Grey

Unfortunately, I could not be at two places at the same time.

Because the Summit on Extrajudicial Killings clashed with my class schedules, I could not honor the Chief Justice’s invitation for me to present a paper at that landmark meeting. Teaching is my religion.

Nevertheless, over the past week, I have tried to think about the problem in between all the other things I have had to do, including mourning the untimely passing of a younger brother.

I have my own reasons for thinking a little harder about the problem: during the martial law period, I was very nearly a victim of enforced disappearance myself. By a stroke of luck, my would-be kidnappers were stopped by the police. That gave me the opportunity to demand that my arrest be fully documented, fingerprinting and all.

Instead of disappearing without a trace, I was rewarded with detention incommunicado for weeks — a condition vastly more bearable than what might have been. Many years after that incident, I had the pleasure of a reunion with the agents sent to get me that night. We all regretted the unhappy circumstances that nearly cost me my life and them their souls.

In expressing my regrets to the Chief Justice for not having the opportunity to participate in this meeting of stakeholders, I also conveyed my hope that the conference would be productive.

It is easy to imagine a conference like this one degenerating into an orgy of finger-pointing and blame-pinning. Or for the discussions to be trapped in at the level of useless platitudes about how immoral extrajudicial killings and forced disappearances are.

I am happy the Chief Justice has made it clear that this will not be a forum for condemning or convicting other people. As it must be, this forum will look at measures that all sectors, not only the judiciary, may do in order to reduce the occurrence of extrajudicial killings and forced disappearances.

We all know how horrible this phenomenon is, how much pain it induces to friends and relatives of the disappeared. We all know that such incidents are patently illegal and inhuman. They are plainly wrong. No civilized community should tolerate nor endure such incidents.

A stronger system of accountabilities is clearly in order so that no one can ever imagine they could commit acts of barbarity and get away with it. Every public institution, and every political grouping, must offer a clear and achievable program for improving such systems of accountability.

Such systems of accountabilities must be offered in the context of a sincere moral consensus that differences may be settled in non-antagonistic ways. That is the tougher challenge. Talk is cheap. Sincerity, especially in a condition such as we have where blood debts have been compiled over the years, is rare commodity.

The mouthpieces of the leftwing movements are always the loudest in condemning the murders perpetrated against their comrades. But they are also most silent about the murders perpetrated by their own comrades against unarmed agents of the state.

There are assassins on both sides of the long internal war that has plagued our society. A murder is a murder is a murder. No ideology, no warped appeal to national security and public safety, no political goal can make one murder more tolerable than another.

Every murder, in whatever way it might be attempted to be justified, is wrong. It cannot be more wrong if it is committed by an agent of the state and less wrong if it is committed by cadres of a political gang.

Rebellion may never justify murderous acts. Nor may the illusory blanket of maintaining public safety (by making components of that same public unsafe) justify a dastardly act.

Without mitigating the crime committed by agents of the state suspected of extrajudicial killings, let me say something that those too conscious of keeping to the “politically correct” line might neglect mentioning: the observance of human rights may be improved only if those rights are scrupulously observed by all parties.

In an internal war, it will always be difficult to rein in basic emotions. Like exacting revenge.

During the late eighties, I lost several dear friends to assassins. We have always suspected the murders were committed by police vigilantes reacting to the senseless assassinations of ordinary cops during the most murderous of the Alex Boncayao Brigade.

We grieved the loss of comrades to vigilantes who were also grieving the loss of their own friends and colleagues. Every act of violence contributes to a merciless spiral of taking an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.

It will be tough, for instance, to plead with the Marine brigade in Basilan that they be very civil to those who treacherously ambushed and nearly wiped out a patrol last week, mutilating the bodies of brave soldiers who fell in combat. The same difficulty applies to every unit of our security force that has suffered casualties from communist death squads.

I have had conversations with soldiers whose professionalism is tested every day by the treachery of the enemy. Insurgencies produce very large grey areas, with the insurgents shifting identities all the time, transforming from “legal” activists aiding armed cadres to becoming armed cadres themselves within the space of a day. The officers I talk with speak of “lopsidedness” in the fact that they are constantly scrutinized for observance of human rights while their foes are not.

Improving the observance of human rights must be a two-way street. Or else every measure introduced to reduce abuses will be an uphill roll.