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COVER

CONTENTS

 EDITORIAL

COVER STORY

- Never Again To Ask Question: Where are You?

NEWS Features

FROM VICTIMS TO HEALERS
PSYCHO-MORAL SUPPORT TO
THE FAMILIES OF VICTIMS OF
ENFORCED DISAPPEARANCE

The Brave
Women
Human Rights Defenders

The Ordinance Anticlimax and its Aftermath...

Expression of Pain
Wives of the Disappeared
Bare Their Hearts...

A Glow in the Dark:
The AFAD’s 11th Anniversary

Eleven years of trials and
triumphs towards a world
without desaparecidos

NEWS FEATURES

To See With The Heart
A Sharing 


The State of human Rights in the Philippines:
Wearing off the Facade 

Peru: A Milestone in the Struggle for Justice
Fugimori is sentenced to 25 years in prison
for crimes against humanity
 

A Reflection: Between the Devil
and the Deep Blue Sea


Sri Lanka: Human Rights Under Fire

Report on the Lobby for the United Nations Convention For the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance and Workshop of Women Human Rights Defenders

announcement
Helping the Families of the
Disappeared help themselves...

Solidarity Message


literary
Mothers of the Disappeared
 

 

NEWS FEATURE


To See With The Heart
A Sharing
 

BY MRS. EDITA BURGOS
 

Eleven Years of Trials and Triumphs Towards a
World Without Desaparecidos

a public forum on the phenomenon of enforced disappearances in the Philippines
Bulwagang Sala’am, University of the Philippines Asian Center
4 June 2009



Greetings!

Last week I was in the province to visit my mother. Seated by the window on the bus, waiting for it to leave for the city, I watched a young man, in his thirties, saying goodbye to his young daughter, about 7. It seemed as if he was asking his parents to take care of his daughter. Then when the driver gave the signal that the bus was about to leave, this man cupped his mother’s face with both his hands and planted a kiss on her forehead. The mother in turn caressed her son’s cheek to acknowledge the kiss. The impact of this scene which took no more than 10 seconds was so much that I could not stop the tears from streaming down my cheeks. You see, that is the way Jonas would say goodbye when he left the house and I would also touch his cheek to tell him he must take care.

This is how it is among us families of victims of enforced disappearance. One moment we are ‘normal’ doing what we are doing, then the next moment, something touches the heart and triggers an assortment of emotions. . . then we are dazed into stillness, tortured by thoughts of our missing.

It seems just like yesterday when the family was shocked by the abduction of Jonas. The hundred and one depths, lows and extremes of rollercoaster-like emotions remain fresh. The pain, the fears, the sorrow still are present, but through the days, weeks, months, years, we have been given the grace to develop new eyes. . . much like sight of the heart and not the vision of our eyes.

Today, on the 37th day of the third year of Jonas’ abduction, I try to read or hear God’s language in what has happened.

John of the Cross wrote “The language of God is the experience God writes into our lives.” Man’s sinfulness has caused enforced disappearances and all human rights violations, not God. Yet, in the events that has happened, the abduction of Jonas, our search, the people we have met, the discovery that there are hundreds like us who are victims, there must be something that God is saying to me and the family.

We, the family, as farmers have a vantage point of looking at things. It is not an accident that the rains came at the wrong time and consequently our rice harvest was very poor. It is not an accident that we harvested more than 3 tons of mangoes in our small farm but the price was very low, we practically broke even. It also, is not an accident that Jonas is not around, now that the farm has difficulties, and he would have known what to do.

Today, because our God is generous and has blessed us with different eyes, we refuse to be influenced by an unhealthy fatalism that says “ants die when they fight elephants or we cannot win against giants.” Thus we continue our search, we continue to seek justice.

Today, as we go through day to day ordinary things, missing Jonas, longing for his embrace, we
ask ourselves “ What is God saying to us in these ordinary things?”

This particular stanza in St. Teresa of Avila’s poem “In the Hands of God,” is an example of things
which to me is not mere coincidence.

“Be it Joseph chained or as Egypt’s governor,
David pained or exalted,
Jonas drowned or Jonas freed,
What do you want of me?”

Coming across this poem, gave me a taut feeling like being choked in the heart. You see the day before, a source said he heard someone say that Jonas was drowned by his captors. Of course we cannot verify if this is true or not...but to read the poem a day after, while the information was so fresh...

It has been 10 months and Supreme Court is silent... we were granted only partial of the writ of Amparo by the Court of Appeals. We were denied the writ Habeas Corpus. If we are not given these instruments, these weapons by which we hope to find Jonas, how can we proceed? And yet we cannot be paralyzed into inaction.

Clearly, to me the message is that we continue speaking against enforced disappearance. The message is not to be quiet. The message is to be a voice for the disappeared who cannot talk. It is precisely this discernment that prompted me to accept the chairmanship of the Desaparecidos, an organization of the victims and families of enforced disappearance. And strongly still, the message is to seek Him with more fidelity in prayer and silence.

So I say as Henri Nouwen says “Mourn, my people, mourn. Let your pain rise up in your heart and burst forth in songs and cries...Mourn for the absence of a soft embrace...Mourn for those whose hunger for justice has brought them to prisons...Think of it as a dark face of evil that has penetrated every human heart, every family, every community, every nation and keeps you imprisoned...Cry for freedom, for salvation, for redemption...” (New Oxford Review, June, 1992)

“Today we must mourn so that we don’t accept as normal, this hell on earth. . . . to properly cry is to see injustice, indifference, lack of love and hardness of heart...” (R. Rolheiser, Against an Infinite Horizon)

I tell you I have been ‘crying properly’ for a long time now. I mourn with all of you. It is this mourning for the disappearance of Jonas that has enlarged my heart. And now I am able to embrace all. Thanks to Jonas, I can even embrace those who are responsible for this crime against humanity, enforced disappearance. Yet even as I embrace them in forgiveness, I pray for justice to be served. I hold them, the military and their commander-in-chief accountable for my son but it will not be me who will mete out justice.

I am missing one son but so many have become my sons. I thank Jonas because his being disappeared has helped me seek God’s will for me.


Photo credits of The Voice, December 2008 (Vol.VIII, No. 2) Cover

“60th UDHR Logo” ©http://www.ohchr.org
“Earth” ©http://starrynightlights.com
“Thai human rights defenders (Somchai Neelapaijit, Charoen Wat-aksorn and
Phra Supoj Suwajo)”
©http://thailand.ahrchk.net
“Aasia Jeelani” ©http://www.ikv.nl
“Munir Said Thalib” ©http://www.indonesiamatters.com
“Aung San Suu Kyi” ©http://www.guardian.co.uk
“Edita Burgos” ©Ilang-Ilang Quijano/http://cameracurse.blogspot.com
“Mandira Sharma” ©http://www.bbc.co.uk
“Suciwati” ©http://www.duaberita.com
“Usman Hamid” ©http://www.flickr.com/photos/pradeepics
“Khurram Parvez” ©http://en.epochtimes.com
“Parvez Imroz” ©Nizzar Ahmad/http://www.ikv.nl
“Angkhana Neelapaijit” ©AFAD
“J.C. Weliamuna” ©http://srilankaencounters.com
“Sunila Abeysekera” ©Patricia Williams/http://hrw.org
 


VOICE August  2009

 

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