct in Masiu, Lanao del Sur. She refused to leave until she was able to get one.

First-hand she witnessed, “everything, everything that elections should not be, all the election anomalies, fraud and violence of the grossest kind coming alive right before my seeing, hearing, touching.”

And to the hushed crowd, De Villa, who cuts a portrait of dignified grace, asks: ““Why is it good to remember? And what is the context of this remembering?”

Before her were electoral watchdog volunteers who gathered for a national post-electoral summit at the Discovery Suites here on September 5 to 7, convened by The Asia Foundation (TAF) and the Ateneo de Manila School of Governance (ASOG).

Quoting a passage from the Book of Exodus, she tells the crowd: “Remember. You must remember.” Because to remember is “to bear witness, to tell our own stories particularly those that which hold us hostage and keep us in captivity.”

And by refusing to remember and confront evils of past elections, “we condemn ourselves to repeating these same evils that have robbed us of our birthright to participate in choosing freely the leaders who will govern us.”

Throughout the three-day summit, the duty of remembering these “electoral evils” fell on watchdog volunteers who relived harrowing stories of fraud, irregularities and violence. The tales are punctuated with tones of helplessness and cynicism and, well, to also one of hope.

Participants were from eight national civil society organizations (CSOs) and seven CSOs from the Autonomous Region for Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) based in Tawi-Tawi, Basilan, Maguindanao, Lanao del Sur, Sulu and Shariff Kabunsuan.

The ARMM CSOs had monitored the conduct of elections and had partnered with PPCRV and TAF. They also coordinated with TAF in facilitating 21 Asian election observers from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia all over ARMM during the May 14 polls.

It was the first time, says De Villa, that PPCRV, an electoral group that is Catholic Church-based, had partnered with 12 Bangsamoro CSOs that are “purely Muslim-organized, led and moved.” She describes the partnership as a “cultural breakthrough” and an “awesome experience of inter-religious dialogue”.

The synergy of CSOs and election watchdogs including NAMFREL (National Movement for Free Elections) and LENTE (Legal Network for Truthful Elections). to monitor the conduct of election in ARMM was “spontaneous” and “nearly perfect” without need of formal agreements, de Villa says. “But election irregularities and fraud in massive proportions ruptured and tore open the seamless fabric.”

ARMM CSOs reported a litany of fraud and irregularities such as massive disenfranchisement, multiple registrants, flying voters, vote-buying, ballot box-snatching and election-related violent incidents.

At one point, a video footage taken by the Maranao Peoples Development Center (MARDEC) was shown. It captured the dismal conditions inside a canvassing center in Lanao del Sur where poll workers had to pry open a ballot box using a piece of rock because the key simply could not be found.

The scene which is at once pathetic and comic drew muffled laughter from the audience.

Similar stories had been shared, revealing a pattern of electoral woes all over ARMM which, as expected, was the flashpoint of discussions and debates not only in this summit but also in similar post-electoral gatherings.

Talks would often rivet to the controversies in Maguindanao and Lanao del Sur which drew a public outcry, particularly on the 12-0 win for the administration’s Team Unity in Maguindanao and the barring of poll groups in the counting and canvassing of votes held at the provincial capitol in Shariff Aguak.

These include exposes from a teacher calling herself “Bai” over radio station DZRH and the slaying of district supervisor Musa Dimasidsing, both of whom detailed cheating accounts in Maguindanao; and the loss of election returns that led to the filing of contempt charges against lawyer Lintang Bedol, Maguindanao election supervisor, who was later released from detention.

As these were unfolding, failure of elections was declared by the Commission on Elections in 13 of 39 Lanao del Sur towns; in Barira town, Shariff Kabunsuan; 13 barangays in Indanan, Sulu; 9 precincts and one barangay in Basilan; and two precincts in Barangay Naungan, Tandubas, Tawi-Tawi.

These events prompted the Citizen’s Coalition for ARMM Electoral Reforms, Inc. (C-CARE) to declare that “widespread fraud and serious irregularities tarnished the integrity of the electoral process particularly in the ARMM.”

By the end of the summit, participants issued a call that “special efforts need to be given to ARMM because it is of a scale that can affect the national elections.”

FEATURE
Electoral Watchdogs: The Context of Remembering (Part II)

“Remembering is good but should also be done in context,” says Prof. Octavio Dinampo, coordinator of the Sulu-based Tulung Lupah Sug, Inc., who echoes De Villa’s call.

He, however, cautions against a hasty indictment on ARMM, particularly on its people and culture, without the benefit of viewing it from the lens of a historical time continuum and current political realities.

For Dinampo who teaches history and political science at the Mindanao State University in Jolo, Sulu, retelling the stories of election in Muslim Mindanao should not be isolated from historical realities.

Lest it be forgotten, ARMM, he says, is a “by-product of a long struggle of the Bangsamoro peoples right to self determination.”

Woven into the fabric of ARMM’s narrative is the Moro resistance, he adds, in the face of “historical antecedents of Spanish imperialism, US assimilation policies and Philippine colonial policies.”

These have shaped ARMM’s pockmarked electoral history that led to its current stigma as “the basket case of Philippine elections,” the country’s “cheating capital” and “factories of fraud” dating back to as far back to the 1949 victory of Pres. Elpidio Quirino. It was when the “the birds and the bees and the dead have voted” came about, according to a report by Mindanews’ Carol Arguillas.

Even then, Manila politicians had the propensity to use Moro areas such as Lanao or faraway Tawi-Tawi as a virtual reservoir of votes owing to the poor road and communication systems, according to Arguillas. “In these places, no one would dare investigate “ghost towns” and where election results, because of the distance, came in trickles.”

According to Dinampo, what had worked well in the past had been perfected by the past and present national administrations which have been supporting the rise of overlords in ARMM. “Don’t blame ARMM without blaming Malacanang,” he says.

Patronage politics where local warlords enjoyed largesse coming from the coffers of ruling parties ensured a “hundred percent delivery of votes to Malacanang,” he adds.

This continued dominance and emergence of new political dynasties not only in ARMM but also elsewhere in the country is also cited by the CSOs as a major concern “as these subvert the true political will of the people.”

The exercise of “leadership by dictatorship” by these dynasties, according to the CSOs, negates democratic practices such as check and balance, transparency and accountability. It also spawns a ‘culture of impunity’ and a ‘culture of fear’ that cripples meaningful participation in governance.

“But who armed these overlords? Who created these private armies?” Dinampo asks. “These are no different from the pro-Jakarta militia used by Pres. Suharto against pro-independence East Timor resistance fighters.”

He shares a widely-held belief that the creation of private armies in ARMM was partly done not only for electoral ends but also to neutralize the pro-independence Bangsamoro rebel groups.

Also a rising concern in ARMM is the gestation of this form of patronage politics interplaying with local clan conflicts over political power which, according to Steven Rood, TAF’s country representative to the Philippines, “overwhelms the electoral system.” In an article, he cites TAF-commissioned researches showing that the “main source of violence conflict in Muslim Mindanao is not separatism but clan feuds,” commonly known within the ARMM as ‘rido.’

Says Rood: “While elections throw this dynamic into sharp relief, such feuding is a constant reality and no amount of change in election procedures (no matter how much such reform might benefit Philippine democracy) will change that.”

Due in part to this intense clan rivalries, CSOs have noted that new municipalities in ARMM are also currently being created in rapid succession through legislations passed by the Regional Legislative Assembly.

For instance, the undivided Maguindanao had only 18 municipalities in 2001. By the time Shariff Kabunsuan province was carved out of Maguindanao last year, the total number of towns in both provinces had increased to 33. The same is true for Lanao del Sur which has 38 municipalities.

This practice of “carving out” towns is touted to be a tool for political accommodation and a form of appeasement to warring political clans and factions.

In one post-electoral assessment, ARMM CSOs reported that the creation of new towns does not, however, automatically increase corresponding shares of the Internal Revenue Allotments (IRA).

This resulted to the failure of many LGUs to deliver basic social services to communities alongside the abuse and misappropriation of IRA funds which run up to P30.7 billion in 2004.

IRA is being disbursed by the national government directly to ARMM LGUs pursuant to the Local Government Code and are completely within their disposition to fund the LGUs operating expenses and other programs, according to a 2006 study of the policy think-tank INCITEGov.

The IRA is also a source of corruption and lures leaders into running for elective posts, according to the CSO report. Most elected candidates also resort to using the IRA as their personal funds to recoup exorbitant election expenses, ultimately leaving only scraps for use in the delivery of social services to communities, the report said.

Even Comelec Commissioner Rene Sarmiento could not resist commenting on how the advent of IRA had caused this mad scramble for local political posts where candidates do everything to win by whatever means.

In his handbook on the “2007 Regular and Special Elections in ARMM”, Sarmiento writes: “Before IRA, nobody showed much interest to become politicians. Today people invest in millions to be elected. Once elected, many local officials use the IRA as if it is their personal funds. Worse, politicians go as far as killing their opponents just to become governors or mayors yet they do not serve who elected them.”

Sarmiento, who was assigned to ARMM just a month and a half before the May 14 polls, came out with the handbook, “the fruit of my experiences”, he says, to explain the intricate processes governing regular and special elections.

“But it is not all negatives in ARMM,” says Sarmiento . “There are many pluses,” he reflects, “people, culture, stories of heroism, the presence and commitment of CSOs giving color to this beautiful region in Mindanao.”

Not off the hook

But the CSOs, particularly those from ARMM, are not letting the Comelec off the hook. Not that easily, anyway.

Despite Sarmiento’s valiant efforts, Comelec had committed far too many lapses, irregularities and anomalies particularly in ARMM, according to the CSOs, including highly-politicized commissioners and staff.

“Comelec is also to be blamed for abetting these practices and therefore is a major actor that allows the democratic processes to be undermined,” says one summit participant.

The poll body did not heed, for instance, calls for reform such as the cleansing of its ranks and the purging of multiple registrants in ARMM. Neither did the poll body prosecute or send offenders to jail that could serve as a deterrent to future fraudsters.

In preparing for the 2010 elections, CSOs vowed to “work towards a professional and effective Comelec by participating in the selection of four new Commissioners” by February 2008 – the still unfilled seat, the seats that will be vacated by chair Benjamin Abalos, commissioners Ressurreccion Borra and Florentino Tuason.

“We are going to help, suggest some criteria to the selection, strengthen the Comelec itself,” said Dinampo. “Our form of intervention will be constructive not destructive.”

They also agreed to help set policy reforms through lobbying for legislative amendments to the Omnibus Election Code and Overseas Absentee Voting Law as well as push for the passage of the Anti-Dynasty Bill.

The group also committed to help prosecute offenders by filing cases, securing and protecting witnesses to make them accountable to the people and getting video footage for evidence.

They will also work for the modernization process of the electoral system by 2008 and beyond by actively participating in the identification and selection of the proper and effective system.

“We do not want to wait for 2010 before we start moving again. The 2010 elections is very crucial as it will involve presidential, senatorial and local elections,” said Antonio Lavina, dean of the Ateneo School of Governance.

For De Villa, rage alone does not sustain the passion to work for electoral reforms or by “throwing stones or simply basking in our little triumphs.”

It is by keeping alive “our individual anchorage and trying not to push to forgetfulness the places and times of our struggles.” And not to forget the duty of remembering, she says, for “remembering is the beginning of freedom.” (Mindanews, September 14, 2006)

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