Human Rights Watch
‘Worse Than Martial Law’

Sept. 21 – the 32^nd year of the declaration of Martial Law in the country – became an occasion for Davao-based activists to take the issue of state repression to the streets. For those who are old enough to remember, it was a case of déjà vu as age-old issues of human rights violations were ventilated, with calls for social change being shouted as fists are clenched as a sign of courage and defiance.

BY CHERYLL D. FIEL 
Bulatlat

Activism in Davao then and now

At the program of the rally in Rizal Park, Alvin Luque, secretary general of Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (Bayan, or New Patriotic Alliance) who is facing rebellion charges filed by the military was among the crowd who stood with clenched fists as the names of Martial Law victims were spoken.

In his opinion, Luque found his predicament and the sacrifice it entails to be minuscule compared to what activists ahead of him had to go through.

Nick Gonzales, an activist since the 1970s, said, "If you were an activist in the Martial Law days, there was no legal battle to speak of."

"Of course, it was the time of Martial Law. You cannot ask the courts to produce the warm body of a person declared missing precisely because the writ of habeas corpus was suspended. So that when Marcos suspended the writ of habeas corpus, the first thing we did was pack up and go to the hills," Gonzales said.

When he got arrested, Gonzales explained, "For three months, I was brought from one place to another. They gave me the water cure. Aside from the military, they let the manoys (jailed criminals) do the beating. Almost every week, new faces would emerge in the jail. The military would just say that some of our comrades pointed at them."

As these happened, no news stories were published about his case, not even people marching in the streets called for his release. Gonzales said that only a few nuns and priests were brave enough to go to various detention centers to locate victims.  

Violations continue after Marcos

Casilao said that today, it is not just the priests and nuns who could go and look around for missing persons. Today, anyone who volunteers for Karapatan can proceed to the military camp, intelligence and the police headquarters right away as soon as a case of arrest is reported.

Despite these initiatives and the existence of documents that protect people from human rights abuses like the Comprehensive Agreement for Respect for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Laws (CARHRIHL), Casilao disclosed that reports on human rights violations continue to flood his office.

The names of the dead among Davao's Martial Law activists that were read during the program totaled 20. The number of reported cases of activists killed from then President Joseph Estrada's time up to the present has reached over 100. Not included are the thousands of victims of various harassment cases by the police and military.

The struggle continues

However, just as Gonzales was still able to continue doing organizing work in the barrios during Martial Law, the mass movement persists under conditions of increasing political repression under Macapagal-Arroyo's presidency.

"We cannot stop because if we do that, the more we see victims of military abuses coming," Casilao says why they have to continue with the mass actions. There are those who joined the street protests to demand justice for their missing or killed sons or daughters, or relatives.

To these activists, the more the Macapagal-Arroyo administration implements Marcosian tactics against progressive organizations, the more people are motivated to join the mass movement. Bulatlat

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