Monday, September 24, 2007 Benedicto: Teen rebellion and martial law By Benedicto Sanchez Nature speaks
QUEZON CITY -- I was torn between two loves this past week. I had to be in Quezon City to take part in the forest resource use policy forum. But my heart tugged me to be in Bacolod to join my Human Rights Defenders confreres to commemorate the 35th anniversary of the dictator’s declaration of Martial Law with a photo exhibit at La Consolacion College.
Human rights advocacy is very close to my heart. I relate it to my growing pains under martial law. It was during those dark days when their violations became the standard of governance and misrule. The Communist Party-New People’s Army flourished not because they were the better alternative; the draconian martial rule made any alternative look like heavenly bliss.
I was still in college then at the University of the Philippines-Diliman. Just like most students not just in UP but in exclusive schools of Ateneo de Manila, Maryknoll College (now Miriam), and many others joined protest actions against the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus and the series of bombings of public facilities.
Most everyone suspected the government’s role in the destabilization activities to justify the declaration of martial law.
Yet, despite chants of anti-fascism, deep down, I wondered where the real repression was. A World War II buff, I didn’t picture life before martial law nowhere near to what subjugated populations suffered under the Nazis or the Japanese Imperial Army. After all, student activists can still rant and rave against imperialism, feudalism, bureaucrat capitalism and fascism, and then still go home, unafraid and late at night, to our middle class homes.
We were rebels, sure, but no more than the teen-age hip-hop, emo rebels of today. The statement of our generation against the older generation and the establishment then was to grow our unkempt hair long, hippie-style, to differentiate ourselves from the clean-cut look of our parents. That is probably why the teens of today rebel at my generation—by shaving their hair bald.
I now cringe at seeing my teen-age photos with long locks of hair, the same time that my brothers grew their hair long, too. They weren’t activists, even conservatives, at that. But sporting long hair was our form of self-expression.
Now in our mature years, we find long hair and skinheads uncool. I settled for the middle length.
But with martial law, teen-age forms of self-expression as defiance of parental authority became much serious than getting our allowances cut off. It became dangerous to our health and liberty.
When Marcos read Proclamation 1081 placing the whole country under martial law, I realized how many rights the country had lost. I woke up in my middle class home in September 22, 1972 with no newspapers, TV or radio programs.
The liberal atmosphere in UP was transformed into a gulag overnight. As if to mock the symbol of dissent, social criticism, public service and patriotism, the Metrocom set up checkpoint in front of the Oblation and forced bus passengers to alight for body searches.
We learned to peek over our shoulders to make sure no suspected military agents listened to talks that can be misconstrued as “subversive.”
Even harmless teen-age rebellion of self-expression was subjected to repression.
Metrocom checkpoints arrested long-haired kids after curfew to Camp Crame and snipped their hair, Mohawk-style. Unsightly back then, male teen were forced to go for military-style white side walls. I had my hair cut the same way to avoid arrest, but later settled for barber’s cut.
A month after the declaration, a totally clueless high school classmate volunteered to help me distribute protest literature. He gave a leaflet to a Metrocom sergeant and got hauled to Fort Bonifacio for his pains. After two months, it was my turn. I was shunted from city jail, the north sector Metrocom camp, Camp Crame and Aguinaldo, and then Fort Bonifacio.
We were just plain teen idealist dissenters out to make a statement, as every generation does. When a family lawyer friend heard that my case was political, he washed his hands faster than Pontius Pilate did in condemning Jesus Christ to the cross. It would have been better, he said, had I murdered, robbed or raped.
He could pull strings from the courts to let me off the hook.
When even personal dissent became political, many youth declared enough is enough. If they cannot express themselves legally and openly, the lure of more extreme protests such as armed struggle became more and more enticing.
Never had I appreciated more my bill of rights, my human rights of freedom of expression, of assembly and self-organization than when the country totally lost them to martial rule and repression.
