Phillipines 2023. interfaith learning tour organized by the National Council of Churches.
I participated in the interfaith learning tour organized by the National Council of Churches in the Philippines, the Ecumenical Voice, and the International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines. The two-week long interfaith tour, held in February 2023, were participated by religious leaders, community organizers, and members of the academe from Canada, United States, and Malaysia. The tour consists of three phases. The first is the orientation phase which introduced us to the dismal human rights record of the Philippine government. A part of the orientation session is a rehearsal on how to respond to intimidation that may come from military personnel, some of them may appear in civilian clothes, who may try to intervene in our data gathering. The second phase is immersion in communities where human rights violations are rampantly occurring. We were divided into three groups. I was part of the group that immersed in the militarized communities north of Manila. Our aim was to gather information on the experiences of civilian population in militarized communities. The third phase is report back and planning.
On this report I will be focusing on our experience of immersion in militarized communities. Although this report focuses on the situation on the area that was assigned to us, it becomes conspicuous on the report back session that these individual experiences are part of the national plan to maintain a docile population unable to participate in democratic processes of the state. By way of harassment, intimindation, character assassination, killings, and violent dispersal, communities are kept inside a culture of silence.
In our immersion to communities, we heard the stories of people experiencing militarization. The concept of militarization as an organizing term captures the experiences of the community: (1) increased presence of military in the community both uniform and in civilian clothes, (2) reorganized social institutions where traditional civilian leadership are subsumed under military rule, (3) intensified repression of people’s movements by way of incarcerating and killing their leaders and character assassinating their political organizations using social media platforms and posters. It becomes obvious that the militarization is meant to create a docile population or a neutralized and de-politicized community who are unable to participate in democratic political discourses and processes and collective actions guaranteed under democratic states. This repressive condition adversely affects the well-being of the community. Having a politicized mindset enable the community to fight back, resist, and assert their rights to organizing. A politicized citizens is a bed rock for a vibrant democratic engagement that sets the condition for a flourishing of life. While a depoliticized citizens guarantees and legitimates the proliferation of tyrannical rule which sets into motion uprisings and rebellions that produces cyclical violence.
One of the military tactics that de-politicized communities is the ‘force surrender program.’ It is a tactic that harassed community leaders forcing them to ‘surrender’ to military personnel on ambiguous legal charges mainly based on gossips. Have you imagined yourself imprisoned for charges that are based on gossip? Let me describe the process: A military personnel will approach a targeted community leader to invite them to dialogue in the barangay hall or military office. The basis of the dialogue is for them to “clean” their name. They will be asked to renounce membership from any political groups, even to their church congregation. The military would promise money to entice the community leader to surrender. But for most times these were not given. The persons who might have already signed up as surrendered will have to wait long but not receiving any promised amount. By then, they have swore-in and signed-up as surrendered, in a liturgical ritualized event usually held as a spectacle in front of municipal halls. They may have also snitched other community leaders in a manner that they would feel they have betrayed their community. They may also have provided sensitive information about their organizations that can be used by military to persecute them. In this process, the world of the surrendered political subject shatters.
The money that was promised may have ended up in the pockets of military personnel. Its reflexively a given, the military establishment is rotten. But there could be more that the rottenness in the system. Not sending them the promised money inflicted them shame. In Filipino psyche, the idiom “mukhang pera” is a term of shame that resembles what we know in English term as financial opportunism. In the Filipino worldview it’s a high form of shame. Because financial opportunism, prioritizes economic gains over friendships, money over comraderies’, the self over political and religious commitments. The military are intentional on inflicting this kind of shame to the surrendered politicized agent as a tactic to depoliticized the community leaders. One of the effects is that the surrendered political subject can no longer feel comfortable around folks in the organizations, the relationship of the surrendered with other would never be the same. They become marked. Leaders of people’s organizations can no longer trust them. Maybe these political leaders would open-up spaces for trust but the innerworkings of shame would hinder them to participate. Their world, through the ritualized surrender, swearing-in as a public spectacle, the waiting for the money to arrive, the infliction of shame, the changing of set of friends and loyalties and political commitments, constitutes how a political subject is depoliticized. Depoliticization include the shattering of one’s world, the de-formation of one’s thinking, and the renunciation of political commitments. These all constitute a form of torture minus the physical pain, and an effective torture because surrenderers comes in throngs, and that the evidence of pain does not exist physically.
These military atrocities thrive in the condition of silence. But it is not irreversible. In this condition of silence that faith communities should speak up. It is important that the faith communities have the capacity to read situations with a critical eye. This can be made possible if we provide spaces for a political reading of religious scriptures in the light of the current events. Our faith can be made relevant if we have critical mental tools to assist us to better understand the things happening around us. We have a rich tradition of a Jesus who is politicized through and through, from birth, the choice of the manger instead of the palace, the ministry in Galilee where poverty is most pronounced than in Jerusalem where the seat of power resides, the choice of disciples from among the common people instead of the learned Sadducees and Pharisees, the working of miracles among the people, and a lot more. The Jesus depicted in the Bible is political. We also have a rich prophetic tradition that prioritizes the concerns of the suffering people and criticizes the powerful. The SCM-Canada has been both a vehicle and a venue of this kind of biblical interpretation, one that is relevant and attentive to the suffering of people whose only hope is God.
I thank the SCM for providing the safe space to talk about politics in the light of our individual faith convictions. And for the space where solidarity among oppressed peoples from all over the world are expressed.
