From war brothels to cybersex?

Philippine Daily Inquirer/OPINION/by Ma. Ceres P. Doyo

Last year Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto said the use of “comfort women” in World War II was “necessary” to keep battle-stressed soldiers in fighting form. His comments sparked outrage in Asian countries and even drew US criticism. Agence France-Presse cited a survey showing that a large majority of Japanese disagreed with the mayor’s position.

This is the 21st century, we are in the third millennium, and Hashimoto didn’t know that having sex slaves is a crime against humanity. At any time, in any place and circumstance.

A similar tempest made the news days ago when Katsuto Momii, Japan’s newly appointed head of public broadcasting station NHK, said military brothels during World War II was “common in any country at war.” And he said this in his first news conference as NHK chair. He might as well have stressed that these comfort women were not Japanese exported abroad to ease the Japanese soldiers’ aching groins but women and girls of the Asian countries Japan occupied and tried to subjugate with much cruelty—the Philippines, Korea, Indonesia, Taiwan, China, etc.

Stoking old, unhealed wounds must be the expertise of some Japanese officials conceived during the war years. Momii, 70, was a babe crawling on his belly while his elders were skewering women and babies abroad.

The Associated Press also quoted Momii as saying that: “The comfort women system is considered wrong under today’s moral values. But the military comfort women system existed as a reality [during World War II].” A necessary reality? He then lashed at South Korea for continuing to demand compensation and for criticizing Japan, “as if Japan was the only one that forcibly drafted women into the system.”

As far as I know, only Japan’s disgusting use of comfort women (aka sex slaves) as part of its military boosting strategy has been condemned openly by no less than the victims themselves. Documents indeed showed that the sex abuses were not random or spur-of-the-moment but part of a deliberate effort to fortify soldiers and put them in best fighting form—through sex with unwilling victims.

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Cardinal-elect Quevedo: A 'God's commando'

Philippine Daily Inquirer/OPINION/by Ma. Ceres P. Doyo

CARITAS CONGAUDET veritati. Love rejoices in the truth (1 Corinthians 13:6). This is the episcopal motto of Cardinal-elect Orlando B. Quevedo. I had to use a magnifying lens to find it in his coat of arms shown on the Internet. One of the quadrants in the coat of arms has a cross and a crescent and another one has a Moro vinta. Very symbolic, I thought, of where the archbishop serves.

Soon to be “elevated” to the cardinalship, Quevedo heads the archdiocese of Cotabato which covers parts of several provinces in Mindanao. I put the word “elevated” inside quotation marks after I read what Pope Francis said about cardinals. Quevedo belongs to the Oblates of Mary Immaculate. The OMI has a strong foothold inMindanao with its Notre Dame schools, media presence and priests serving in varied apostolates.

In 1997, when I had to write a feature on the slain bishop of Jolo, Benjamin de Jesus, also an Oblate, I did some research in the OMI’s library in Quezon City and went home with books on its missionary work in the Philippines starting with the coming of the first American Oblates in Mindanao. Some of the accounts of the new arrivals in the late 1930 and early 1940s were straight out of a Wild West adventure book, some hilarious, some heart-pounding.

The OMI was founded in 1826 in Aix, France, by St. Eugene de Mazenod, a count who became a priest and worked among the poor. Some 6,000 Oblates now work in difficult missions in many parts of the world. They were the first missionaries “to brave the howling winds of the North Pole to reach the encampments of neglected Indians, Metis and Eskimos.” Pope Pius XI called them “specialists in most difficult missions.” For their daring, these hardy men who wore the sash and cross earned the name “God’s commandos.”

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Questions on the buried cadavers

Philippine Daily Inquirer/OPINION/by Ma. Ceres P. Doyo

Two months after Supertyphoon “Yolanda” struck, the hundreds of remaining unburied and unidentified cadavers are being rebagged and buried in mass graves after DNA samples and other identity marks have been taken. There remain many questions and criticisms on why it took so long for the bodies to be buried, and why survivors had to live with the stench of the decaying corpses for two months.

Assurances from health officials that corpses do not pose threats to health were not that reassuring, what with intermittent rains adding to the landscape’s somber look of decay. The smell of one decaying dead rat is bad enough, what more hundreds (it used to be thousands) of dead human beings? The survivors, traumatized enough, had to live with this.

The good news is that government agencies are trying to drive the last nails into the coffins, so to speak, though there are no coffins to speak of, only body bags that cannot seal in the smell of putrefaction. The DNA sampling and recording for purposes of identifying the remains in the future have not been described in detail, leaving me and many others wondering how the task of exhumation would proceed in a way satisfactory to the dead’s next of kin. That is, for their missing family members to be finally found beneath the mound and identified with precision.

Or is this all an exercise in futility, a way to make the bereaved feel a little better, a way to meet cultural expectations? That is, that the living will eventually get reunited with their loved ones’ remains so that they can give these proper burial in a place of their own choosing. This, even in the age of cremation when many who are still living are choosing not to be buried (when they’re dead, that is) but to have their ashes scattered to the four winds or merged with the ocean. Not to be kept in urns or cubicles but to be released to the cosmos.

Question: What can survivors in search of missing kin expect in the future? Will they be able to find the remains of their loved ones who are in the mass graves (if they are in the mass graves) and be told with absolute certainty that the remains in a particular body bag are what they are looking for? Are the body bags and their identification numbers impervious to rot, and how do these correspond to the DNA samples on the list? Were photos and thumbprints taken before the bodies decomposed?

The severity of the havoc wreaked by Yolanda was beyond compare that procedures conducted with swiftness, orderliness and precision in the immediate aftermath could not be expected. But now, late in the day, could something still be expected (in the future) in the identification department?

I’ve seen too many “CSI NY” and “CSI Miami” episodes on TV that might make me think identification of corpses and criminals through scientific means is so easy. But the Yolanda superepisode was one of a kind and the dead so numerous (6,000 plus) that it would be hard to meet all the survivors’ expectations as far as finding their dead is concerned.

How indeed will the process of exhumation and identification proceed in the future? Will there be a mass exhumation? Will searching relatives have to present their own DNA samples and spend for the exhumation and identification process? How do you find one body from among thousands buried together (not one on top of another, I suppose) in a mass grave?

According to reports, more than 1,000 bodies were recently buried in a mass grave in Barangay Suhi in Tacloban City, others will be buried at Holy Cross cemetery, and some 800 more are being processed.

I salute the forensic teams of the National Bureau of Investigation and the gravediggers who have been at this for weeks. Health Secretary Enrique Ona and Undersecretary Janet Garin have gone to see the processing of the dead for themselves.

But I really want to know the science part of this. I dread the day when relatives will demand an exhumation, identification and matching process, and the government cannot deliver. How exactly will this be done? Too early to ask?

But shouldn’t families with missing kin instead be prepared to accept that their loved ones, together with thousands of others, have been buried properly and need not be raked up once more, to let the dear departed lie peacefully in hollowed grounds where the living and generations to come can honor them collectively?

Swept to the sea or buried as unknowns, the dead do not care. It is the living who need to come to terms with the suddenness and fierceness of it all, with the reality that life as they knew it will not be the same again, but that life must go on. For as the psalmist said, “Joy comes in the morning.”

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Goodbye to Sr. Flor Maria Basa of the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary (FMM) who passed away last Monday at 92. I did a front-page piece on her yesterday. I wrote a series on her in 2012, at the height of the impeachment trial of Chief Justice Renato Corona.

This nun, who had quietly lived her religious vocation for more than 60 years, came out with guns blazing, so to speak, to shoot down what she believed was not the truth. She spoke truth to power. Though never summoned to the witness stand, her statements corroborated other findings of the impeachment court that eventually found Corona guilty.

She will be laid to rest tomorrow at the FMM burial grounds in Tagaytay, in that resting place on the grassy ridge with the splendorous view of Taal lake and volcano, in that hallowed place where mist turns to dew. #

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Basa, nun who backed kin vs Corona dies at 92

Philippine Daily Inquirer/NEWS/by Ma. Ceres P. Doyo

Sister Flor Maria Basa of the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary (FMM) who came forward in 2012 to support her niece Ana Basa’s allegations against impeached Supreme Court Chief Justice Renato C. Corona died on Monday night. She was 92.

A religious for 67 years, Basa died at the FMM retirement home in Gen. Mariano Alvarez town in Cavite. Burial is at the FMM cemetery in Tagaytay City on Jan. 10 after the 9 a.m. funeral services at the retirement home.

During the 2012 impeachment trial when the media was seeking her out, Basa was already having regular medical checkups for what doctors suspected to be colon cancer. But the nun was very clear-minded, articulate and full of humor. She refused surgery and extraordinary medical intervention for her ailment.

Basa had a lengthy interview with the Inquirer, which came out in a two-part special report by Ma. Ceres P. Doyo (May 5 and 6, 2012). A short version of the story is included in Doyo’s latest book “You Can’t Interview God: Church Women and Men in the News” (Anvil, 2013).

Basa was born in Sampaloc, Manila, on Dec. 6, 1921, to Jose Maria Basa and Rosario Guidote. She was one of the four Basa siblings. An older sister, Sister Concepcion, was also a Franciscan nun. Shortly after Flor Maria’s birth, the family moved to a house on Lepanto Street (not far from the controversial Basa-Guidote property that was the subject of arguments in the impeachment trial).

The nun’s grandfather, Jose Ma. Basa Sr., was a renowned Filipino patriot who, along with national hero Jose Rizal, fought Spanish rule. Many streets have been named after him.

Basa was thrust into the limelight because of her family ties to some protagonists during the trial of Corona, who is married to her niece Cristina. Because of the pronouncements she made to uphold a party in a family problem concerning inheritance that could have a bearing on the ongoing trial, the nun became fair game for the paparazzi.

Though never summoned to the witness stand, her pronouncements corroborated other findings of the impeachment court that eventually found Corona guilty.

This nun who had quietly lived her religious vocation for more than 60 years suddenly came out to shoot down what she believed was not the truth and “spoke truth to power.”—Ma. Ceres P. Doyo

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Tabang Visayas

Philippine Daily Inquirer/OPINION/by Ma. Ceres P. Doyo

First there was Tabang Mindanaw in the past decade or so when large areas in Mindanao suffered from armed conflicts and environmental disasters. These left thousands of families in need of not just relief and rehabilitation that would bring them back to their original state but something even better and concrete to look forward to. Nongovernment organizations (NGOs) or civil society groups (CSOs) linked arms with business, church groups, international organizations and government agencies not only to deliver material aid but also to kindle hopes for peace. I think of the selfless individuals I’ve met who tread the less-traveled paths in those parts.

Among the most affected then were marginalized indigenous communities (indigenous people or IP). I have seen for myself and written about the groundbreaking, continuing and remarkable work done by CSOs for these communities. But not to underestimate the local people’s participation to uplift themselves.

Among the amazing breakthroughs are special schools that continue to graduate batches of IP students (up to tertiary level) who are now serving their own communities and even beyond. Think of a Tiduray from Mindanao now doing technology work among the Mangyans of Mindoro. Ah, the vision and out-of-the-box quiet persistence of groups and young individuals! (I am again being invited to those parts to see for myself the great distance that has been covered.)

Now, there is Tabang Visayas.

Launched in the aftermath of Supertyphoon Yolanda”  (international name: “Haiyan”) that blew to smithereens [large parts of the Visayas], and some parts of Luzon, was Tabang Visayas which, from the briefing I got, is even more daunting than Tabang Mindanaw. Words to describe the kind and extent of the devastation and loss in human lives (more than 6,000 as of now) have run out.

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Lessons in humility

Philippine Daily Inquirer/OPINION/by Ma. Ceres P. Doyo

“I have three precious things which I hold fast and prize. The first is gentleness; the second frugality; the third is humility, which keeps me from putting myself before others. Be gentle and you can be bold; be frugal and you can be liberal; avoid putting yourself before others and you can become a leader among men.”—Lao-Tzu

Much has been said about the standoff between Makati Mayor Junjun Binay’s convoy and the Dasmariñas Village security guards who refused to let the former pass through a gate which was supposed to be closed at certain hours of the night. There was another gate close by that was always open.

Use the other gate, please—that was the guards’ instruction. There was no emergency situation.

The mayor’s party (that included his armed security and his sister, the newly elected Sen. Nancy Binay) just had to have their way. The police were called in; they lifted the barrier. The poor guards were “invited” over to police headquarters. All these took so much longer than if the convoy had just turned around and went to the other gate.

What is so wrong with turning back and using the other gate? What was that exercise all about?

Some officers and residents of the posh village were not pleased that their hired security agency’s head apologized to the mayor. They hailed the guards on duty who tried to stand their ground.

It was the Inquirer that first came out with the story and the video footage for everyone to draw conclusions from. The footage has since gone viral on the Internet. And the Inquirer has since published an editorial to stress what that footage showed and meant.

From the mayor’s father, Vice President Jojo Binay, there has only been defense for him. As mayor of the city he deserved some courtesy, the father said. Unhindered passage even in a private subdivision (where foreign diplomats who hold offices there are not exempt).

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Christmas messages from the ruins

Philippine Daily Inquirer/OPINION/by Ma. Ceres P. Doyo

Sorrow is just next door. Sorrow can be the word on top of one’s mind while one contemplates the series of tragedies—earthquakes, supertyphoons, storm surges, landslides, road accidents, armed conflicts abroad—that claimed countless Filipino lives and left families in grief while the Christmas season was approaching.

“Pasko pa naman”—not “na naman”—is the oft-repeated refrain. What difference a letter makes in a phrase.

And while many of us may remain physically, materially, or financially unscarred, we cannot be emotionally untouched by the sights and sounds, the wailing and gnashing of teeth, the proximity of it all.

So easy for us to say that “hope springs”—and indeed it does in our eyes—but those who are still trapped in the depths see only darkness until and unless, little by little, they are lifted up by the loving arms of those they do not even know—those who offer time, talent and treasure and who wish no recognition or reward.

And, notwithstanding the ugly bickering, character bashing and political posturing among the ill-spirited (“Boo!” to you), the amazing thing is that nations, countless individuals and communities of people have stepped forward to embrace the Philippines.

When everything is compounded, mountains do move. The spirit of goodwill is worth more than the sum total of the material aid that has been given. And the divine forces in the universe have a way of weighing all of these energies together and ensuring that nothing goes to waste.

Just now, after writing that last sentence, I was moved to open the pages of Teilhard de Chardin’s “Hymn of the Universe.” And this is what met my eyes: “Without any doubt there is something which links material energy and spiritual energy together and makes them a continuity. In the last resort there must somehow be but one single energy active in this world. And the first idea that suggests itself to us is that the soul must be a centre of transformation at which, through all the channels of nature, corporeal energies come together in order to attain inwardness and be sublimated in beauty and in truth.”

I know an 88-year-old widow, loved by her many adopted sons and daughters, who was aching to give back to the universe. In my state, she thought, what can I do for the Supertyphoon “Yolanda” survivors? She picked up the phone, asked for relief items from her fellow senior-seniors in the neighborhood, and before she knew it her garage was full of donated goods. Now, now, she thought, what do I do with these when they can’t fit into my car? Well, a neighbor with a pickup vehicle happened by and offered to take the relief goods to a receiving center.

I have received letters from friends who have waded into the ruins of Samar and Leyte. Here are some excerpts:

From Sr. Cho Borromeo, FMM: “One heart-wrenching story is that of seven children who lost their mother while she was trying to save them one by one. That was just one of the many stories that gripped us.

“As we coursed through the various towns and barrios, scenarios of destruction and desolation loomed large: buildings and houses reduced to rubble, countless dead coconut trees lining the mountains, children running after passing vehicles begging for food and water, electric posts lying on the roads, roofless churches and houses.

“But amidst these images of darkness, we witnessed signs of light and hope. In all the churches we visited, statues of Jesus, Mama Mary, angels and saints stood tall in the midst of destruction around them. In Naval, a big stained-glass façade was shattered to pieces but not the figure of Our Lady of Guadalupe at the center. Is this not God’s way of assuring us, especially the Yolanda survivors, that He still has the last say?

“Despite lack of food, clothing and shelter … people still had time to prepare the Advent wreath, green being the symbol of hope, growth and life. Indeed, no amount of devastation can extinguish the religious dimension in the human heart—especially in the heart of Filipinos!

“What also made a strong impact on me was our teamwork. For many of us it was the first time we met the other members of the team. But the way we worked and interacted with one another gave one an impression that we knew each other from Adam! That’s the Franciscan spirit!”

From Sr. Ana Maria Raca, OSB, and the Benedictine Sisters of the Divine World Hospital in Tacloban City:

“In the midst of the immense darkness on the landscape, rays of light shone. It came from good hearts—hearts that cared—and they reached us! Relief goods, medicines, financial help and various forms of solidarity and support coming from all over the country and the whole world. Light pierced through the darkness and gave us hope and joy…

“In the confusion and chaos during the first days of the arrival and retrieval of relief goods coming to Tacloban, we received the first five boxes (the rest of them retrieved at a later time) from St. Scholastica’s College, Manila’s relief operations. These were 2 boxes of IV fluids, 2 boxes of Nips chocolates and a box of Bear Brand milk choco.

“The Nips were our supper for the night and what saved us in the succeeding days when hunger came. To you who donated the Nips, please know what it meant to us and how it became a symbol of hope. Please know that no action is small in a situation of life and death.

“For us who believe, destruction and death are not the last words, but HOPE in a loving God who works through His people like all of you.”

From me to you: A God-drenched Christmas to you all!

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aka Rolihlahla, Dalibunga, 46664, and Madiba

Philippine Daily Inquirer/OPINION/by Ma. Ceres P. Doyo

One of my favorite autobiographies is “Long Walk to Freedom” by Nelson Mandela, published in the 1990s after he came out of 27 years in prison (where he was known as 46664) and rising to become the first black president of South Africa.

Madiba, as Mandela is also fondly called, died last week at the age of 95.

“Long Walk” is an awesome sweep spanning the generation before Mandela was born, to his walk to freedom and greatness, with so much in between—the struggle against apartheid—that is well known to the world.

But it is Part 1 (of 11), “A country childhood,” that fascinated the child in me. Here lay the seed of the great tree and the freedom fighter that he would later become. Let me walk the reader through it, with little interference.

“Apart from life, a strong constitution, and an abiding connection to the Thembu royal house, the only thing my father bestowed upon me at birth was a name, Rolihlahla. In Xhosa, Rolihlahla means ‘pulling the branch of a tree,’ but its colloquial meaning more accurately would be ‘troublemaker.’

“My father, Gadla Henry Mphakanyiswa, was a chief by both blood and custom. He was confirmed as chief of Mveso by the king of the Thembu tribe, but under British rule, his selection had to be ratified by the government…

“When I was not much more than a newborn child, my father was involved in a dispute that deprived him of his citizenship at Mveso and revealed a strain in his character I believe he passed on to his son. I maintain that nurture, rather than nature, is the primary molder of personality, but my father possessed a proud rebelliousness, a stubborn sense of fairness, that I recognize in myself….

“We lived in a less grand style in Qunu, but it was in that village near Umtata that I spent the happiest years of my boyhood and whence I trace my earliest memories.”

Autobiographies of great persons make for great reading, but it is not always the earthshaking portions that shake me. It is their hidden existence before they made their way into public life that I love reading about. How did it all begin? To get biblical about it, could anything great come out of Nazareth?

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Is world ready for climate change refugees?

Philippine Daily Inquirer/OPINION/by Ma. Ceres P. Doyo

Last week Agence France Presse reported on the case of a Pacific islander who had sought refugee status in New Zealand by arguing that his homeland, the island-nation Kiribati, is known to be sinking. His case received media attention. But the judge dismissed his case as “unconvincing” and “novel.”

Ioane Teitiota, 37, whose visa had expired, pleaded through his lawyers that he should not be deported because climate change is gradually destroying his place of residence in Kiribati (pronounced Kiribas). In his ruling, High Court Judge John Priestly said Teitiota did not qualify as a refugee under international law. The judge acknowledged that Kiribati is suffering from environmental woes such as storm surges, flooding and water contamination that could be attributed to climate change, but stressed that so are millions of other people in low-lying countries.

Priestly cited the United Nations Refugee Convention stating that refugees must fear persecution if they returned home, and said Teitiota did not meet this requirement.

Petition denied. The Inquirer gave the story the margin-to-margin title “Islander fails in bid to become first climate change refugee.”

This story is relevant in view of the unprecedented magnitude, even by world standards, of the destruction wrought by Supertyphoon “Yolanda” (“Haiyan”) in parts of central Philippines, the awesome rehabilitation and reconstruction work ahead, and the human toll (more than 5,600 dead at this writing) that Yolanda left behind. Many survivors have been leaving the devastated landscape in droves to seek refuge, even if temporarily, in safer havens. Others may not want to go home again.

Which got me thinking: What do we have here, internal refugees? Not evacuees, whose flight and change of residence are more temporary in nature.

The term “internal refugees” was coined by human rights groups during the Marcos dictatorship. The military would drive out residents of entire villages in order to flush out suspected rebels. Many left their homes never to return again. I know some from the provinces who feared for their lives and resettled in Metro Manila. Some even sought political asylum abroad.

The world has seen different kinds of refugees in the last century. Refugees from political persecution, war, famine. Now, as in the first test case involving a Kiribati national, we have a climate change refugee. Is the world ready? This will be a new kind of refugee—from climate change, which is not entirely Mother Nature’s whim, but her wrathful reaction to humankind’s abuses against the planet. (Some extreme schools of thought may attribute the calamities to inexorable planetary or cosmic changes not of humankind’s making.)

According to Nature World News (NWN), Kiribati faces problems of rising sea levels and its increasing population. NWN reported that about half of the total head count, some 50,000 people, are already packed onto a small sand strip that measures six square miles.

Countries such as Kiribati and Tuvalu have been sinking over the past many years, but NWN cited a Reuters report that global warming might not be the sole cause of Kiribati’s woes. Local traditions favoring large families and Church restrictions on family planning have led to population increase, overcrowding, disease, and infant mortality. Two friends of mine, both health education experts, worked in Kiribati many years ago. They didn’t tell me about Kiribati’s sinking then.

Agence France Presse reported that the UN Human Rights Commission is concerned that Kiribati, Tuvalu, Tokelau and the Maldives could become “stateless” because of climate change. NWN said Kiribati President Anote Tong has predicted that his country will be uninhabitable in the next 30 to 60 years because of sea level rise and contamination of freshwater. Among the options are moving the entire population to manmade islands and buying land in Fiji.

The Pacific region has some of the smallest nations on Earth which are most vulnerable to climate change. An Asian Development Bank report stressed the impact of climate change on the region’s agriculture, fisheries, tourism, coral reefs and human health. Papua New Guinea, East Timor, Vanuatu, Fiji, Samoa and Solomon Islands are taking a bad hit.

Last September, the 15-nation Pacific Islands Forum signed the Majuro Declaration (named after the capital of Marshall Islands) which seeks pledges on cutting greenhouse gas emissions and adopting renewable energy.

Back to the local front. An Inquirer report (by correspondent Robert Gonzaga) said that Bataan, the site of the camp for refugees from Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia (called “boat people” then) who fled communist rule two to three decades ago, could be a major relocation area for Yolanda survivors in search of new homes. Some Bataan residents are open to the idea of Yolanda survivors either as temporary refugees or starting a new life in the province. They had welcomed Indochinese refugees in the past, they said, why not fellow Filipinos this time?

The former camp in Morong, Bataan, is now the site of the Bataan Technology Park (area: approximately 360 hectares). Bases Conversion and Development Authority president Arnel Casanova said he’s open to the idea.

Of course, there are pros and cons, so hold your horses. The refugee camp under the UN High Commissioner for Refugees had UN funding then. Bringing in Yolanda survivors will require logistics of the government kind. Jobs, skills and cultural integration are just a few issues. Will Yolanda survivors—refugees in their own country—even take the offer?

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New Bantayog heroes, martyrs honored today

Philippine Daily Inquirer/FEATURES/by Ma. Ceres P. Doyo


Inquirer file photo



Three individuals and a group of 19, mostly teenagers, are to be honored Tuesday as martyrs and heroes in ceremonies at Bantayog ng mga Bayani (Monument of Heroes) in Quezon City. Their names will be added to the list etched on the black granite Wall of Remembrance, bringing the total number to 223.

To be honored are Inocencio Tocmo Ipong (1945-1983), a church worker and former political detainee; Nicasio Manalo Morales (1955-1999), a consumer advocate and, later, a US-based antimartial law activist; Cesar Ella Hicaro (1947-1980); and a group of 19 young Filipinos collectively known as the Escalante martyrs, who were mostly in their teens when shot dead during a 1985 rally in Negros Occidental province.

All were opposed to the martial law regime of the dictator Ferdinand Marcos and considered freedom advocates. The way they lived and died varied but they all had a heroic streak that made them worthy to be included in the list of names engraved on the Wall of Remembrance. The wall stands a few meters from the 45-foot bronze monument by renowned sculptor Eduardo Castrillo. The monument depicts a defiant mother raising up a fallen son.

The monument, the commemorative wall and other structures at the Bantayog complex are dedicated to the nation’s modern-day martyrs and heroes who fought against all odds to help restore freedom, peace, justice, truth and democracy in the country.

Church worker

Born in North Cotabato, Ipong spent three college years at a seminary in Davao City and later transferred to San Carlos University in Cebu City where he graduated. In college he got involved in farmers’ struggles. Eventually, he joined the Federation of Free Farmers as an organizer.

When martial rule was declared in 1972, Ipong saw the abuses brought about by authoritarian rule. He worked as a lay assistant of the Rural Missionaries of the Philippines, an organization founded by the Association of Major Religious Superiors of the Philippines. He organized marginalized communities in order to empower them to fight exploitation.

In 1982, Ipong was abducted and illegally detained in Camp Catitipan in Davao City. He was declared missing for some time until his father, who was looking for him, heard him calling from behind the grills. Ipong had been tortured by his military captors who wanted him to admit he was the man they were looking for.

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'Waray Waray,' let's rock!

Philippine Daily Inquirer/OPINION/ by Ma. Ceres P. Doyo


Before anything else, let me share what my friend, actor-activist Joel Saracho of T’bak-Pilipinas, posted on Facebook last Sunday (during the Pacquiao-Rios boxing bout in Macau) which got lots of “likes” and “LoLs”: “I have this nagging suspicion that today, a lot of people will temporarily cease being disaster management experts. They will become boxing commentators and sports analysts.”

This caricatured the blamers, finger-pointers, flame-throwers and I-told-you-soers who added to the fallout of Supertyphoon “Yolanda” that leveled most of the Waray-speaking Eastern Visayas (that is, the provinces of Leyte and Samar) and parts of Western Visayas. Of course, the morning-after experts all sounded like they meant well, but after a while the ululations, especially from those with obvious malice intended, could get annoying.

Soon after The Great Howler left, people in devastated areas crawled out of the rubble with nary a possession, many with their entire brood missing. The stories of loss, survival and heroism—there’s an ocean of them. Now, more than two weeks later, international, local and government relief groups still have their hands full, but things are beginning to look up and people are starting to break into smiles, sing songs, and play basketball. And what a bonus that boxing idol Manny Pacquiao won with nary a cut on his face, and promising to pay the survivors a visit and share his prize money.

I last visited Samar and Leyte in 2010 to see for myself community-driven development projects. I visited Balangiga, in Eastern Samar, the historic little town that fought to the death the colonizing Americans on Sept. 28, 1901. The event that happened during the waning years of the Philippine-American war is now known as the “Balangiga encounter.”

To resist domination, Balangiga tribesmen attacked the elite Company C of the 9th US Infantry Regiment. It was a suspenseful strategy that showed the Filipinos’ boldness and daring in the face of a superior force. Forty-eight Americans perished and 28 native combatants died. (I remember watching the movie “Sunugin ang Samar” directed by Joey Gosiengfiao.) In retaliation, the Americans waged a scorched-earth campaign and turned Samar into a “howling wilderness,” earning for Gen. Jake Smith the sobriquet “Howling Jake.” Hundreds of Filipinos were killed. The Americans took with them three church bells of Balangiga. (There is an unrelenting campaign for their return.) I hope the lifelike replica of the bloody event by National Artist Napoleon Abueva in front of the Catholic Church of St. Lawrence was not ruined by Yolanda.

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Benedictine nuns amid the ruins

Philippine Daily Inquirer/OPINION/by Ma. Ceres P. Doyo

The Divine Word Hospital (DWH) in Tacloban City was the only hospital that continued to operate in the immediate aftermath of Supertyphoon “Yolanda,” which wrecked almost everything in its path in the morning of Nov. 8. Operated by the Missionary Benedictine Sisters—and funded, too, through their unrelenting efforts—the 160-bed hospital became a hub of life-saving emergency activities that challenged the survival instincts of the nuns, the hospital staff, the 159 patients and their bantay (watchers).

It was all hands on deck, a scene out of “ER,” the TV series, except that roaring wind, rain and sea were tearing away at sections of the hospital outside and inside. There was no place to hide. “Mother Nature was crying, howling so intensely,” recalled Sr. Ana Maria Raca, superior of the hospital. Window panes crumbled to pieces, air conditioners jumped out of their niches, roofs peeled away, electricity and all means of communication went dead. 

By the time the sky cleared, the almost dying were dead, and the new admissions—the badly injured or near dead—severely tested the traumatized hospital staff. And the nuns, too, some of whom could have perished had they not given in to instinct and put into practice the spirit of obedience at the 11th hour. Yes, in this day and age of headstrong nuns.

All the 16 Benedictine nuns who were in Tacloban when Yolanda hit survived. Not all of them were connected with the hospital. About half of them were from the Benedictine-run St. Scholastica’s College-Tacloban, which was about 45 minutes by motor vehicle from DWH. The school’s superior, Sr. Baptista Busmente, was in Manila, but the newly installed president, Sr. Julia Yap, was on campus before Yolanda hit. The school nuns knew of the warnings but some thought it was safe enough on campus. But Sister Julia was restless. A marine biologist who can dive and swim, she would have been the least worried.

That late afternoon on the eve of Yolanda, Sister Julia surveyed the landscape around and beyond. “I was overcome with a strange feeling. As a marine biologist, I am familiar with the behavior of the tides and of the sea,” she told me. Was it fear of impending doom? She was also well aware of the kind of ground the school buildings (about three years old) were standing on—reclaimed land near a mangrove area.

When Sisters Julia and Ana Maria spoke to each other over the phone, a decision was made: The school sisters must go to the hospital, spend the night there, and wait the typhoon out. Sr. Lourdes Obejas, who was flying in from Manila, was told to proceed to the hospital and not to the school.

Sr. Edissa Manrique wasn’t too keen on going to the hospital, but Sister Ana Maria insisted that no one was to be left behind. All the school nuns moved over to the hospital and took with them provisions for a day. No hemming and hawing. “Obedience without delay” is a monastic practice of those with religious vows.

Some footnotes here. The first Missionary Benedictine Sisters came to the Philippines from Germany in 1906. Known for their adherence to “ora et labora” (pray and work), they run about a dozen schools known for strict discipline and emphasis on social awareness, the Tacloban hospital (one more coming up in Pambujan, Samar), and ministries for the marginalized.

These sisters that I mention were the ones I spoke to last Sunday at St. Scholastica’s College-Manila where relief packages were being sorted out before transport to Leyte. These sisters flew to Manila days after Yolanda to help with relief efforts. Several truckloads have already been transported to the hospital by land and air.

The traumatic experience was still evident in the nuns’ voices, but the grace of humor somehow lightened the load. They recounted how they, along with the hospital staff, subsisted on rice porridge and boiled eggs three times a day till food supplies came, how it was not to have a bath and change of clothes for days, how they had to find the words while blessing the dead.

St. Scholastica’s Tacloban was a total wreck. The nuns’ decision to evacuate saved their lives. In the aftermath, witnesses saw looters hauling away sinks and the nuns’ carry-on suitcases. “As if they were walking out of an airport,” a sister said with a chuckle.

The Benedictines’ school in Ormoc City was not as badly hit, and expectedly, it was their farm-retreat in Alangalang that did not run out of food and water. There were peanuts and root crops in the ground and farm animals to be butchered. The 40-plus seminarians on retreat were a great help.

After the deadly storm surge, two nuns from the hospital went out to join the walking wounded in search of food for the patients. “Twice I bumped into [Interior] Secretary Mar Roxas,” a nun recounted. She broke out of the cordon and exclaimed unabashed, “Mr. Roxas! Mr. Roxas! Please give us rice for the hospital!” The rice came after their second encounter, and with President Aquino present this time.

This space is not enough for all the stories. No aid is too small or too big for the survivors of this unprecedented “world-class” disaster. Alumnae here and abroad (Canada, the United States, etc.) of Benedictine schools (St. Scholastica’s Manila and other branches) have been giving aid through the nuns, sending cash, even providing transport planes. For info on relief efforts and donations, visit http://haiyan.scholastican.org. It has a list of bank accounts under the name Prioress of the Community of Benedictine Sisters.

As the Benedictines had taught us in our youth, Ut in omnibus glorificetur Deus. That in all things God may be glorified.

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