Stop the killings! October 4, 2006
(Conclusion)
HOW do we stop the killings?
Three things.
First, precisely with forums like this. The point is to bring international attention and pressure to bear on the Philippine government for those killings. They have no place in the global democratic community. No, they have no place in the global civilized community.
The importance of this can never be sufficiently belabored. There is one point about the killings that seems to escape the notice of foreign journalist organizations that have rightly condemned the atrocity. That is the fact that most of the victims have worked outside Metro Manila. That is the case in particular with the journalists. There seems to be an implicit taboo on the killing of journalists in Metro Manila. Nearly to a man or woman, the journalists have been killed outside the capital.
It’s not hard to see where that taboo comes from. It doesn’t come from the would-be assassins’ healthy respect for the national media, it comes from the would-be assassins’ healthy fear of international opinion. If the killers have nothing to do with government, they stand to be tracked down resolutely with the flailing of the international press. If the killers have to do with government, the government stands to be reviled passionately with the driving of the international press.
The confinement of the murders to the countryside is surprisingly true as well for the activists. Though a few activists have been murdered in the fringes of Metro Manila, most have been felled well outside of it. The people of the Bayan Muna party-list group that I’ve talked to at least have told me they still felt relatively safe -- such as any dissenter can still feel safe in the Philippines -- in Metro Manila. But that was before the recent murder of Makati City Mayor Jejomar Binay’s security aide, Pablo Glean. If that is a political killing, and it looks every inch so, it is a scary pass. It ups the ante on the mayhem.
Three groups of people are particularly vital in bringing pressure to bear on the Philippine government for this. The first is the international press and human rights community. As Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo found out in her latest trip abroad, where she was hounded by the human rights and press groups wherever she went, her local constituents may be deaf to the cries of the dying, but not so the world.
The second is the Filipino press community abroad, specifically the one in the United States which is the biggest. And the third is the larger Filipino community abroad, again particularly in the US, which is the biggest, most articulate and most vocal. The last two were active participants in Edsa People Power II, the new technology, encompassing e-mail and cellular phone, which allowed Filipinos abroad to participate in the events in the home country in real time. Filipinos abroad didn’t just watch the ousting of Joseph Estrada as spectators, they completely literally took part in it.
If the ousting of Estrada remains contentious to this day, stopping the killings is not. That goes beyond partisan loyalties and concerns. We do not stop the killings in the Philippines, we promote dictatorship in the Philippines. It is as simple as that.
The second thing to do is to fight the tangle of justification for the killings, specifically the ideology or culture of war and national security.
One of the astonishing things I found out early last year when I went to several provinces to talk about the killings of journalists was the ease with which some members of my audience seem to have factored in, and even rationalized, the killings. One expressly wondered if the victims hadn’t brought their fate upon themselves by “going overboard.” The radio commentators in particular, they said, were dripping with venom all over the airwaves.
My reply to this was and is: You grant that half of the victims were disguised journalists, the other half would have been true ones. The latter would have been exposing corruption in high places. If only one of them died, it would have been intolerable. For a whole tribe of them to do so, it gives government, who has a sacred duty to protect them, no reason to exist.
More than that, nothing justifies the murder of journalists, paper-thin or rock-solid as their credentials might be. Not corruption, not intemperate language, not stepping on the toes of people. At worst, where they are corrupt and intemperate, they deserve censure, not death. At best, where they are doing their jobs, they deserve medals, not coffins.
Finally, how do we stop the killings?
Well, to what do we owe the killings finally?
We owe them to the fact that we have a regime that, like the martial-law one, is nearly universally held to have no electoral mandate. No, that like the martial-law one is nearly universally held in contempt by the public. We owe the killings to the fact that the current regime, like the martial-law regime, has resorted to defending illegitimate rule by force, or to defending dictatorship -- how else call a rule without the people’s mandate? -- by the ways of dictatorship. We owe the killings to the fact that the current regime, like the martial-law regime, is trying to kill resistance by killing resisters, to kill protest by killing protesters.
How to stop the killings finally?
Lose Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. You will forgive me if I do not use the honorific “President” before her name.
Last year, at the heart of the crisis in government, an archbishop came out to say, “But ousting Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo won’t solve all our problems.” What I said then, I say now: “It won’t solve all our problems, true, but it sure as hell will solve a great many of them.”
Certainly, it will stop this problem. Certainly, it will stop the killings.
http://opinion.inq7.net/inquireropinion/columns/view_article.php?article_id=24626
HOW do we stop the killings?
Three things.
First, precisely with forums like this. The point is to bring international attention and pressure to bear on the Philippine government for those killings. They have no place in the global democratic community. No, they have no place in the global civilized community.
The importance of this can never be sufficiently belabored. There is one point about the killings that seems to escape the notice of foreign journalist organizations that have rightly condemned the atrocity. That is the fact that most of the victims have worked outside Metro Manila. That is the case in particular with the journalists. There seems to be an implicit taboo on the killing of journalists in Metro Manila. Nearly to a man or woman, the journalists have been killed outside the capital.
It’s not hard to see where that taboo comes from. It doesn’t come from the would-be assassins’ healthy respect for the national media, it comes from the would-be assassins’ healthy fear of international opinion. If the killers have nothing to do with government, they stand to be tracked down resolutely with the flailing of the international press. If the killers have to do with government, the government stands to be reviled passionately with the driving of the international press.
The confinement of the murders to the countryside is surprisingly true as well for the activists. Though a few activists have been murdered in the fringes of Metro Manila, most have been felled well outside of it. The people of the Bayan Muna party-list group that I’ve talked to at least have told me they still felt relatively safe -- such as any dissenter can still feel safe in the Philippines -- in Metro Manila. But that was before the recent murder of Makati City Mayor Jejomar Binay’s security aide, Pablo Glean. If that is a political killing, and it looks every inch so, it is a scary pass. It ups the ante on the mayhem.
Three groups of people are particularly vital in bringing pressure to bear on the Philippine government for this. The first is the international press and human rights community. As Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo found out in her latest trip abroad, where she was hounded by the human rights and press groups wherever she went, her local constituents may be deaf to the cries of the dying, but not so the world.
The second is the Filipino press community abroad, specifically the one in the United States which is the biggest. And the third is the larger Filipino community abroad, again particularly in the US, which is the biggest, most articulate and most vocal. The last two were active participants in Edsa People Power II, the new technology, encompassing e-mail and cellular phone, which allowed Filipinos abroad to participate in the events in the home country in real time. Filipinos abroad didn’t just watch the ousting of Joseph Estrada as spectators, they completely literally took part in it.
If the ousting of Estrada remains contentious to this day, stopping the killings is not. That goes beyond partisan loyalties and concerns. We do not stop the killings in the Philippines, we promote dictatorship in the Philippines. It is as simple as that.
The second thing to do is to fight the tangle of justification for the killings, specifically the ideology or culture of war and national security.
One of the astonishing things I found out early last year when I went to several provinces to talk about the killings of journalists was the ease with which some members of my audience seem to have factored in, and even rationalized, the killings. One expressly wondered if the victims hadn’t brought their fate upon themselves by “going overboard.” The radio commentators in particular, they said, were dripping with venom all over the airwaves.
My reply to this was and is: You grant that half of the victims were disguised journalists, the other half would have been true ones. The latter would have been exposing corruption in high places. If only one of them died, it would have been intolerable. For a whole tribe of them to do so, it gives government, who has a sacred duty to protect them, no reason to exist.
More than that, nothing justifies the murder of journalists, paper-thin or rock-solid as their credentials might be. Not corruption, not intemperate language, not stepping on the toes of people. At worst, where they are corrupt and intemperate, they deserve censure, not death. At best, where they are doing their jobs, they deserve medals, not coffins.
Finally, how do we stop the killings?
Well, to what do we owe the killings finally?
We owe them to the fact that we have a regime that, like the martial-law one, is nearly universally held to have no electoral mandate. No, that like the martial-law one is nearly universally held in contempt by the public. We owe the killings to the fact that the current regime, like the martial-law regime, has resorted to defending illegitimate rule by force, or to defending dictatorship -- how else call a rule without the people’s mandate? -- by the ways of dictatorship. We owe the killings to the fact that the current regime, like the martial-law regime, is trying to kill resistance by killing resisters, to kill protest by killing protesters.
How to stop the killings finally?
Lose Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. You will forgive me if I do not use the honorific “President” before her name.
Last year, at the heart of the crisis in government, an archbishop came out to say, “But ousting Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo won’t solve all our problems.” What I said then, I say now: “It won’t solve all our problems, true, but it sure as hell will solve a great many of them.”
Certainly, it will stop this problem. Certainly, it will stop the killings.
http://opinion.inq7.net/inquireropinion/columns/view_article.php?article_id=24626
posted by dqfan06 @ 9:33 AM
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