Push Admin

Article (news)

Why they oppose martial law

Tokwa Collective

<div class="embed-wrap"><figure data-feedback="fb:likes,fb:comments"><img src="http://sa.kapamilya.com/absnews/abscbnnews/media/2017/news/09/21/11252016-antimarcos-mla-rmr.jpg"/><figcaption>Protesters gather in Luneta behind an effigy of the late President Ferdinand Marcos in this 2016 file photo. Rob Reyes, Tokwa Collective</figcaption></figure></div>MANILA, Philippines – A massive demonstration is set September 21, Thursday, to mark the 45th anniversary of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos&#x27; declaration of martial law in 1972. Many of those who are attending the protest march in Luneta did not experience the darkest days in the country that lasted for more than a decade. Many of those who are protesting were not even born yet when the dictator and his family fled the country in 1986. But there are those who will join the protests to assert their opposition because they suffered from the brutality of military rule. There are those who oppose it and have all reasons to do so. <div class="embed-wrap"><figure data-feedback="fb:likes,fb:comments"><img src="http://sa.kapamilya.com/absnews/abscbnnews/media/2017/news/09/21/09192017-martiallaw-tokwacollective1.jpg"/><figcaption>Rudy, 49 years old, Samar. Rob Reyes, Tokwa Collective</figcaption></figure></div>Rudy (not his real name) joined the New People’s Army in 1984 when he was just 16 years old. “It was not just a choice, it was my obligation to my family,” he told Tokwa Collective. Rudy believed that it was the only answer to the crisis that the country and his family were facing. “They wouldn’t listen to people like us,” he said. “It was the thirst for justice that made me decide to take up arms and fight for what I believed was right,” he added. The ordeal started when his father had a conflict with a local government official who was influential and had control of the military in Basey, Samar. His father brought the case to the proper venue. He filed legal charges against the people who took their livelihood to the courts. But instead of justice, “the government took away everything from us.” In 1982, when Rudy was just 14 years old, he was arrested for allegations of being an NPA commander in the central Philippines province of Samar. “I didn’t have any idea what was happening. Why was I accused of such things? I was just a boy,” he said. The young Rudy suffered all kinds of physical and mental torture in the hands of the government troops for almost two years. He was constantly transferred from one detachment to another. For two years, he could only taste food and water every two weeks. “If you can call it food. It was like food for animals,” he said. “There were times that I couldn’t distinguish pain at all because I felt pain all the time,” he said. After two years of torment, he was released with no conditions. The weakened Rudy never thought of getting out alive, but he did. He went straight home. It was the fastest 10-kilometer walk of his life. Tears poured down as his father welcomed him back with the “tightest embrace he ever gave.” They celebrated that night. His father took out the only bottle of coconut wine he was saving for the planting season. Right after they consumed the last glass of it, gunshots were heard. “I could clearly see the bullets ripping off everything in its path,” he said. Rudy grabbed two of his younger siblings. His father ran to the back of their shanty but was shot, caught, and arrested. He was charged with the same accusations that the military used against Rudy. “They insisted that he was a rebel commander,” said Rudy. But unlike Rudy, his father was not brought to the camp. He was taken to the village military occupied by the military. For a month, his father was tortured. Rudy found him with missing body parts and a bamboo stick pierced in his neck. The son buried his father in their farmland with a promise that justice will be sought.A few days after, Rudy took “the only choice” he had “to obtain justice, protect life, and fight for freedom.” <div class="embed-wrap"><figure data-feedback="fb:likes,fb:comments"><img src="http://sa.kapamilya.com/absnews/abscbnnews/media/2017/news/09/21/09192017-martiallaw-tokwacollective2.jpg"/><figcaption>Zeny Mique, 65 years old, Quezon City. Rob Reyes, Tokwa Collective</figcaption></figure></div>Zeny Mique returned home one evening in 1973 to find her parents in a panic. They told her that men from Intelligence Services of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (ISAFP) had come to their house looking for her. Being the niece of the then undersecretary for the Department of National Defense, her father thought of taking her to him. At his office, her uncle questioned her of alleged involvement in the student activist movement. She was later turned over to the ISAPF for detention. Released after two months, Zeny continued with her community work in Ilocos Sur and, in 1979, she was again captured by the military along with two other companions (one of whom they later found out was a military asset who had betrayed them). The second detention in Camp Diego Silang in La Union lasted for two years during which the accounting graduate was subject to different degrees of psychological torture. “They kept us in a small room with just a tiny window and we could not see out. The food we were fed was horrible. It was like food you fed to pigs,” she said. “There were no bathroom facilities in the cell and we often had to hold it in until someone came to take us to the toilet. Nobody knew where we were. We were denied access to lawyers,” Zeny narrated. In 1981, she was released temporarily until she received word that her case had been filed in court and their temporary release orders had been remanded.Zeny was again detained in Vigan, Ilocos Sur for violation RA 1700 or the anti-subversion law. In Vigan, she was detained alongside hardened criminals. It was only upon the repeal of RA 1700 in late 1982 was when she was finally set free. <div class="embed-wrap"><figure data-feedback="fb:likes,fb:comments"><img src="http://sa.kapamilya.com/absnews/abscbnnews/media/2017/news/09/21/09192017-martiallaw-tokwacollective3.jpg"/><figcaption>Milagros Legazpi, 55 years old Cabagan, Isabela. Rob Reyes, Tokwa Collective</figcaption></figure></div>Mila Legaspi was just a young girl when she noticed that things had changed in their village in Cabagan, Isabela even before the declaration of martial law. “At first it was just cattle and farm animals that disappeared. Later on, people started to disappear too,” Mila recalled. When martial law was declared, the Philippine Constabulary set up camp in their village. Their movements were monitored and no one was allowed to leave the village without proper clearance. Villagers would be gathered for questioning and it was at one such instance that she saw her own father beaten and made to dig his own grave to scare him. A military official had all the women rounded up and several were taken. They were never seen again. Her own parents were held by the military for questioning and were kept in the barracks they had set up in the village for several days. Her mother was raped several times, her father severely beaten. In 1973, when she was 15, she decided to escape their village and join the activist movement. In 1980, her parents, two cousins and her oldest son (who was only a year old then), were taken by the military and detained. One of her cousins was later shot dead. Her parents languished in jail with her infant son. After giving birth to her second child, Mila was arrested. During the arrest, men in civilian clothes had barged into the house she was staying at in Manila with her newborn son. “My son was taken by one of the men from his crib and I was blindfolded, beaten, and loaded onto a vehicle. It would be months before I would see my son again.” During her detention, Mila was tortured and repeatedly raped. She was kept in a tiny, dirty cell no larger than a small bathroom. Her captors would fool her into thinking that her son was being taken to see her and she would wait for hours, sometimes days, without even seeing the baby. Mila was kept in detention in Fort Bonifacio for more than a year with no access to lawyers. She recalls being denied food and water for days as punishment for some unspecified wrongdoing. It was only the thought of seeing her son again that kept her alive. Mila’s mother, now 84, upon hearing the news that President Rodrigo Duterte had threatened to declare martial law, fell into a panic. She recalled what happened to them during that time and nervously said that if this happens, then the killings and rapes would start again. On September 21, Rudy, Zeny, and Mila will re-tell their stories. “This time, not for us to be heard, but for them to understand why we oppose.”

For a month, his father was tortured. Rudy found him with missing body parts and a bamboo stick pierced in his neck.

For a month, his father was tortured. Rudy found him with missing body parts and a bamboo stick pierced in his neck.