Eman

Every popular uprising soon acquires a face.

In the street protests in Iran against autocrat Ahmadinejad two years ago, one young woman was shot in the chest and killed instantly. Her name was Neda. Until the day she was shot by the thugs of the Ahmadinejad regime, she was an apolitical student. On that fateful day, she decided to join her father protesting in the streets.

The photo of her breathing her last, her blood streaming out and her father weeping by her side, was carried by the world’s media. It was a photo that summed up what the street protests were all about: a rejection of the brutal repression, the religious and nationalist zeal that was used to justify it, and the affirmation of individual freedom and dignity.

Neda’s face, her person, the circumstances of her death haunted the Ahmadinejad regime. By that single event, summing up all the brutality with which the regime in Tehran treated its one people, Ahmadinejad will never recover legitimacy in the world’s eyes.

The Tyrant of Tehran, by sheer brutality, might have bought time for his regime — but only for a while. This regime will never be loved by its people. Eventually, it will be deposed.

Over a week ago, another young woman broke into a hotel in Tripoli where foreign journalists were housed. Her name is Eman Al-Obeidy.

At the hotel lobby, a tearful Eman began recounting her harrowing experience in the hands of Gadhafi’s militia brigades. She stopped at a checkpoint, bound, beaten and raped. There were other women in that facility subjected to the same fate. Her only fault, it appears, is that she comes from the eastern Libyan city of Tobruk, now liberated by anti-Gadhafi forces.

Eman could not complete her story. Gadhafi’s agents jumped on her. A jacket was thrown over her head. She was bundled, dragged to a security vehicle and brought to prison. Foreign journalists trying to come to her aid were wrestled to the ground.

Eman could have kept her horrific fate to herself. She might have created a prison for herself, bounded by her own fear. She might have chosen to remain anonymous, her story untold.

But she chose the path of courage. She went to the journalists to denounce the evil done her — at the peril of being permanently silenced. By doing that, she tore the veil of lies by which the Gadhafi regime attempts to thrive. She spoke not just for herself but for all Libyans victimized by the rule of the ruthless.

The regime reacted by demeaning her, hoping to invalidate her message. Gadhafi’s spokesman called her a deranged whore. The slander was relentless on state media around the clock. She was in fact a lawyer engaged to be married in her hometown before all the troubles started.

Because of the global attention she attracted, the regime could not simply kill her as they have done countless others. They were forced to release her, although a gun is pointed to her face each time she steps out onto the streets. She is regularly stopped at checkpoints and still beaten up.

But her word is out. The brutality is laid bare. Dignity is what this revolution is all about.

Expert

Sometimes we have to pause and wonder whether a particular engineering problem might be better solved by a lawyer or an engineer. This is because of the propensity, in this country, to litigate instead of actually applying solutions.

Remediation work at the West Tower condominium, affected by an oil pipe leak, ran into a quagmire of legal cases, bureaucratic hedging and simplistic environmentalism. A couple of days ago, one of the hindrances to immediate remediation of the Bangkal area was overcome. The DENR lifted its cease and desist order on Bensan Industries, enabling the company to begin cleaning up the water at the West Tower basement so that it may be safely disposed of through the sewer systems.

Bensan was contracted by FPIC, owner of the pipeline that delivers fuel from the Batangas port to Pandacan, to help in the remediation effort. Until the cease and desist order was lifted, water from the condominium unit had to be trucked out around the clock at great expense to all. The untreated water was disposed elsewhere.

 Bensan Industries uses oil-and-water separation technology from the American Petroleum Institute. The available technology is enhanced by locally developed processes that enhance the purification even more. The water, after purification, approximates tap water.

I am familiar with Bensan Industries. Its owner, Engr. Benjamin Santos, is widely recognized among Filipino scientists. He used to work as chemical petroleum scientist for Texaco in the US. He returned home and invested all his money building a zero-waste, zero-emission used oil treatment facility using technology he himself invented. Over the past decade or so, I tried to help Ben in his advocacy for stricter government restrictions on the disposal of highly toxic oil wastes.

Ben Santos chairs the Filipino Inventors Society. He was awarded “Environmental Hero” by our government in 2009, the same year he was decorated by the Philippine Council of Management.

 He points out that even if the oil leak did not happen, West Tower condominium has a design flaw that allows ground water to seep through the building’s back drains and flood the basement. In addition to cleaning up the water for safe disposal, Ben Santos will install a device that cleans the air, arresting the foul odor the flooding causes.

If there is anyone who can clean up the West Tower mess, it will have to be Ben.