Red graves

By Juan Mercado / September 12, 2006

FRAMED by bamboo crosses and tagged with numbers, the 67 skulls mouldered in the dappled sunlight. The British Broadcasting Corp. TV camera focused on the young priest who sprinkled holy water at the skeletal remains. The camera then panned faces of weeping women who identified half-rotten clothes, recovered from the mass grave, as belonging to relatives.

These were not the killing fields of Choeung Ek, 14.5 kilometers from Phnom Penh. That was where most of 1.7 million Cambodians were executed by paranoid Khmer Rouge.

This grisly scene played out in a Southern Leyte jungle, BBC’s Sarah Tom reported. Forensic experts pointed to cracked skulls, broken ribs, tied hands: grisly evidence of torture and violent deaths.

"Villager Domingo Eras recognized remains of his brother, abducted by the rebels, by his clothes," Associated Press reported. A woman identified clothes worn by three cousins when they disappeared..

The Leyte graves could "hold remains of up to 300 people killed by communists in the 1980s purge of suspected spies," Lt. Col. Bartolome Bacarros said. The Armed Forces spokesman referred to pogroms, including: "Kadena de Amor" in the Quezon-Bicol zone ( 1982), "Operations Missing Link" in Southern Tagalog (1988), "Kampanyang Ahos" in Mindanao (1985-86), "Olympia" in Metro Manila (1998-99).

How many were ‘‘salvaged’’ in the paranoia over military infiltrators? CPP chair Rodolfo Salas admitted to 1,800 executions in a 2003 Inquirer interview. UP professor Walden Bello claims 700 were executed in purges that netted five agents. No one knows for sure.

In his book "To Suffer Thy Comrades: How the Revolution Decimated It’s Own," former UP student Robert Francis Garcia gives chilling eye-witness accounts. "The pen-pen, a popular folk jingle for kids, was adopted by executioners as a grotesquely playful method for choosing the next candidate for the grave, a la ennie-meenie-minoy-moe."

Weakened by the mass murderers, the CCP ultimately halted the bloodbath. Nontheless, CPP clamped on a post-1993 assassination policy. It targeted former communists who left the movement to silence others.

The first "death condemnations" were for "principal traitors." Assassinated were: Romulo Kintanar, Felimon "Popoy" Lagman and Arturo Tabara. "It is sometimes necessary to kill the chicken to scare the monkey," was Jose Maria Sison’s explanation for Kinatanar’s murder, Pierre Rousset writes in: "The Post 1992 CPP Assassination Policy."

Filipino communists have tried to squelch any discussion of the bloodbaths. "Why remember the CCP purges?" complained the party’s media liaison officer Anne Buenaventura in an full-page Inquirer opinion page article. The party ‘‘carried out comprehensive measures to rectify errors"––from expulsion of members to "self-criticism."

But like Pol Pot’s gang, executioners here have gone scot free. Some hold executive positions in button-down Makati offices. "Name all the victims and pinpoint their graves, so they can be given decent burials," say the survivors, their relatives and human rights advocates, grouped under Path (Peace Advocates for Truth, Justice and Healing).

"These individuals had names, faces and lives," PATH said. "Locating the graves and informing the families are the two most immediate tasks that that CCP-NPA should commit to... A full disclosure of what happened is called for, not just pieces of information that the (party) feels politically expedient to release at the moment."

Opening of three mass graves in Poland’s Katyn Forests revealed the murder of 21,857 reserve officers and civilians.. Exhumation of Leyte mass graves can perform a similar service, if followed up by pinpointing––and excavating––other "killing fields." Their opening may indicate how many were cut down in the "name of dictatorship of the proletariat." And truth is the only basis for closure.

AFP’s Major Felix Mangayo, meanwhile, says charges will be leveled against CPP commissars "including one alleged former leader who is now a lawmaker." Opposition Rep. Satur Ocampo has denied involvement. So has Jose Maria Sison from his Netherlands sanctuary. From the sidelines, Gabriela’s Liza Maza, AnakPawis’ Rafael Mariano, Bayan’s Teddy Casino and Crispin Beltran hold the basin for the collective hand-washing.

Their multiple fronts sneer that the army opened the Leyte graves "to bolster police claims that communist guerrillas were behind numerous recent killings of left-wing activists."

Maybe so. Let’s see if the Melo Commission can ferret out the truth of ‘‘salvaging’’ of journalists and left-wing activists. But those Leyte skeletons and desaparecidos also argue for equal scrutiny for Khmer Rouge style pogroms of the CPP. No double standards here.

"Despite years of neglect and silence, this issue is far from closed, contrary to what the CPP claims," Path officials Robert Francis Garcia, Lan Mercado and Daisy Valerio write: "The crimes of Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot continue to haunt them so many decades after... Filipinos should take this lesson to heart, and should never stop remembering. And reminding."

"Filipino communists refuse to consider the obvious. Have they... condemned themselves to the rubbish bin of history?" asked an Inquirer editorial titled: "The Cannibal Revolution."

So after over (37) "years of trying to overthrow the government, what does the New People’s Army have to show for it?"

What our Reds can show will be found in all those grisly secrets held within other sealed mass graves.

They should, therefore, be pinpointed and opened, with little loss of time––despite the predictable knee-jerk objections from JoMa, Satur, Teddy, Liza and Crispin and Co.

Ultimate safety net

By Juan Mercado / July 10, 2006

RICE seeds, stored in an earthquake-proof Philippine gene bank, will soon be shipped to an Artic high-security vault, there to be stocked alongside those of other crops, to form "an ultimate safety net" for the world’s food.

Almost half the length of a football field, the "safe" is being drilled into a mountain on the snow-bound Norwegian island of Svalbard  It’s a spin off from  the 2004 International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture.

"It’s our final safety net," Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg said at the cornerstone rites. Stored seeds can be destroyed by war, political conflict, natural calamities or research disruptions. "This has apparently happened about 40 times to date ( and Svalbard) will make it possible to replace seeds which have been lost’’, he said.

Svalbard will be, "in effect, the Fort Knox of seeds", the Washington Post noted "It’s to be the ultimate backup in the event of a global catastrophe….so humankind would not have to start again from scratch." .

Sealed off by it’s remoteness, buried in three feet of concrete, ringed by a perimeter fence, chilled by Artic permafrost, the seed bank will be completed by late 2007. It will then store seeds from all over the world, says Global Crop Diversity Trust, a UN-linked organization that campaigned to establish the seed bank.

When it’s airtight doors close, for perma-frost slumber, over three million seeds will be stockpiled — including packets from the International Rice Research Institute at Los Banos.

Seeds are at core of human life. About two million varieties of plants are used for food and forage today Kun pili an binhi, dakul an aanihon, the Bikol proverb says. "If the seed is selected, the harvest will be bountiful."

 Rice is the main staple for almost three billion people. Most of the calories that  enabled earth’s population to double ten times, over the last 10,000 years, came from three plants: maize, rice and wheat. Rice harvests pulled ahead of wheat in 1999. "Their history is that of mankind."

"IRRI looks forward to sending sub-samples of its collection to Svalbard for permanent ultra-safe conservstion", says Dr. Ruaraidh Sackville Hamilton who heads the Institute’s gene bank.

The Genetic Rice Resources Center, at Los Banos, is one of  the world’s most comprehensive banks for rice germ plasam. It’s refrigerated storerooms hold over 107,000 samples of rice collected from 110 countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America. .

IRRI worked, in the 1990s, with the Constultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR ), to plan a radically new approach to safe conservation of crop diversity, he recalled. "These ultimately resulted in the Global Crop Diversity Trust."

About 1,400 seed banks exist worldwide. These include large national collections in the US and China. Smaller ones operate at universities and research laboratories. Other CGIAR centers focus on maize, wheat and other crops, These are backed by World Bank, the Food and Agriculture Organization, and other foundations. 

IRRI is developing, with the Trust, a strategy to link all the world’s collection of rice, Dr Hamilton said. The Institute’s "model computer system allows curators of rice collections to share data with the rest of the world....so we ensure that this unique diversity is also used fairly to help the poor."

At Svalbard, seeds from Los Banos, along with samples from the world over, will be sealed in black boxes. But they go into a "bank of last resort." Seeds will be drawn from the vault only when all other sources have been obliterated or exhausted.

Svalbard "Noah’s Ark" is seen the context of how a world of nine-billlion people, by 2030, can be "adequately and equitably fed, and in environmentally sustainable ways", Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Norman Borlaug told an ADB meeting in Manila.

Borlaug developed wheat varieties that tripled yields in Mexico in the early 60s — and spread worldwide. By 1974, India wheat harvests had tripled. This launched the "Green Revolution" worldwide

A slowing down of growth rates will probably see population will peak below ten billion—"ten gigapeople"—not long after 2050. "This was unthinkable just two decades ago," notes the Economist. "Human beings may be the only creatures that have fewer babies when better fed."

Consumption however, will require world food supply to double over the next 50 years, Borlaug said. In China alone, food, feed, and fiber demand by a larger wealthier population is likely to double by mid-century. But it’s arable land base is likely to shrink by 20%.

Asia is running out of land to plow. Food must come from intensified production on already farmed land. Limited water resources is a constraint. By the year 2025, as much as two thirds of the world population is likely to live under water-stress conditions

And it is only a matter of time before East Africa’s new race of destructive stem rust erupts here affecting cereal production

Genetic modification has transformed maize, rice and soyabeans. Biotechnology and new scientific tools will be developed to help meet future food and fiber challenges.

The historical track record shows high yielding varieties of rice, wheat, maize, over the past 50 years, tripled world cereal production — with only a 10% increase in total cultivated cereal area

To beat back hunger, Borlaug called for a twin-track strategy : first, productivity-led agricultural growth component, and second, safety net programs to assist the chronically hungry. That requires political mindsets to see beyond the next elections.

Selective silences

By Juan Mercado / June 28, 2006

IN a recent TV interview, party-list congressman Teddy Casino found himself backed into a corner with a question that bothers many people: Do Filipino communists run on twin tracks of armed rebellion and above-ground legal struggle for one objective: to take over power?

 Well, yes, Mr Casino reluctantly admitted. Guerilla forays and battles in legal fora are flip sides of one movement. The New People’s Army shares the "same world view" with party-list representatives like the "Batasan 5."

Communist Party of the Philippines’ Jose Ma. Sison once said the movement resembled a warrior with sword and shield, columnist Antonio Abaya recalled. The NPA scimitar; the shield is cobbled from the National Democratic Front’s multiple fronts.

 Homegrown communists, use democratic space, given by constitutional government, to destroy that same government, he added. "This would never have been allowed in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Taiwan South Korea. Onli in da istupid Pilipins."

Taking up arms against the government is a crime. But being a communist is not. Casino and Comrades nontheless shrink from the tag. Bayan Muna’s Satur Ocampo, Gabriela’s Liza Masa or Anakpawis’ Rafael Mariano prefer antiseptic names like: "militants," "leftists," "radicals," etc.

Many in media oblige. That’s understandable. "The name of a man is a numbing blow from which he never recovers," Marshall MacLuhan wrote in his 1964 landmark study: Understanding Media.

Except for North Korea, Cuba, communism has collapsed everywhere else. Who’d relish being identified with a bankrupt creed?

Ordinary Filipinos, however, are disquieted by this twin-headed hydra. That mistrust persists despite posturing, by Batasan 5 and fronts like Kilusang Uno Mayo, as reformers of oppressive socio-economic structures, gripped by a corrupt elite.

The unease doesn’t stem from scrubbed names or even verbal outbursts. Rep. Crispin Beltran, for example, cheered the bloody massacre of Chinese students at Tiannamen Square.

But in a democracy, everyone is entitled to his wrong opinion. Even commissars can exercise the constitutionally-guaranteed right to speak freely. Of course, they’d promptly squelch this right if they wiggled into power.

Doubts also fester from what communists refuse to discuss. "The cruelest lies are often told in silence," Robert Louis Stevenson once said.

Party-list congressmen zippered their lips when, in the last elections, they were bluntly asked by the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines: "Do you support payment for ‘permits to campaign’ levied by the NPA?"

Neither will they question "revolutionary taxes" the NPA wrings at gun barrel point. Taxation is the sole function of a sovereign government. Thus, they’ll shuffle around questions on NDF claims to a "status of belligerency," i.e. heading another state.

They’ve kept mum on the post-1992 CCP policy of assassinating former communists: Romulo Kintanar, Popoy Lagman, Arturo Tabara, Ricardo Reyes, Benjie de Vera, among others.

Meeting in Porto Alegre Brazil, the World Social Forum, called for a stop to threats against ideologues like Walden Bello, Aurora Maria Nemenzo and Lidy Nacpil and others. The assassination threats were credible, it said. It was the old Mao tactic of "killing the chickens to scare the monkeys."

Neither will they discuss the bloody pogroms that executed scores of cadres in the paranoia over military deep penetration infiltrators. Were 700 executed in a purge that netted five agents, as Walden Bello claimed in a study? Or was it 2,000? A policy of gritted teeth ensures we’ll never know the truth.

And what will their program of government be if they "overthrow the bourgeois state and establish a dictatorship of the proletariat"?

Few talk. But former secretary Horacio Morales gave some hints when they tried hitchhike on Joseph Estrada’s "transition government" in street demos that fizzled.

 First, they’d scrap the 1987 Constitution––a document ratified by 76 percent of voters in a referendum. Next, this unelected group (or politburo?) would suspend elections for 1,000 days.

And after that, what? Then, the defacto dictatorship would consider whether they could afford the luxury of elections? Any doubts what the answer will be?

How would communism, Pinoy style, differ from versions in Kim El Sung’s Korea, Maoist or today’s China, let alone the disintegrated Soviet Union.

Will  it be  a one-party police state? Media would, of course, be gagged. Will the state create its own church, as in China, and insist on appointing its own bishops? Will the state control all schools, businesses, farms, etc. Will the New People’s Army substitute for the undertrained, underpaid AFP?

A flood of open letters, articles, "studies," meanwhile, come from "organizations" that claim to represent every sector: students, migrants, workers, fisherfolk, etc. These are nothing but cubby-hole operations with access to a fax, printer and computer. These shell organizations are megaphones. And you’ll know them by their silences, award-winning commentator Bobby Nalzaro points out.

Murky muteness erodes credibility. Thus, homegrown communists never mustered enough warm bodies to topple even an unpopular regime like the Arroyo administration.

Like Sisyphus, they’re forever locked into hijacking political groups, from Fernando Poe’s campaign to Erap’s bid to beat plunder charges, to wrest the power that has eluded them so far.

Nor can they can not count on widespread citizen support, until transparency replaces their policy of selective silences.