(Blood in your Hands! Acrylic, Watercolor & ink 70×50 cm)
It’s been three years and I still can’t wait to go back home. My main reason, maybe, is that I left too early. It was only here that I understood the Philippines’ history, culture and society and how it is connected to other countries. And of course, one cannot fully understand such a thing. More questions come when answers are found, and it is a chain of questions and answers that never ever end. And with this comes my insatiable desire to go and learn the stories I have never learned, tell the stories that they never let us tell. I want to go back and do those things I haven’t had the chance to do when I was living there. It is so difficult that I finally understand who I am and where I come from and yet cannot be there.
I am actually planning to visit home as soon as I get some papers that will allow me to go and of course some money to pay the flight. I was keeping the thought that simple. Documents and money. That was all I need. I was trying to be too narrow-minded as to completely ignore the reason why I ended up here in the first place! The killing of Pitao’s daughter and the abduction to a Filipino-American who went back to the Philippines to do human rights work is a shout to me that I should wake up from my stupid dream.
Lasy March 2009, 20-year old Rebelyn Pitao was found dead floating on a river, partially naked with stab wounds and evidence of sexual abuse. Rebelyn was a teacher and her only “crime” was being the daughter of a member of the New People’s Army (NPA).
Pitao’s mother explained how, with the police officers listening, tricycle driver Danny Peliciano told her that two unknown men had boarded his vehicle alongside Rebelyn when she climbed in to ride home. As they neared Bago Gallera de Oro subdivision a white van – a Toyota Revo – blocked their path and forced the tricycle to stop.
“Two other men came out of the van and dragged her out of the tricycle. The driver said Rebelyn was screaming for help but he could not do anything because the men were armed. The driver said he ran away. Then they dragged my daughter inside the van.”1
Somebody, not a member of the NPA, killed? Unbelievable believable. Gloria Arroyo, you are indeed worse that Marcos.
I always hear survivors of Ferdinand Marcos’ martial law in the 1970’s say that that kind of civilian-killings barely happened during the martial law. Barely, because there are some cases. Jose Maria Sison’s brother, for example, was an economist and a deputy director of the Presidential Economic Staff of Marcos, but was still abducted and was never surfaced.
Last May 19 at around 1:30 pm, Melissa Roxas, an American citizen of Filipino descent, and a member of BAYAN-USA and the cultural group Habi Arts based in Los Angeles, California, was abducted in Tarlac. She was with two other volunteers, Juanito Carabeo and John Edward Handoc. Roxas went to the Philippines in 2007 to pursue human rights work, where she became a full time volunteer health worker
At least eight fully armed and hooded men believed to be members of the military abducted the three health workers at gunpoint and herded them into a van that had no license plates. This is the first time that a Filipino-American has fallen victim to what looks like another case of enforced disappearance.2
The circumstances of Roxas’ abduction typify the abductions and enforced disappearances of over 200 innocent civilians, allegedly last seen in the hands of suspected state security forces.
In the Philippines, you don’t have to be a communist to be killed. You just have to do human rights work. Or at least be a daughter or a son of someone who does!
I deeply condemn the killing of Rebelyn and the abduction of Melissa Roxas. Same goes to the more than a thousand more political killings since 2001. Several investigations, most notably by the United Nations Human Rights Council, have pointed to the military as the main culprit in these atrocities.
Sure, all I need is some documents and some money. I can legally go back to the place where I was born. But it’s like the Arroyo administration and the military hanged an invisible “Enter at your own Risk” sign for all those Filipino (daughters/sons of ) political refugees abroad wanting to go back home.
1 https://abs-cbnnews.com/special-report/03/14/09/killing-too-far-rebelyn-pitao
2 http://www.bulatlat.com/main/2009/05/24/fil-am-activist-2-others-abducted-at-gunpoint/
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Note: I wrote this a few months ago. Melissa Roxas is now surfaced. In the video below, melissa tells her story of abduction and torture:
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