A clean, well-lighted place

On June 30, 1992—that was 15 years ago—just before the new president, Fidel Ramos, was going to be sworn in, I was somewhere in Santa Cruz, waiting for our photographer. I was in a rush to finish an assignment so I could be home to watch the swearing in on TV. I was doing a magazine story and I forget now what it was. But what turned out to be unforgettable was my encounter with a family of soon-to-be-seven that lived in two pushcarts. The mother’s name was Evangelina Gamutan. She was 34 but looked 54. She was ngo-ngo (with a cleft palate) and...

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World Day of Justice

Last Tuesday, July 17, was World Day of Justice. The day marked a milestone in the history of international law and international justice. Nine years ago in 1998, 120 states attending the Plenipotentiary Conference in Rome adopted the Rome Statute, the founding treaty of the International Criminal Court (ICC). As of today, 139 states have signed and 105 have ratified. It should be noted that while celebrations were taking place all over the world, here in the Philippines a summit on extrajudicial killings attended by stakeholders from civil society,...

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Remembering Lean

The youth of this generation ought to have and ought to know someone like him, someone so passionate and dedicated to a vision and a cause. And yet so endearingly likeable. Ask his friends and comrades. He was the quintessential student or youth activist. Leandro “Lean” Alejandro was all of 27 when he was killed in a hail of bullets 20 years ago. He was emerging from his organization’s office when the forces of evil swooped down on him and gunned him down. The predators had caught up with their prey and would turn him into mincemeat. What they...

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57 blood-red years

Showbiz celebrity brats like Paris Hilton and other wannabes out there have a lot to learn from this great woman. Long before she became a movie icon and had her name on the firmament of genuine stars Rosal Rosal (Florence Danon) had already begun to have a life outside of the glitzy world of showbiz. “I was in this world but not of this world,” she likes to say. It’s a biblical phrase she often quotes to stress that the movie persona she was known for was not what she was in real life. Of course, people know that by now. This year, Rosal Rosal...

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