YEARS ago, our late mother, Dr. Lourdes Llavore Espina, then head of the pediatric ward of the Corazon Locsin Montelibano Memorial Hospital, joined a medical mission responding to a cholera outbreak in a southern Negros community.
The village was located in territory widely acknowledged to be controlled by the New People’s Army. On one end were mountains, on the other, a river spanned by a bridge, on the other side of which was an Army detachment.
The mission’s convoy was stopped by the soldiers, who said they could not proceed. Nanay asked why, pointing out – as if she even needed to – that they were there to treat people and save lives.
The officer brusquely tried to dismiss her, saying: “But those people are NPA sympathizers.”
Nanay was “Katoliko Sarado,” truly devout. We believe it was this that allowed her to see beyond people’s differences into their common humanity. Besides, she took the Hippocratic Oath and her profession’s code of ethics, which mandates “service to mankind irrespective of race, age, disease, disability, gender, sexual orientation, social standing, creed or political affiliation.”
Everyone who ever knew Nanay knows she was one of the most patient persons. It would take a truly major provocation to trigger her. Alas for that Army officer, he did.
Of course, I had often been on the receiving end of her scolding but this was the first time I had seen her really, really angry. It was epic.
“How dare you deprive people of assistance just because they have different beliefs than yours? Are you saying they deserve to die?” Nanay railed. Turning to the other soldiers around the convoy, she asked: “How would you feel if those were your wives, your children, your fathers, your mothers? If anything happened to them because others prevented them from getting help, what would you do? And you ask why there are rebels?”
Chastened, the officer let the convoy through.
Why do I narrate this story?
Because this past week has seen the disgraceful spectacle of government and its security forces bringing to bear all the power and resources at their disposal to thwart the search for justice for the nine persons killed in the October 20 massacre in Hacienda Nene, Barangay Bulanon, Sagay City, all but two – teenagers Marchtil Sumicad and Jomarie Ughayon Jr. – of the victims members of the National Federation of Sugar Workers who were participating in a campaign to till land covered by agrarian reform.
Hardly had the smoke cleared on the carnage than police and military officers immediately blamed the New People’s Army.
Never mind if the government and state security forces have openly branded the NFSW as a “legal front” of the rebels. From there, the government narrative went through many twists and turns, from initially hinting the rebels actually carried out the slaughter to a version that says union organizers prodded the victims into entering the property to goad a violent response from a private armed group supposedly maintained by the landowner.
A week after the slaughter, the police, as expected, announced multiple murder charges against Rene Manlangit and Rogelio Arquillo, who they say were the ones who led the victims to their deaths. Strangely enough, there has been no word about filing charges against the actual killers – you know, those men who actually carried and fired the guns.
Ladies and gentlemen, it is now a capital crime to organize the landless to assert their right to own the land they till.
Just as shameful, to build up their case, a day after the massacre, the Sagay police took a 14-year-old survivor, nephew of one of the teenage victims, with the intention of making him a witness.
And then, with the participation of the City Social Welfare and Development Office and, sadly, the provincial office of the Commission on Human Rights, proceeded to lie about the circumstances.
They said the elderly couple from whom the boy was taken and who tried to get him back were “pretending” to be his grandparents but were not related to him. Thus, the boy was handed over on October 24, or two days after he was taken alone into custody, to his father who had come all the way from Capiz province.
What they did not say is this: Yes, it was the biological father, but he had abandoned the boy and his mother when the child was 4 or 5 years old. His mother had since found another partner whose parents raised the boy when she left to work in Manila.
This was the elderly couple the child recognized as his “grandparents” even if they were not related by blood.
They finally had to release the child to his mother when she arrived from Manila.
Of course, the provincial government had to keep up appearances as well and so Governor Alfredo Marañon Jr. issued a statement announcing the creation of a task force to ensure a “thorough and impartial investigation” of the massacre and vowing to bring to justice not only the killers but also those who “planned, organized, agitated and manipulated the poor farmers and sugar workers.”
So much for “thorough and impartial.”
I am sure, if Nanay was alive today, she would have choice words to say about this fiasco that only underscores the pervasive social divide that afflicts Negros society and how those in power can so brazenly abuse it with impunity.
One word I am sure she would use is “SHAME.”
Shame not only on those who shamelessly abuse their power to perpetuate injustice and deprive the poor of their rights but also shame on those who choose to keep silent in the current situation.