Saturday, October 11, 2008 Speak out: Defiance and death By Dianne Arnie P. Nicolas
NEW Peoples Army (NPA) rebels, beautiful or not, must die.
If Rachelle Mae Palang is that, then the military is supposedly right to kill the 21-year-old former College Editors Guild of the Philippines officer.
We are a country where rebels and writers join the ranks of most-wanted criminals. We have lived hundreds of years hence with still-stifled voices.
It is a paradox too tragic. Those who most desire freedom are those with the most to fear.
So what if she’s an NPA rebel?
My good friend Januar tells me, and I agree, that it’s even more disturbing.
NPA rebels in that case take the form of intelligent girls, would-be doctors, registered nurses, fresh graduates, promising writers, graduates of private elementary Catholic schools, idealists, pro-poor advocates, simple dreamers—the most compassionately angry hearts.
There are young people, NPA rebels or not, holding on to hopes so strong they die for them.
They have seen much of what everyone else hides that they are outraged—loud, restless, ready to go far and wide to seek equal access for justice and freedom to the masses.
They know that some basic rights are denied those who already have too little to survive.
Defiance is the next day’s meal.
Rebellion becomes the recourse from obtaining knowledge too painful to contain. This is why some of us write.
Right or wrong, this is why some of us go out on the streets, talk to comrades from hillsides and mountains, and see realities with a yawning need for telling, for help.
Some go to better understand. Others, for reasons I may understand but do not share, take arms.
Still, many others are simply people like I am—believing that things could be better and that principles for freedom must not be compromised for the sake of a few.
Students and writers are dreamers and more. They become fighters for causes larger than their books and halls and student publications.
We turn red dreaming of a better world, bearing the strongest of nationalist dreams.
Is the nation so perfect it does not have room for pluralism, criticism, defiance?
Must government give military more budget only to murder dreamers who dare say, or write, otherwise?
In a medical mission, Rachelle may have found a nation needing more than a dab of ointment.
We need revival.
Last I remember her, she had eyes that laughed. I heard she was shot point-blank, almost but not quite like another intelligent young man of the past.
And pray tell, is it true her murderer received a medal for her head?
