Accents
Si Luing, si Nilo, si Jonas, atbp.
Happy Easter! Thus did the emails I got bubble with Easter greetings, and were they sent back just as bubbly and warmly as when they came. Thus did I greet the readers in last week’s column after a week’s respite from the computer. Could I write the same to May Wan and Tamara, daughters of Luisa Posa Dominado? Could I greet the same to Rosemarie and DM, wife and son of Nilo Arado? Or even to Mrs. Edita Burgos, mother of Jonas Burgos? Gush, only a kind, understanding, consoling embrace when I do meet them. And oh, let me hold back the tears.
May Wan will surely write me how they’re going to commemorate April 12, 2007, the day her mother disappeared on the face of the earth. For a bit of family history: Her father is Tomas Winston Dominado, son of Atty. Tomas Dominado, Sr., a classmate of Marcos in UP, and married to a Legislador, our relative. See the connection? Anyway, May Wan is the godchild of my daughter Randy, an internist here in the U.S. of A.
And now for a bit of flashback: April 12 was the day Luisa Posa Dominado and Nilo Arado were abducted by “unknown elements,” a convenient term for the apparently “know-able” for anyone to give his/her own meaning or reference. Luisa, Luing to friends, was the spokesperson of SELDA ((Society of Ex-Detainees for Liberation, Against Detention and for Amnesty). Nilo Arado was a national council member of Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (Peasant Movement of the Philippines). Their companion, Jose Ely “Leeboy” Garachico is the Public Information Officer of KARAPATAN-Panay and the Coordinator of ILAC (Iloilo Legal Assistance Center). KARAPATAN is the alliance of human rights organizations. Luisa and Nilo were spirited away to a kingdom that remains to this day a mystery while Leeboy was shot and left to bleed. The three came from a forum held in Antique when the car Leeboy was driving was waylaid in Oton, my relatively peaceful hometown.
I remember seeing Nilo Arado on TV as he testified in the Senate hearing of the notorious JocJoc Bolante fertilizer scam. Despite the so-called clearance that smacks of white-washing, Rotarian Bolante emerged from his political asylum quarters in the U.S. of A. and, wonder of wonders, has morphed into a congressional wannabe. Gosh, but I digressed too long. Nevertheless, take this or leave this: It is said the name of the former Agriculture Undersecretary has undergone transformation. It is now Joke-Joke Bulate! Say mo, Dolphy?
Back to the serious and the grim. Closely following the disappearance of Luing and Nilo was that of Jonas Burgos. He was forced into a waiting van while eating in a mall, April 28, 2007, in the view of dumbfounded customers. Jonas, 36 at the time of his abduction, was an Agriculture graduate who taught organic farming to farmers like him. His father Joe Burgos, a newspaper publisher, was an icon of press freedom. Nationwide demos and protests for Jonas and for the other “disappeared” failed to make them surface. Dr. Edita Burgos spent a month in the UK and the US delivering speeches, thinking that international concern might produce her son and end the brazen human rights violations being perpetrated in the home country. Her efforts up till now were to no avail.
The case of Sherlyn Cadapan and Karen Empeno, two UP students doing field work when abducted June 26, 2006, antedated that of Luing, Nilo, and Jonas. Other occurrences of enforced disappearances were perpetrated before, in-between, and after that ominous April 2007 as shown by the data I’ve jotted down during one SELDA anniversary program I attended. The administration of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has the most number of ‘disappearances’ — 184 cases; President Ramos had 87; President Estrada had 16. (As of this writing, April 7, 2010, I still have to get KARAPATAN’s latest record of GMA, and, heavens, no additions please.)
And now, a quote of Shakespearean magnitude from Jonas Burgos’ mother: “If he has been murdered, so be it, then let’s find the body.” May Wan, Tamara, Rosemarie and her son DM in the innocence of childhood, and the rest of the families of the Desaparecidos could say that, too, of their loved ones because puzzling questions continue to surround their fates: Do they still have the breath of life in them? Were they really, really murdered? Why were they murdered? WHY? How was the killing accomplished? When? Where? (To be continued)
(Email: lagoc@hargray.com)
