The Kidnapping
May 27, 2001
Dos Palmas Resort, Palawan
"About four or 4:30 in the morning, before the sun came up, there was a bam, bam, bam on the door... By the time he (Gracia’s husband Martin) got to the door, the door burst open and three men with M-16s came in and they took him right out... he was just gone," Gracia recalled.
"As I was leaving the room I had the presence of mind to grab our chinelas (flip-flops) for our feet, and then a young guy headed me off towards a speed-boat, and there were probably four to five hostages, tourists in the boat already with Martin."
A romantic weekend at a plush Philippine resort to celebrate their 18th wedding anniversary had just taken a nasty turn. But not in their wildest dreams did Martin and Gracia Burnham realize what the next days, weeks and months would have in store for them.
Along with Martin and Gracia, the Abu Sayyaf had managed to capture a total of 20 hostages — a good catch for this kidnap-for-ransom group. Unknown to the hostages, they were headed out to sea, only to arrive several days later on jungle-covered Basilan island, a formidable Muslim stronghold and well-known playground for these notorious rebels.
For years, the Abu Sayyaf had been terrorizing natives and tourists alike, all in its quest to form an independent Muslim state in the southern islands. The Abu Sayyaf are best known for their savage way of killing hostages if their demands for ransom are not met, such as beheading. They also brag about links to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda.
Now Martin and Gracia found themselves face to face with some of the most feared killers in all of Asia.
"They were very proud of the fact that if they ever have a Muslim society like they really were fighting for in Afghanistan, they said Muslim law is if you steal something we’ll chop your hands off... and by that time, I’d seen so much thievery, I thought, ‘How can that be a good thing? This group would have no hands.’"
Overall, Gracia says their captors treated them okay. "They treated us fairly well, this could be a much worse story than it is, we were never tortured, we were never beaten, they treated us fairly well."
The kidnappers did threaten to kill them at least once. And what happened to their fellow hostage Guillermo Sobero, the only other American, showed how true the threat really was. Abu Sabaya, the leader of the Abu Sayyaf, threatened to kill one of the "whites" within 72 hours if his demands for a new negotiator were not met.
"I quite honestly assumed that it would be the Christian missionary who lost his life, it wouldn’t be the American businessman. And we didn’t even realize what was happening, when they came and took Guillermo away that night. They just said, ‘You’re going to go talk to somebody.’ And it had been 72 hours, why wasn’t my mind thinking that? But he tossed his stuff my way, and said, ‘Take care of this until I come back.’"
Guillermo never came back. For the next 10 months, Martin and Gracia would take it day by day, gun battle by gun battle, running through the jungles by night and laying low by day as they dodged the bullets of the Philippine military.
"We knew, if you believe in luck, I don’t, but we knew, that our ‘luck’ was going to run out," Gracia said. "Martin died in our 17th gun battle, and those weren’t just little gun battles, those were bullets whizzing over our heads. And we knew that one of these days, it wasn’t going to whiz over our heads, it was going to hit us. It was hard for us. Every once in a while we would sit down and remind ourselves who the good guys were and who the bad guys were."
Although the Philippine military tried to hunt down the terrorists, the Abu Sayyaf was able to dodge them, hiding in the dense jungle.
Gracia said, "I think they were probably doing as well as they could. People would say, ‘It’s a small island, how can they not find you?’ Well, if you’re in the tall grass and the jungle trees, you know that you can’t see over the ridge. There were times when we could hear them on the next ridge and they were close to us."
"Yes, we dreamed about food, we talked about food all the time and maybe that made it worse, but it seemed to make us feel better. There were days we went without anything, I remember many occasions that we would stop for our noon meal and there was no food and they would pass around little containers of salt, and we would just put a little bit of salt in our hand and eat that."
Gracia recalled one instance when God provided a surprise meal, just for her.
"I was sitting beside the streams, and I saw this little minnow and he was kind of trapped off by some stones in this little pool, and I just reached down thinking he’ll dart away, I’ll never get him. And I picked up this fish, and I looked at Martin and I said, ‘Look what I got!’ I said, ‘Do you want some of this?’ And he said, ‘No.’ So I just stuck it in my mouth... it was good."
It was then that Gracia began to feel hopeless. "Hopeless – that’s probably a good word. I think I decided right then that God didn’t love me, because if God loved me I would be out of there."
But Martin stepped in at that point, reminding Gracia to keep fighting the good fight. "He said to me, ‘You know Gracia, it seems to me, either you believe it all or you don’t believe it at all.’ And he said, ‘Scripture tells us that God loves us, and you can’t pick and choose what scripture you’re going to believe in and follow.’ And he said, ‘Why don’t you just accept what’s true. We don’t know why we’re hear, but we do know that God loves us. Why don’t you just accept what’s true.’ And at that point, I pretty much gave in to God."
Throughout their trial, Gracia continued to rely on Martin’s faith and humor.
"Yes, he always found something to laugh at, bless his heart... I had made reservations for us at Dos Palmas, because he had just come back from a trip from the States, and he was going to have to take over for another pilot that had to go back to the States. And I thought he needed one day of rest, and it was right around our anniversary, so I, you know, I came up with this big idea so he could get over jet lag. And about two days into our captivity there on the boat he looked at me with a twinkle in his eye and he said, ‘Gracia, this was a great idea, I think I’m over my jet-lag!’ He just never stopped laughing, and if you knew Martin, he had a contagious laugh and we would laugh at anything we could find to laugh at."