ANYONE who has gone through freshman year in law school should be familiar with this case. Middle of 1947, copies of a photo of a man hanging lifeless from a tree in Tagbilaran were sent to newspaper offices not only in Bohol but throughout the Philippines and abroad. Attached to the photo was a suicide note, written in Bisaya, addressed to his wife. Here’s a rough translation of the letter, quoted extensively from court records:
“Dearest wife and children, bury me five meters deep. Do not plant a cross or place wreaths over my grave because I don’t need them.
“Please don’t bury me in a lonely place but in the Catholic cemetery because while I have committed suicide, I still have the right to be buried among Christians. Don’t pray for me, don’t remember me and don’t feel sorry for me. Wipe me out of your lives.
“If someone asks you why I committed suicide, tell them I did it because I was not pleased with the administration of Roxas. Tell the whole world about this. And if they ask why I did not like the administration of Roxas, point out to them the situation in Central Luzon and Leyte. Write to President Truman and Churchill. Tell them that here in the Phlippines, our government is infested with many Hitlers and Mussolinis.
“Teach our children to burn pictures of Roxas if and when they come across one. I committed suicide because I am ashamed of our government under Roxas. I cannot hold high my brows to the world with this dirty government. I committed suicide because I have no power to put under Juez de Cuchillo all the Roxas people now in power. So, I sacrificed my own self.”
The man in the photo—and author of the suicide note—was supposed to be a certain Alberto Reveniera. It turned out that the name was faked and that the suicide and the note were a hoax.
The man was actually Oscar Espuelas and he was not dead as the picture suggested. Instead of hanging with a rope tied to his neck from a tree, Espuelas was in fact standing on top of a barrel when he had himself photographed. The only thing that was not fake was his hatred towards then President Manuel Roxas and his people, whom he wished to be decapitated.
After Espuelas was convicted of inciting to sedition (not the more serious crime of sedition because he did not participate in any actual public uprising), he appealed to the Court of Appeals and eventually to the Supreme Court. The High Tribunal, however, ruled against him.
“Knowing that the expression Juez de Cuchillo means to the ordinary layman as the Law of the Knife, ‘a summary and arbitrary execution by the knife’, the idea intended by the appellant to be conveyed was no other than bloody, violent and unpeaceful methods to free the government from the administration of Roxas and his men,” the court said.
Note that Espuelas did not actually urge anyone to decapitate Roxas. He merely said that he was desperate and driven to suicide because he could not kill all the Roxas men in power. The letter did not even specifically name Roxas as among those whom he wished assassinated; the Court merely inferred it. Still it was enough to send Espuelas to jail.
The imposition of the quarantine has seen at least three cases where someone publicly threatened or urged others also publicly, with a promise of reward, to kill President Duterte. By this time, the President must have already received many such threats and having gotten used to them, would probably not bother with a few mindless ones.
But here’s the catch. Inciting to Sedition is not a crime against person but against public order. The President doesn’t have to initiate it. He doesn’t even have to be personally involved in it.
So here’s a piece of advice to anyone who is crazy enough to promise to pay 100 million or, for that matter, any amount to kill the President: Remember Espuelas.