Monday, July 14, 2008 Editorial: Lighting the dark
IN THE placid quiet of July 11, while birds swooped from the high cornices of Redemptorist Church in Cebu City, Fr. Paddy Martin invited early morning churchgoers to reflect that the day marked the feast of St. Benedict, founder of western Christian monasticism.
In the same breath, Fr. Paddy honored fellow priest, Fr. Rudy Romano, who disappeared after he was picked up by military agents on July 11, 1985.
A priest canonized in the 13th century for founding monastic communities that lived according to moderation, balance and respect for individual differences.
Another priest who lived a life of community with his 20th century flock: ministering to the poor and marching in the streets to denounce martial law and the conjugal dictatorship of Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos.
Different times, same faith.
St. Benedict and other monks brought the light of reason and faith to Christians struggling in the darkness of the Middle Ages. Even on the 23rd year of his disappearance, Fr. Rudy stands for the flame dispelling the darkness in the memory of those who keep eternal vigilance to seek justice and defend freedom.
Killers on motorbikes
Hours after the Redemptorist mass honoring St. Benedict and Fr. Rudy, three men earning a living fell to assassins’ bullets within a span of eight hours.
According to a July 13, 2008 Sun.Star Cebu and Sun.Star Superbalita report, a man left his companion on motorbike and walked inside a piano repair shop at Barangay Labangon. Shortly before noon, the killer shot in the head repairman Norbert Sumicad.
At 1:30 p.m., Tomas Carbonilla, 52, who watched cars for a fee, was shot in the face by two killers riding a motorcycle in Barangay Tejero.
At 7:30 p.m., two men on motorcycle drew near the multicab driven by Buddy Denapo, 31, and shot the courier service messenger/collector. When the multicab stalled at Barangay Talamban, one of the men alighted and fired at the victim at close range. Denapo died instantly from gunshot wounds in the head and in an eye.
According to the same report, the police were still investigating the cases, including verifying if Carbonilla was once jailed for robbery. The authorities, though, “brushed off” speculations that these recent killings were summary executions.
At least 181 men, majority of them with past or pending criminal cases, were gunned down and killed in Cebu City between December 2004 and 2007. According to Sun.Star Cebu, nearly all of the cases remain unsolved.
Unchanging times
Repression has hardly been reinvented. The justifications and jargon may just have become more sophisticated.
International and domestic laws prohibit torture and summary executions.
Yet, according to Amnesty International, governments, groups and individuals still carry out these violations, with even 75 percent of these state-sanctioned crimes carried out to extract information, “re-educate,” punish, coerce and ultimately, silence the victim.
The torture that was rationalized as “political re-education of dissidents,” even ones only suspected of being so like Fr. Rudy, has become, in this post 9/11 world, “extraordinary renditions,” one of the tactics in the US-led War on Terror to deny trial and torture suspected terrorists for information.
The United Nations’ Human Rights Council has urged the Philippine government to improve its record of unsolved and uncurbed extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions of activists, journalists, former convicts, indigenous people, trade union workers, farmers and even human rights workers.
According to a report of the Philippine Human Rights Reporting Project in The Mindanao Examiner, the government should even do more than just punish the guilty and vindicate victims.
Promoting human rights means also alleviating poverty, protecting women, children and workers, and bringing about social equity.
Only thus can the living keep the darkness at bay.
