'Exile from human memory'

[caption id="attachment_885" align="alignleft" width="188" caption="Clarita Alia"][/caption]

What are the perils of indifference?

That was the question around which Elie Wiesel's speech, “The Perils Indifference,” revolves. “The political prisoner in his cell, the hungry children, the homeless refugees —not to respond to their plight, not to relieve their solitude by offering them a spark of hope is to exile them from human memory…,” Elie Wiesel said at a Millennium series lecture held in White House and hosted by then US first couple Mr. and Mrs. Bill Clinton.

When Wiesel, a 1986 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, spoke those words, he had in mind the victims of the tragic episode in humanity's history that was the Holocaust.

But it is not too far off the mark to include Clarita Alia among those exiles from “human memory.” Call it inflated, but that is where Clarita Alia is right now: Gone from the memory of the people. Her cries remain unheeded; her demands seemed to fall on deaf ears. Over the years, Clarita Alia has been clamoring that justice be served for the death of her four children: Richard, 18; Christopher, 16; Bobby, 14; Fernando, 15—all were knifed to death. But she seemed clamoring in vain.

Already in her 50s and now a widow, she single-handedly raised her eight children by selling vegetables at Bankerohan, one of Davao City’s largest public markets. Like all mother, she dreamed of giving her children a bright future. But the environment Mayor Rodrigo Duterte created would make that dream just that: a dream.  

Back on the fringe, again

Published in Mindanao Times 06/02/09

Davao City’s problem on human rights has been around for a long time now, but one that’s often left unnoticed. Fortunately, it was pulled out on the fringe and brought into the mainstream when the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) launched a widely publicized public inquiry on the unchecked killings. But from the looks of it, it seems to be back again to where it was before: on the fringe.

Just two months ago, when the CHR came here to investigate the series of killings in the city allegedly done by the Davao Death Squad (DDS), Davao City became the talk of the town. National broadsheets ran headlines regarding the CHR investigation. Newspaper columnists and cartoonists, human rights advocate and full fledged activists, street philosophers and street sweepers also joined the fray.

Human Rights Watch is right

Human Rights Watch, a New York-based human rights group, released yesterday its report, titled "You Can Die Any Time: Death Squad Killings in Mindanao."

After downloading the soft copy of the report, I managed to take a cursory read of the report. There's one portion of the report that struck me, only because it confirmed what my father told me some years back. Once he told me that some members of the DDS are former NPAs. In fact, my father said, he knew someone who had just been recruited to join this ghostly group.

One portion of the HRW's report, "The Perpetrators: Inside the Davao Death Squad," confirmed this. "Most members of the DDS fall into two main groups," the report said. "According to several insiders, the older members, some of whom were recruited back in the early 2000s, were primarily former members of the so-called “sparrow units” of the NPA who surrendered to the government, as well as some former military and police personnel."

Update: Download the full report of the HRW here.