LAST April 16, 2018, Bureau of Immigration agents picked up a 71-year old Australian missionary and Catholic nun Patricia Fox from her home in Quezon City to be promptly detained at the Bureau of Immigration office in Manila under unclear pretexts. Later on, it would be revealed that the nun was being investigated for engaging in political activities that is critical of government.
Her lawyer issued a statement that it was actually the National Intelligence Coordinating Agency that was behind her arrest after her supposed participation in the International Fact Finding Missions that sought to investigate the increasing incidents of human rights violations in Mindanao a few weeks ago.
Local and international condemnation followed swiftly with known church leaders both here and abroad expressing great alarm over the arrest. International wires also covered the unfolding events especially that it came after the heels of another foreigner being deported for basically the same pretexts. If the point of government was to belie the alarming human rights situation in the country by preventing foreign observers to speak out, then it merely confirms what they have been trying desperately to hide with these crackdowns.
Perhaps, after feeling the pressure from the Church and international media attention, the Bureau of Immigration issued a released order the following day April 17, 2018, for Sister Patricia,. She was provisionally allowed to go home but she continues to be under investigation for being an “undesirable alien” because of her supposed political activities. This has been publicly refuted by the nun arguing that her advocacy for peasants and indigenous peoples are part of her duties as a good daughter of the Church and its social teachings.
The unfortunate incident could have been chalked off as a case of an overzealous intelligence agency out to flex its muscle versus their paranoid identification of foreign threats which now include Catholic missionaries and European parliament members. It was certainly a welcome breathe of diversity from the usual black clad terror suspects but ominous in their brazenness and lack of circumspection.
However, during a public speech in Camp Aguinaldo last April 18, 2018, before his generals and intelligence executives, no less than President Duterte himself took the cudgels for his beleaguered military men behind the arrest by declaring that he directly ordered Sister Patricia Fox to be investigated for “disorderly conduct”.
It is, once again, a very revealing development on the kind of mindset that drives this dictatorial administration. I doubt, given his busy social life and the firesale he is currently undertaking with the nation’s patrimony for his favored eastern investors, if he has time to micromanage the activities of a 71-year old Catholic nun quietly doing her part as a Christian standing with the Filipino poor and oppressed in the rural areas. But his military certainly do and they were the ones who fed him with information that caused his tired outburst.
Among the wrong information fed to him it seems is that Sister Patricia just entered the country as a firebrand critic which caused him to spew the following misinformed statements: “Huwag mong papasukin kasi walang hiya ang bunganga ng madreng yan.” The fact, however, is that Sister Patricia has been quietly serving the rural poor in this country for close to three decades already with her work with the Rural Missionaries of the Philippines where she was once national coordinator.
Then he goes on with his tirade about Australia and their refusal to accept refugees as if Sister Patricia was an official of the Australian government. He was obviously barking up the wrong tree and should have uttered these words while he was on board the vessel of the Australian Navy earlier. But nary a squeak was heard from him about his pro-refugee stand then.
The obvious lack of circumspect and prudence in the President’s statements regarding Sister Patricia’s arrest is very revealing of the worrying status and direction of this administration. It is obvious that he is only listening to poisoned sources who know how to push which buttons to elicit their desired reaction.
There is the drama of a beleaguered military and police establishment who are bullied by human rights organizations and western parliamentarians. A new addition to these oppressed sector that the President must come to defend his soldiers from are the Christian missionaries standing with the rural poor. The madness that we are witnessing are the senseless tirades of a puppet whose strings are being pulled. But who is the puppeteer? Review the circumstances of Sister Pat’s arrest and you will find the answer.