Tuesday, September 30, 2008 Speak out: Murder of a young idealist By (Name of writer withheld upon request)
RECENTLY, classmates, friends, teachers and relatives mourned the death of Rachelle Mae Palang, a Cebuano who walked Cebu’s streets, studied Cebu’s schools and just recently became a registered nurse.
The military who claimed credit for the “successful” operation, would do well if they can empathize with this grief and sense of terrible loss of a life prematurely snuffed out, instead of giving conflicting statements that Rachelle Mae had with her an M16 rifle (Col. Cesar Yano, head of the 302nd Infantry Brigade said in a conversation with the father, she didn’t have a weapon with her).
How do we reconcile the thought of nurturing the young and educating them to be future leaders of this country and killing them? Something’s terribly wrong with a society where one aspect lovingly nurtures, and another without regret kills.
The military should see the social face of the one they have killed, that she was a loving daughter, a bright student, a nurse that cares for the poor.
If she was an ideologue, it’s tragic she had to die for her ideas. There are other countries in the world where people need not die for their political beliefs. Ours is not one of those. We are politically immature, we are afraid of contrary political ideas.
If she was with combatants, it wasn’t the people they were targeting as there were no reports of such. The state has weapons; the NPA also takes up weapons. The battle is for political control of the nation. One group believes the need to reshape Philippine society by eradicating class divisions and with the state controlling much of the economic activity to ensure (unsuccessfully in many cases) egalitarian wealth distribution. The other believes in the continuing elite-dominated governance (which proves unsuccessful too in improving the life of many Filipinos living in poverty.) It’s the second group, currently in power that the military supports.
Do we really have to kill each other for the ideas we believe in? In far mature democracies, communists and conservatives can run for office carrying with them their political beliefs and their societies benefit from the democratic debate between unhampered free enterprise and limited state control. No one gets killed.
To justify Rachelle Mae’s untimely death, the military said she was a combatant. Will murdering a young idealist solve anything? Society allows the state the use of force in enforcing the laws. But it should be with restraint, a reasoned and sound judgment for after all, who was it they murdered if not a fellow Filipino?
When Caesar’s army battled that of his co-triumvir Pompey, Caesar was pained in seeing Romans killing fellow Romans.
What honor did Centcom achieved that they pinned medals on the triumphant soldiers? Like Caesar, it should be with a pained heart that they face up to Rachelle Mae’s death if they believe that was necessary. And if it wasn’t, be men enough to admit their mistakes. There was no triumph in those killings.
No honor in killing a fellow countryman. We remain in an undeclared civil war.
