Reporting Martial Law: Exposing Atrocities and Repression through the Micro-media Reportorial Facility (Last of 3 parts)

(This piece written by H. Marcos C. Mordeno was first published in the book, “Transfiguring Mindanao: A Mindanao Reader,” edited by Jose Jowel Canuday and Joselito Sescon, published by the Ateneo de Manila University Press and launched on June 22, 2022 in Davao City. See Part V on “Mediating Truths, Contested Communities, Making Peace.” Permission to share this with MindaNews readers was granted by the Ateneo University Press)

Read the first and second parts.

Impact

Due to limited copies, the newsletters may not have reached as many readers compared to mainstream periodicals. But the impact they created could not be overemphasized. For one, accounts of torture, arbitrary arrests, summary executions (popularly known as “salvaging”), and other abuses politicized and even radicalized several Church people, a sector that the Marcos regime had always wanted out of the political sphere, owing to the weight of their moral influence.

After Bandilyo sa Bukidnon of the Diocese of Malaybalay, some newsletters run by other dioceses, which used to print only Church- or faith-related articles, began publishing reports on human rights violations. One of these was Lamdag (Light) of the Archdiocese of Cagayan de Oro. It happened that both TFDP-Cagayan de Oro and Lamdag were housed in the convent of the Saint Augustine Cathedral. (Most TFDP offices across the country held offices in convents and other church buildings, having been founded by the Association of Major Religious Superiors in the Philippines, in January 1974. Hence, virtually all convents, congregations and religious institutions regularly got copies of the newsletters.)

Weeks after Lamdag published a TFPD story on the massacre of a man and four of his young nephews somewhere in western Misamis Oriental, complete with photos of the carnage, copies of a “newsletter” carrying articles against the Communist Party of the Philippines-New People’s Army were distributed outside Saint Augustine Cathedral, the seat of the Archdiocese of Cagayan de Oro. Written in English, well-edited and printed on glossy material, it was also called Lamdag, leaving no doubt what its intent was and who were behind it. Interestingly, it was also during this time that the parish priest assigned to the cathedral started citing human rights violations documented by TFDP in his homilies.

Also in Cagayan de Oro, a member of the city council who had read a fact sheet about the burning of 25 houses and the torture of a Lumad leader in Sitio Lantad, Barangay Kibanban in Balingasag, Misamis Oriental, shared the material with his colleagues. The matter was then included in the council’s agenda and the local TFDP staffers were summoned to testify. The council, dominated by members of the then opposition Partido Demokratiko ng Pilipinas-Lakas ng Bayan, passed a resolution condemning the incident and asking for an explanation from the 4th Infantry Division of the Armed Forces of the Philippines.

Moreover, newsletters tackling the human rights situation in the country reached the United States and Western European countries. Copies landed in the offices of civil rights and lawyers’ associations and individuals who eventually formed themselves into support groups for the Philippine human rights movement. Members of these groups would fly into the country to participate in fact-finding missions or undertake independent investigations to see the situation under Martial Law firsthand. In other words, stories gathered by the local documenters in the villages and printed on humble factsheets and newsletters helped unmask the real face of the dictatorship before the international community.

In due time, those stories reached the human rights bodies of the United Nations. The UN would have started an investigation into the human rights performance of the Marcos government, but this was preempted by the ascendancy of the Aquino administration following the 1986 Edsa People Power Revolt.

The military began to feel the pinch of stories about their abuses. This was illustrated when the 2nd Scout Ranger Battalion assigned in Claveria, Misamis Oriental accosted a TFDP worker who went there in late 1985 to document the effects of the food blockade. During the interrogation, the battalion commander berated his captive at length because he was working for an institution that dared publish military abuses. In addition, not a few victims were warned by soldiers not to report the violations against them to human rights groups.

Conclusion

Press freedom – and consequently, truth – became the first casualty of Martial Law. Censorship enabled President Ferdinand E. Marcos to suppress the real picture behind the vaunted “benevolence” of his “constitutional authoritarianism”. With the media muzzled and coopted, the people were left with no means to check corruption and other official abuses. This made the Filipinos realize the importance of safeguarding a free press if democracy is to flourish and survive.

Courage, however, bloomed on the meadow of fear. It started with a single placard held aloft by the shaky hands of a nervous protester before a phalanx of anti-riot police. The placard became a one-page factsheet on military abuses. From thereon, it was only a matter of time before the humble factsheet evolved into several pages of newsletters and magazines that dared to expose the brazen character of the “New Society”.

What is noteworthy during that chapter of Mindanao history was the crucial role played by ordinary people who may not even have realized how invaluable their contributions were. They ignored the risks to themselves to bring the stories to the offices of human rights groups, churches and other institutions, and ultimately, beyond the country’s borders. They could be called the first group of “citizen journalists” in the country, although the stories never carried their bylines.

By the time the newsletters had become a staple for progressive groups in Mindanao, militarization and the abuses it engendered heightened, that the island came to be called the “Bleeding Land”. More and more rural communities were forcibly displaced by military operations. Security forces were now targeting prominent activists, human rights lawyers and church people across the island. With the apparent desperation of the Martial Law regime, there were apprehensions of a looming general crackdown against individuals and organizations tagged as left-leaning. Such a situation would have meant the end of the newsletters and other self-help media initiatives, but despite the fear, their producers chose to continue publishing underground.

The dreaded general crackdown did not happen even as the political situation showed no signs of changing for the better. This could be attributed to the Marcos regime’s effort to build a veneer of “democratization” due to the fallout from the Aquino assassination and in response to growing pressure from the United States, its main backer, to institute reforms. Washington knew that
military abuses were driving more Filipinos to the fold of the communist-led insurgency, and many moderates were now rubbing elbows with the militants via what the latter termed as a “tactical alliance” or “united front”. Since resigning was never an option for him, Marcos needed to offer some concessions to prevent the situation from further deteriorating, and ensure his political survival.

But he ran out of time. The truth was about to set the nation free, thanks in no small way to the collective courage of the victims who spoke up and the documenters who reported their stories in those modest yet courageous publications.

Tomorrow: 

(“Transfiguring Mindanao: A Mindanao Reader” has 34 chapters with 44 authors mostly coming from Mindanao covering broad topics from history, social, economic, political, and cultural features of the island and its people. 

The book is divided into six parts: Part I is History, Historical Detours, Historic Memories, Part II is Divergent Religions, Shared Faiths, Consequential Ministries, Part III is Colonized Landscapes, Agricultural Transitions, Economic Disjunctions, Part IV is Disjointed Development, Uneven Progress, Disfigured Ecology, Part V is Mediating Truths, Contested Communities, Making Peace and Part VI is Exclusionary Symbols, Celebrated Values, Multilingual Future.  Edited by Jose Jowel Canuday and Joselito Sescon, this book is a landmark in studies on Mindanao. 

Get your copy: Website: bit.ly/TM-aup, Shopee: bit.ly/TM-s, Lazada: bit.ly/TM-lzd.
Watch the book launch here: bit.ly/TM-booklaunch)