The November 29 Family

DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
12/5/2007



Put some of the significant news items of yesterday side by side and one will understand the Makati RTC soldiers’ protest walkout and the citizens’ participation occurred and culminated in the Manila Pen declaration of Gen. Danilo Lim that “Dissent without action is consent.” The moral, political and economic crises accumulating the past seven years deepens each day; it is the law of nature that lava vents explode as the tectonic pressure builds up. Gen. Danilo Lim set a new standard of moral and public responsibility calling not only for dissent, which we have had for seven years, but for action; without action rambunctious criticisms are theatrics.

“Thirty-seven solons (administration politicos) join Arroyo’s party: who’s paying for their trip?”, i.e. junket to Europe costing millions of dollars; while another news item reported the World Bank’s data that “the Philippines' poverty incidence rate of 40 percent is higher than China's 3 percent, Indonesia's 23 percent, Vietnam's 37 percent, Lao's 38 percent or Cambodia's 36 percent. “ This economic injustice is the reason of our nation’s unceasing disturbances. As one quotation goes “Peace is not the absence of war but the presence of justice.” From the violent insurgencies of the NPA and our Islamic brothers in the south, to the peaceful protests of activist and idealist soldiers’ movement like the group at the Manila Pen, injustice is the issue.

Economic justice churns stomachs, but moral and judicial injustice eats up the heart of the nation. With us in the PACER jail, the maximum security detention center at Camp Crame were leaders of the peasant agrarian movement Unorka whose right to land has been robbed again and again even as they and their children starve and even die in the hands of land-grabbers’ goons. When Senator Trillanes explained how the Makati RTC judge has repeatedly obstructed the will of eleven million voters, it was not about his personal interest in the case but about the entire judicial system which has become the tool of the powerful to suppress the will of the democratic majority. Magsaysay said, “Those who have less in life must have more in law.” and George Washington: “The administration of justice is the firmest pillar of government”, in both these issues the current dispensation is woefully guilty and its denunciation an imperative.

Take Gen. Danilo Lim and his Tanay comrades’ case, charged for mutiny even as the AFP investigation team led by Col. Al Perreras in its Pre-Trail Investigation (PTI) recommended dismissal of mutiny charges. Gen. Esperon stonewalled the PTI to enforce his own conceived conclusion to the investigation and hearings. This must be taken in light of the rot in all our adjudicatory institutions where the moral grounds of judges enlisted to the cause of the corrupt regime have created kangaroo courts galore. Take Estrada’s conviction by Sandiganbayan chief Tess de Castro who is rewarded promptly with a Supreme Court post – without even waiting for a decent interval to pass.

Unorka peasant, the idealist soldiers, Erap, the Filipino people – all victims of this injustice under Gloria. Imagine how such innocent and significant individuals like military officers and a former president can be subjected to the injustice of a kangaroo court, then we should not be surprised that tens of thousands of peasants represented by organizations such as Unorka are in front of the Department of Agrarian Reforms and in hundreds of courtrooms everyday struggling for justice – and the NPA insurgency festering over five decades now; because of this crisis of justice we have lagged behind Asia in progress and modernization – this is the message of the November 29 incident.

November 29 was a rare confluence of on the eve of Bonifacio Day, the presence of two persecuted military idealists in the same court room and the protest rally at the Ninoy Aquino statue at Ayala-Paseo. I was invited by cellphone to the Ayala rally the day before, as Fr. Robert Reyes was. As Fr. Reyes started prayers the Makati RTC ruckus filtered to us through cellphone texts, and later urging us to Makati Avenue - just a confluence of events. When we reached Manila Pen individuals and groups were also streaming in despite the blockade of the roads by the police forces. Bishop Labayen, Tobias, VP Guingona arrived, among many others – all known socio-political dissenters drawn to the protest being staged. Later after the incident and our release, media asked me about a document outlining a new government junta that was allegedly circulated there, but I never saw one myself.

Until the release of fifteen for further investigation, there were at least forty-one of us inside the custodial center of the PNP at Camp Crame – soldiers, priests, peasants, workers, professionals, one media person (me), writers, lawyers, politicians, senior citizens and businessmen. During the SWAT siege of Manila Pen when the tear gas crept up to the hall where the hold outs stayed, not one of the civilians budged from the conviction to stay on with the soldiers and officers to the very end. I had prepared myself mentally at that moment and thought only of reducing the possible damage to “survivable wounds” – I spotted a thick, heavy terra cotta planter to hide behind. One stood beside the window, admitting later he thought of jumping out when shooting started.

In the four days we were together we had two beautiful mass said by Fr. Robert Reyes, beautiful because it was we, the participants who gave the sermons by our reflections on the experience. Fr. Reyes kept his sermons very brief for it is the people that are the Church he said. The most defining thing about the sharing of the forty-one detainees was what was never heard – there was not a single note of recrimination, or regret, or sorrow; all felt liberated, ready, willing for whatever fate awaiting ahead – and for me and other civilian detainees such as JB Bautista, RG Guevara and others too many to mention, a long detention was but a new dimension in the decades long struggle for national justice.

On the third night of detention Senator Trillanes called all of us to a meeting and discussed our situation, asking what the group wanted to do from that point. We all agreed that we would be together through thick and thin, that we were family and as it was clear at that point that some civilians would be released soon, that those released would continue to be in solidarity with those remaining in detention and we would call ourselves all as the “November 29 Family”. “Walang Iwanan” was the call and everybody cheered. Next morning Fr. Robert Reyes suggested a capital idea – compile the personal reflections of each in the November 29 event and publish a book, and we have started this book with the individual two page essays of each. That evening when some of the civilians were to be released, businessman and fellow detainee Pepe Albert asked me to act as spokesman and this is my mission for the Family now.

There are many analyses of the events of November 29, 2007 but they are not the whole story, in the coming days we will tell our Family’s story. For the oppressed of our nation we also now have General Lim and Sen. Trillanes as the new spokesmen, replacing trapos and other strangers to the people’s plight and the real serious struggle for justice. I am glad our colleague Alejandro “Ding” Lichauco agrees that the incident projected the two a true brave leaders of these times of crisis for the Filipino people. Many words of mainstream media still reflect misconceptions about the Manila Pen incident, but it is only a matter of time that all those are clarified. What shines through is the daring and imagination by the “leaders” of the maneuver at the Makati RTC courtroom, the peaceful manner by which all of it was done, the international exposure attained to air the crisis conditions in the Philippines. Maybe not all elements fell into place, but what is important is that they are here and preparing for another day.

I have abused the usual space allotted to me for this column, but I have requested our publisher-editor to give some extra inches for the November 29 Family because our people need these voices: "This people does not complain because it has no voice, it does not move because it is lethargic, and you say that it does not suffer because you haven't seen how its heart bleeds.” - Pilosopong Tasio speaking to Ibarra, Chapter 25 Noli Me Tangere. The November 29 Family is the Filipino national family; the November 29 Family will be heard. We will continue with our dissent, we will continue with our actions until the oppressed Filipino break through the barricades.

I cannot end this piece without saying in behalf of the Family: thanks to the dozens of lawyers who helped (and continue to help) as part of FLAG (Free Legal Assistance Group) and MABINI, and the many individual lawyers who aided individual clients; the countless messages of support that have come to all of us in the Family, and most especially the members of media without whom all the soldiers would have been murdered (without a doubt, as we civilian at Manila Pen knew full well) in cold blood for the Gloria regime to be rid of this continuing political-military challenge to her tyranny. Thanks also to all the families and friends of the November 29 Family of soldiers and civilians who, through all the pain and fear, kept faith and gave unstinting support.

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