I.

The composition of earth changes every time something is mixed into it. The rains come and it becomes mud when mixed with water. Seeds, when planted, flower into something that feeds you. The same is true of smell and sounds. Isn’t it often said that when you talk to plants they grow to know your voice? Move with your breath?

But what of sweat that pours into the ground? The markings made from combat boots that trampled the earth? The wrappers of Payless on the ground? The many cigarette butts that came from the Devil’s mouth? What of the blood? From the back of Julito*? From the chest of Ronel**? What happens to the animal sound from the bodies? The slow movements of men with their hands tied to the back, the missing tongues, the knife, the men in uniform whose laugh made the earth remember? There was the odor of musk and wind and rotten calabasa. What will grow from that much soil? The earth grew familiar with Julito’s hands when he planted maiz and vegetables in the farm, Ronel’s feet from hours of planting squash. The earth has known their names forever, Oh, but never like this.

II.

By earth
bound
by earth
bit by bit
by give
by mouth
by trail
by foot
by print
by squash
by earth
unearth
by leaf
by worm
lift by hair
by arm
by might
see the sack
grey and ash
by and by
hack by hack
by bit
by bone
by red by rib
by earth
by lie
they lie
my
o my
by and by
by earth they lie

III.

You try to rearrange the bones
but the foot doesn’t fit the leg
the hip too big for the torso
the neck too dark for the head
one eye is gone
the other is the wrong color
no arm
only two left fists.
Mark the parts
that still don’t have
its pieces,
try to fit the ones
that are there
feel the finger,
let it point,
lift them all from the fires.

IV.

I looked for you
in hospitals, infirmaries,
morgues of every city,
everywhere –
even in the fresh patches of unmarked earth
that promised your body.

But it was not you I found
but many more unnamed children.
There was a woman
whose body was half burned,
her face drawn in soft charcoal,
an unmaking of art
an erasure of beauty, of death
in its most primitive form.
There was a man who went
insane from torture, found
on the steps of a small hospital
in Pasig. They were all broken parts
that could’ve been yours.
Other deaths
and their living mothers,
children, and lovers
walking the streets
searching the wind
hoping it will carry them messages.

V.

When you tell the mountains to be moved, it is not at your call that they obey. But journey and take even a spoonful of earth from its mountaintop and place it on flat ground and you would have changed the world a little bit already.

** See above note.

The Philippine military, through its attack dogs Pastor Alcover and Jovito Palparan, are trying to discredit the Commission on Human Rights and its chairperson, Leila de Lima. Human-rights groups are understandably concerned. “Now that the CHR chairperson insists on the mandate of the commission, they consider her as an enemy,” Marie Hilao-Enriquez of Karapatan said. “That is the most dangerous mindset.”

By Ronalyn V. Olea
Bulatlat

MANILA — For years since it was established, the Commission on Human Rights (CHR), a supposedly independent constitutional body whose head is appointed by the President, has struggled to gain some respect. Many had doubted its capacity to fulfill its mandate, even to be impartial.

As its leaders would readily admit, the CHR had been a toothless tiger–a perception made worse by the commission’s failure in the past to confront the government, particularly the Philippine military, for violations of human rights.

It came as a surprise to many, therefore, when the CHR began taking a more active role in recent years in investigating human-rights cases, particularly in the wake of the series of extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances and torture.

CHR chairperson Leila de Lima during a hearing of the Melissa Roxas case in Congress. (Photo by Fred Dabu / bulatlat.com)

The case of Melissa Roxas–the Filipino-American activist who claimed to have been abducted and tortured by soldiers and who, after going home to the United States, had gone back to the Philippines to pursue her case against the military–illustrates best this change at the CHR. Roxas did all that under the protective custody of the CHR.

To many human-rights advocates, it did not come as a surprise as well that the CHR itself had become the subject of attack for doing its mandate. Nothing illustrated this best than the CHR hearing on Roxas’s case on July 29, when Rep. Pastor Alcover Jr. of the anti-communist group Alliance for Nationalism and Democracy (Anad) asked CHR chairperson Leila de Lima if she was related to Juliet de Lima, the wife of Jose Maria Sison, the founding chairman of the Communist Party of the Philippines.

Alcover apparently sought to discredit de Lima and the CHR investigation itself by trying to link de Lima to the communists. Earlier, Alcover alleged that Roxas was a communist guerrilla.

“I take offense in that kind of stance. What are you trying to insinuate?” de Lima told Alcover during the hearing. “Is this part of your psy-war? Are you questioning the credibility of the CHR chair?”

“Yes,” Alcover replied without hesitation.

Threatened

De Lima told Alcover and former Maj. Gen. Jovito Palparan Jr. of the Bantay party list, who also attended the hearing, not to muddle the issue. Alcover and Palparan were summoned by the commission to testify and present the alleged video and photographs showing Roxas as a member of the New People’s Army (NPA). The NPA, led by the CPP, has been waging a people’s war for four decades.

Palparan also questioned de Lima’s statement saying that Roxas’s affiliation is irrelevant to the ongoing investigation of the CHR. He said further that Roxas’s testimony is a mere propaganda against the military and the government. Palparan has been called “The Butcher” by human-rights advocates for the trail of blood he left behind in places where he had been assigned. Alcover is a self-proclaimed anti-communist crusader.

In a statement to the media the next day, de Lima confirmed that Juliet de Lima is a distant relative. “I neither denied nor concealed that. Why are the two gentlemen making a fuss about that?” she said.

“Why are they so threatened by Roxas’s case that they are on full offensive?” de Lima said. “It seems that their personal crusade is to block an inquiry whose goal is to search for truth. Why are they so frightened of such scrutiny? No one is respondent yet because no one has been identified so far. Does anyone feel alluded to for past acts?”

When asked to comment, CHR commissioner Jose Manuel Mamauag told Bulatlat that it’s a peripheral issue. “Their [Alcover and Palparan] mere presence is already an answer to their question on the credibility of the CHR.”

“Regardless of political color, we stick to the main issue of allegation of abduction and torture [of Roxas],” Mamauag said.

“This is the first time they [Palparan and Alcover] encountered a CHR chair who insists on the independence of the commission, who takes her job seriously and who can be depended on by human rights victims. They are threatened by this fact,” Karapatan secretary general Marie Hilao-Enriquez said in an interview with Bulatlat.

Enriquez said Palparan and Alcover aim to destroy the credibility of the CHR as an institution. “For them, there is no place for dissenting opinion,” she said.

“The fact that Palparan and Alcover are now speaking against Roxas’s testimony bolsters our belief that the military is behind her abduction and torture,” Enriquez said.

Visit to Fort Magsaysay

A second visit to Fort Magsaysay, the camp of the Philippine Army’s 7th Infantry Division, to ascertain the allegations of Roxas earned for de Lima and the CHR yet another barrage of attacks.

Some members of the Commission on Human Rights during a hearing of Melissa Roxas case. (Photo by Ronalyn V. Olea / bulatlat.com)

In the early morning of July 30, the CHR team, led by de Lima, visited Fort Magsaysay, this time with Roxas. In her affidavit, Roxas’s description of the place of her detention bears similarities with Fort Magsaysay,

Enriquez, who went with the team, said there were obvious renovations on the compound they inspected. “There is a new wall, a new gazebo. The pathway has been changed. The jail cell identified by Melissa is now a storage room.”

But the compound was indeed near a firing range and an airstrip, said Enriquez, referring to Roxas’s assertion. When they went inside one of the comfort rooms, Enriquez said, Roxas was trembling and told her: “This is where they gave me a bath.”

A day after the said visit, Maj. Gen. Ralph Villanueva, commander of the 7th Infantry Division, described the CHR visit as “cunning and deceiving.”

In a report he submitted to Armed Forces Chief of Staff Gen. Victor Ibrado, Villanueva said the CHR used the visit to Fort Magsaysay to look into cases of missing activists apart from Roxas’s case. He said the visit could just be a “fishing expedition” to implicate members of the military in the cases of missing activists.

In his report to Ibrado, Villanueva accused de Lima of “showing obvious bias by not being frank and forthright in her dealings” with the 7th Infantry Division. He even said he was not initially aware that Raymond Manalo, a torture survivor, was with de Lima during the visit.

In a letter to Ibrado dated August 1, de Lima said Villanueva’s statements are “unacceptable and uncalled for.” “The assertions made by Maj. Gen. Villanueva are untrue and deplorable. We cannot allow the commission’s credibility and independence to be undermined capriciously and without basis,” de Lima said in her four-page letter to Ibrado.

“As a human-rights institution, we respect Maj. Gen. Villanueva’s right to freedom of expression and opinion. However, we draw the line at false accusations and baseless innuendos,” de Lima added.

As to Villanueva’s misgivings about the inclusion of Manalo in the visiting team, de Lima asserted that the CHR has the prerogative to determine who shall allow to take part in its inspections.

Article XIII, Section 18 of the 1987 Philippine Constitution lays down the CHR’s powers and functions including, among others, to investigate, on its own or on complaint by any party, all forms of human rights violations involving civil and political rights; to exercise visitorial powers over jails, prisons, or detention facilities; and to monitor the Philippine Government’s compliance with international treaty on human rights.

De Lima (second from left) with Melissa Roxas (right), Marie Hilao Enriquez of Karapatan and Bayan Muna Rep. Satur Ocampo. (Photo by Vince Borneo / bulatlat.com)

“The Constitution grants the commission broad powers of investigation and visitation. And it has been our firm and consistent position that CHR does not need prior clearance from any authority to fulfill its investigative and visitorial mandate,” de Lima said.

Karapatan’s Enriquez believes that what the CHR is doing is a boost to human rights in the Philippines. She, however, bewailed the attempts by the military to discredit the commission. “Now that the CHR chairperson insists on the mandate of the commission, they consider her as an enemy,” Enriquez said. “That is the most dangerous mindset. Their bigotry kills.” (Bulatlat.com)

Her red shorts were left
in an abandoned shack
a rag on the rotting wood floor
the heavy screen door, shut
the echo of her voice
a scrap between the cracks…

found

a fingernail.

It was said
two women and a man were spotted
somewhere along that road
in a solitary town two years ago
spotted? like cattle?
or deer in the wild?
ready for slaughter?

There is a hush
from the night child
that saw

his father knows

they come for him next

but who then

who

cries out

to stop the coming of the hour?

I,

I could have been that woman

I was

that woman

but surfaced on the banks
of a dark river,
the moon, I didn’t see
but the light behind the folds
the shadow of a hand
before the blow to the head

Yes,

it’s true about the light
the bright light you see
but no moan from the open mouth
only a song
the music of people
in my head

the child’s eyes
looking at me by the river
the broken back of her father
ploughing the miles of grainy fields
not his own,

I remembered the fly
on the lips of baby James
sucking his mother’s dry breast
his tiny hand searching the many folds.

A silent song
from the people
kept playing at my heart.

There is nothing else.

Asked if I was ready to die.
I said Yes.
For the people
I said Yes.

To Sherlyn Cadapan, Karen Empeno, Jonas Burgos, and many more still missing. I get the strength to tell my story because it is also yours. We refused to be silenced.
For the people.
Surface all victims of enforced disappearances!
Justice for all victims of human rights violations!
End the madness.

Come before the Night Hour
Come and Sing
before Night
Comes. I am Flame
to the Body.
The Incipient Wing
that can’t Fly.
The Open
Skin on a Foot
that Bleeds
Black. Tonight
I will learn to Die
a Thousand Times
and Be Resurrected.

Below is the opening statement made by Filipino-American activist Melissa Roxas during a hearing by the House committee on human rights on her allegations of abduction and torture in the hands of the Philippine military.

Good morning, honorable members of the House of Representatives, friends and human rights advocates.

I am Melissa Roxas. Thank you for allowing me to come here today to tell you of my ordeal, which is also a story of many other Filipinos who were abducted and tortured by the military.

I am a member of Habi Arts, a Filipino cultural organization based in Los Angeles. I am also a member of the Bagong Alyansang Makabayan–USA.

I came to the Philippines to learn more about my roots and heritage, to know more about the plight of the impoverished Filipino people and to conduct research for my writing projects. I volunteered with Bayan in the Philippines because I feel that I can achieve my objectives more meaningfully through Bayan’s work with the communities both in the urban and rural areas. To this end, I thought I can put to better use my background on community health.

Melissa Roxas testifies in Congress (Photo by Vince Borneo)

I am a writer and a poet. I am also an activist.

I have reason to believe that the Philippine military were the ones who took me and my companions, Juanito Carabeo and John Edward Jandoc, against our will on May 19. I have reason to believe that the military were the ones who handcuffed, blindfolded, beat me up, suffocated me and denied me of my rights. I have reason to believe that I was brought to a military camp for interrogation.

For six days in captivity, my captors tried to force me to admit that I’m a member of the New People’s Army, accused me of being a member of the NPA and told me that it was “people like me” who are the ones who are making it difficult for the government.

Although I repeatedly invoked my right to see a lawyer, my abductors told me that I will not be able to see a lawyer and instead threatened that they can do all they wanted to do with me because they “got me clean.” They threatened me with death and accused me of so many things, especially that of being a member of the NPA. Because of the fear of more pain and I thought that dying came so slow, I told myself to just play along with whatever they tell me I am guilty of and to be back to the fold of the law, as what Dex told me their mission was.

Surprisingly, on May 25, I was released by my captors near my family’s house and instructed me to keep in touch with them; that they hope I do not harbor any ill-feelings against them because the ones who tortured me are from the “special operations group” and not from their group. I was so terrified and traumatized by this harrowing experience that as soon as I can get a flight to the US, I had to leave to reunite with my family. Although still very much afraid for my life and safety, I had to come back to testify before the Court of Appeals and other investigative bodies to obtain justice and tell the public what happened to me so that people would know and they will not allow this to happen to anyone again.

Now, other people are accusing me of being an NPA, forcing me to admit that I’m an NPA and insisting that I was abducted and tortured by the NPA.

I reiterate, I am an activist. I am not a member of the NPA.

And I have reason to believe that the Philippine military were the ones who abducted and tortured me, and held me captive for 6 days. I do not like to dignify the allegations being hurled at me now as they only echo what my abductors have been forcing me to admit during my interrogation and illegal, incommunicado detention. I have filed a petition for the writ of habeas data. I am asking the Supreme Court that all records pertaining to me including videos and photos, false and true, should be expunged and destroyed as they violate my right to privacy. I insist on that.

I can no longer count how many times I have narrated the incident and my ordeal. But I will not tire to tell the truth about what happened for I seek justice, not only for myself, but for others who have gone through the same. I seek justice, not only for what they did to me, but for other victims of human rights violations.

There are still families looking for their loved ones, and many more still missing. I hope that this august body will also look into the cases of those others still missing and those who have been killed. Thank you very much. (Bulatlat.com)

Melissa Roxas takes her oath right before making her opening statement. (Photo by Fred E. Dabu)

CHR chair Leila de Lima (right) was also summoned by the House committee on human rights. (Photo by Fred E. Dabu)

Bayan Muna Rep. Satur Ocampo (left) and Rep. Edcel Lagman. (Photo by Fred E. Dabu)

Rep. Erin Tanada, chairman of the human-rights committee, shows the pictures of Roxas's injuries. (Photo by Fred E. Dabu)

Melissa Roxas takes a glass of water during her emotional testimony. (Photo by Fred E. Dabu)

Melissa Roxas asserts that the military abducted and tortured her. (Photo by Fred E. Dabu)

Melissa Roxas and her lawyer Rex Fernandez. (Photo by Fred E. Dabu)

On July 30 President Gloria Arroyo of the Philippines will be visiting with the President of the United States.

This is an opportunity to make the White House more aware of the human rights abuses in the Philippines by asking sympathetic members of both the Philippine-American Press and the Philippine media to ask the Presidential press secretary if the President intends to speak with Arroyo about the abduction and torture of Melissa Roxas, an American citizen.

One specific question the President should ask Arroyo is:

Will she publicly go on record as commanding the Philippine military to co-operate with all investigations and legal proceedings in the case of Melissa Roxas conducted by the Commission on Human Rights of the Philippines, the Philippine courts, and Melissa Roxas’ lawyer?

PLEASE NOTE THAT THE CHAIRPERSON FOR COMMISSION ON HUMAN RIGHTS OF THE PHILIPPINES HAS PUBLICLY STATED THAT THE PHILIPPINE MILITARY HAS NOT CO-OPERATED WITH HER INVESTIGATION AND EVEN TRIED TO STOP HER FROM AN ONSITE INSPECTION OF A MILITARY CAMP SUSPECTED AS BEING WHERE ROXAS WAS HELD!

THIS IS AN IMPORTANT QUESTION FOR THE PRESIDENT TO ASK ARROYO.

The Commission on Human Rights of the Philippines and the court system have tried in recent years to address human rights violations, but the Philippine military has not co-operated with most of the investigations, not producing requested evidence and sometimes not even showing up for proceedings.

Also note there is a difference between the Presidential Human Rights Commission (PHRC) and the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) of the Philippines. PHRC is a PR gimmick of the Arroyo administration, the CHR is a constitutionally established commission and the current Chairperson is a diligent advocate of human rights. Check out their website: http://www.chr.gov.ph.

Rev. Larry Emery
Community Presbyterian Church
Post Office Box 93
Walnut Grove CA 95690
(916) 776-1106

Having to leave the Philippines for the United States when she was nine years old was a particularly painful experience for Filipino-American Melissa Roxas. Her desire to trace her roots brought her back to the country of her birth where, in May, soldiers kidnapped and tortured her for days.

By Alexander Martin Remollino
Bulatlat

Los Angeles, California — As a Filipino who migrated to the United States to follow her mother when she was very young, Melissa Roxas remembers the pain of having to leave the Philippines. That pain stayed with her even as she later came to understand that what her mother did was in pursuit of a better life, a decent life that had proved elusive to them and to millions of others in their native land. Growing up, she always wondered why they had to be separated from their loved ones.

Her mother was the first in their family to migrate; she followed soon after. Melissa, a native of Manila, arrived in the US in 1986, when she was just nine years old.

She still has memories of her sporadic bouts of rage in the period between her mother’s departure and their reuniting.

Melissa Roxas (Photo courtesy of Habi Arts)

“I remember feeling really torn…and have very vivid memories of actually screaming at every airplane…in the sky as I was thinking of my mother, and when we were reunited, I felt very isolated because the rest of the family was out there,” she said in a recent interview with Bulatlat in Los Angeles, where she grew up.

“I think that stayed with me, in the sense that I asked, Why did we have to leave the Philippines, why did we have to be separated from everyone that we loved?”

Going to school in the US, she would eventually acquire a sharp awareness that she was somehow different from other Americans. She spoke about students forming cliques based on race or color — and then asked for a pause in the interview.

She nonetheless was able to make friends even with people from different races, she said after the interview resumed.

In high school, in particular, she had many Latino friends. This, together with her readings — she was a voracious reader very early on — piqued her interest in Latin American culture, an interest that took her on exchange programs to Chile and then Mexico, where she came to learn about human-rights issues.

Her heightened awareness of Latin American history and culture eventually provoked in her a desire to go back to her roots in the Philippines.

She went to college at the University of California, San Diego, where she took a BS in Animal Physiology and Neuroscience and, later, a BA in Third World Studies with a minor in Health Care and Social Issues.

While in college, she began volunteering for community organizations advocating the rights of the youth, the homeless and the elderly. Later on, she would become involved with Filipino organizations aligned with the Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (Bayan or New Patriotic Alliance), the Philippines’s largest progressive group. Melissa, who is also a poet, would become a co-founder of the cultural group Habi Arts together with the late painter Papo de Asis and a few other US-based Filipino artists.

The Los Angeles-based Habi Arts, in turn, would, in 2005, become a founding member of Bayan-USA.

That same year, Melissa was among the organizers of a Bayan-USA contingent to the International Solidarity Mission (ISM) to the Philippines, a fact-finding mission that investigated the rampant human-rights violations, particularly the extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances.

Two years later, she decided to go back to the Philippines, this time as a full-time activist doing human rights and community health work.

In April this year, she took part in a survey of several communities in La Paz, Tarlac, for a future medical mission.

On May 19, she was abducted together with two companions, Juanito Carabeo and John Edward Jandoc, by about 15 men in civilian clothes but wearing bonnets and ski masks and bearing long firearms. They were brought to a barracks, where they were repeatedly tortured for days.

Melissa, in particular, was called “Maita” several times and warned that there was nothing the “Canadian government” could do for her while she was being tortured.

She and her companions were later released on the condition that they would not speak in public about what was done to them.

But speak out she did. She has issued a number of statements exposing the violations of her and her companions’ rights, and is set to do more.

She confessed that nothing prepared her for the horrors they went through, even as she had always been aware of the risks to life and limb that are involved in being an activist. “I knew that it was happening, but it wasn’t something that you would imagine happening to yourself,” she said.

During the interview with Bulatlat, Melissa was still visibly shaken by the torture she and her companions went through. She lapsed into prolonged silence and struggled to hold back tears during parts of the interview that lead to flashbacks of the torture sessions.

She still hopes to go back to the Philippines, she said, this time to pursue a case against the military officers and enlisted personnel who were involved in their torture. “The Philippine government and military should not get away with what happened to me, and that means that I would have to go back to tell that story,” she said.

This, Melissa said, is because she is aware that the issue goes beyond what was done to her. Keeping silent, she said, “is like silencing forever all the voices that have been silenced.” (Bulatlat.com)

I would like to thank everyone for being here this afternoon.

It has been a very difficult time for me and my family and I would like to thank everyone who has give us their love, help, and support during this time.

I was in the Philippines for an exposure program doing volunteer work in the community and also doing research for my writing project. I was in La Paz, Tarlac conducting health surveys in the community for a future medical mission.

On May 19, 2009, about 1:30 in the afternoon, I and my two companions, John Edward Jandoc and Juanito Carabeo, heard a banging on the front door and a voice asking that the door be opened. About 15 men in civilian clothes armed with high power rifles and wearing ski masks, some of them had bonnets on to cover their faces, surrounding the house. I was surprised and very scared. They forcibly opened the door and the armed men went into the house coming from the front and the back door and ordered us to drop face flat on the ground, but I kept trying to stand up and asking why are they doing this but they pushed me to the ground.

I then started to shout my name, repeating it again and again, I was punched repeatedly at my right rib cage. They tried to tape my mouth but I kept taking it off, saying my name over and over again. I saw that my two companions were already blindfolded and taped at the mouth and were being taken to a blue van. I was trying to stop the armed men from putting me into the van and they instead started to drag me bruising and wounding my arms and my legs, severely wounding my left knee cap.

I didn’t want to get in that van, I put my feet on the side of the doors but the men forced me inside. and they blindfolded and handcuffed to the back. But they could not tape my mouth because I was already retching and throwing up.

We traveled for more than an hour in the van and when we stopped they separated us and I didn’t know where they took my other two companions.

The first couple of days I was held in a jail cell with iron bars. When I was made to lie down on a wooden bed without a mattress with my head positioned near the iron bars.

They didn’t feed me during the first day and the second day they did not feed me until at night. The whole time throughout my abduction, I was blindfolded and handcuffed, except when they made me take a bath. At first they had me handcuffed in the back but later put the handcuffs in front because my hands were severely cut and bruised.

During my days in the jail cell, I heard construction activities–blowtorching, hammering and construction. I also heard gun firing like a firing range and planes taking off and landing and it was loud and I could also hear goats.

I was never left alone, there were always men watching me. I was constantly interrogated and during the interrogations they would ask me repeatedly if I knew why I was there and I WAS TOLD BY THEM that I was abducted because I was a member of the CPP NPA. I also repeatedly told them that I have rights and that I demanded for my lawyer. I told them I was just a writer and a volunteer.

They told me that even if a year passes, I would see no lawyer. That there I had no rights.

They told me repeatedly that it was because of people like me who are costing the government so much money.

They said people like me are the ones who are making it difficult for the government.

Then they threatened me and beat me.

I remember when two men entered my cell, and one of them, who they called “Tatay”, pulled my handcuffs, raising me so that I was sitting, then he punched me

then a thumb was pressed to my throat choking me…

he was saying “huh!…huh…huh.”

then he struck me again on my left jaw and I heard ringing in my ears.

They said that I was hard headed and that I better answer their questions…

They kept repeating the questions.

Before they left I heard the man say they should just shoot me.

So I could not sleep the rest of the time and I kept waiting because I knew they would come back and I prepared for the worst;

And they came back hours later

and they asked me “Are you ready to die”

and they said before they kill people they make them pee and shit from the pain before they die.

and they dragged me out of the cell.

All I could do was tell them I had rights and I wanted to see a lawyer, but he kept beating me.

At one point they banged the back of my head repeatedly on the wall behind me and I remember seeing flashes of white light. And he kept punching me. Every time I would fall the other men would hold me and force me up.

Then they held my feet and my hands down and they put two plastic bags and put it over my head and around my neck,

I started to suffocate and I could not breath anymore and I was seeing white and thinking I was going to die and then he released the hold

After that happened, there were more interrogations almost non-stop, and more threats.

During my abduction and torture I knew it was the military that had me because they kept accusing me of being CPP/ NPA and tried to make me sign some documents but I refused. I kept telling them I was a writer and that I was a health care volunteer.

I also heard people being addressed as “Sir” and answering to orders with “Yes Sir.”

One of the interrogators, RC said they merely tools of God for making rebels return to the fold and I told him that my God does not torture people. He then told me that the people who abducted and tortured me were part of the S.O.G, the Special Operations Group.

I also heard gun firing, like a firing range, and planes taking off and landing. Also a lot of construction. When I asked Rose what the construction was, she said it was construction in the camp to build more walls, make the walls higher in the camp.

Early morning on May 25th the military dropped me off at my house in Quezon City. I was still very distraught and fearful that they would come back for me. Even after I was at my house with my uncle, they called me again on the phone and I was very afraid and fearful for my safety.

The military said something bad would happen if I said anything to anyone. They especially did not want me to talk with Karapatan. I was very fearful and that is why I wanted to go home to the United States as soon as possible and seek safety and reunite with my family there.

It was very hard to talk about what happened because of the emotional and psychological effects of my abduction and torture. After it happened, I did not want to leave the house at all and it was very hard for me to go even outside of the room. I was also still very weak physically because of my wounds.

Although it is still very difficult to talk about the incident, I wanted to tell the truth about what happened to me. Because I don’t want what happened to me, to happen to anybody else ever again. I want the world to know what happened because the Philippine government and military should not get away with what they did to me, to Juanito, to John Edward. And they cannot get away with what they did to many other people. Because there are still families looking for their loved ones, and there are many more still missing.

I plan on pursuing the case for as long as it takes to seek justice for what they did to me.

I am asking the American people and the Filipino people, and all believers of truth and justice to help me, and help the victims of human rights violations to get justice.

It has to end. The killings, the enforced disappearances, the abductions, and the torture have to end.

Every day since my abduction and torture the nightmares of what happened often return to me and talking about that experience is like going back again to that dark place, but knowing that I spoke the truth about what happened keeps that deep sea of injustice, silence, and fear from drowning me… and instead I get to keep that bit of light inside.

The recent birth of my niece reminds me that life is something more than just presence, it is the earth rising inside of you, the earth that has been there since the beginning, but taking a different form.

I started to think about all the other babies I had seen as a community health worker in the Philippines before my niece was born. The marking of before and after, beginnings and endings. I remember their mothers taking them in for health screenings and basic check ups. Infants who went untreated for days with a fever, the softness in their eyes gives way to a hardness, their skin was tight from dehydration, they were so tiny, their hand in mine was as little as my thumbnail. I remember how much I wanted them to get better and be alive. With so many babies, children and families that I’ve met, I realized that the disease they had was more than an epidemic of typhoid fever, cholera, or malaria, it was the disease of poverty and oppression.

When I started to work more with particular issues of human rights violations I also met different babies, babies and children who had lost their mothers and fathers to a different death. A horrible and preventable death that takes the life not only of its victim, but robs the whole family and the world of their presence, all because they advocated and fought for a better world where their children have genuine freedom, a just peace, and true democracy.

Each day I was with the community, I learned how precious a birth can be, how to appreciate life, and I slowly began to understand what they meant when they whispered me their names and told their stories. There are no deaths that are forgotten, no fathers, no mothers, no sisters and brothers, aunts, uncles, or cousins that are forgotten. They live in the births of new babies each day.

When my own experience of abduction and torture ended and I was reunited with my family it was not a second birth for me, I realized that it is a continuing journey for the search for truth and justice. Repressive governments and military use torture as a form of control, to instill fear in people in debilitating ways, so they stay quiet and lose their light inside. But I realized no amount of pain or suffering or fear can stop that earth in me to keep rising. Instead it gave birth to new births. My experience has convinced me even more of the value of freedom and justice and the importance of fighting for and upholding the principles of human rights and human dignity.

Me being able to write this right now is testimony of how your collective love, support, prayers, and action is helping me and others like me through this experience. I know that your support is also part of a larger movement to create change towards a world free of poverty and oppression. Thank you to friends and family, family and friends of other desaparecidos, progressive people’s organizations, human rights groups, lawyers, civil rights advocates, church people’s organizations, concerned individuals, fellow poets and artists, and all believers in human rights and justice.

There are many more desaparecidos, more abductions, torture and extra-judicial killings going on in the Philippines and around the world. Let the new birth come where there is an end to all of the killings, abductions, and torture. Let the noise come from all directions–they are no longer whispers but shouts for justice.

Love,
Melissa Roxas