The road to closure

Philippine Science High School teacher Cristina Pargas Bawagan remembers the day when she saw one of her jailers standing outside her home in Cubao, Quezon City.

It was June 1981, shortly after she was released from her “torture chamber,” where she had been beaten and sexually molested by state forces. Tina vividly remembered her tormentors, and recognized one of them, an enlisted man, lingering outside, apparently keeping her under surveillance.

She invited him into the house for ice cream, telling him it was hot outside. He declined and never returned.

Now 59, Tina has also kept in touch with one of the officers who rounded up suspected communist sympathizers in Nueva Ecija on May 27, 1981. The soldiers found her diary and brought her to their safehouse. She was blindfolded, handcuffed to a chair, beaten and sexually molested. They called her “Ka Amanda” – her pseudonym in the underground.

The torture ended only when her family traced her whereabouts. Her mother Lita, accompanied by Tina’s sister and an aunt, found her at Camp Olivas in Pampanga and entrusted her to a lieutenant who was part of the arresting team. Hearing the lieutenant’s voice, Tina decided he was not among her torturers.

When her relatives had left, the lieutenant drove her to a drugstore outside the camp and brought her hamburger. Tina remembered the kindness, and sent the lieutenant a thank-you note before she was released from the camp.

After her release, Tina had to report regularly to Camp Crame. Her husband, Jun Quimpo, was also tortured by the military and at age 24 was killed in Nueva Ecija.

Tina, who later remarried, did not forget the lieutenant. In April last year, she got in touch with him through a mutual friend. At 58, the officer had risen in rank to become a police general before retiring from the service.

They met up in Baguio City, where he brought her and two of her colleagues to the market and the Good Shepherd for shopping. He and Tina have since become text mates. After a cancer scare, he has apparently become spiritual. These days he talks about karma and reincarnation.

The story of reconciliation was amazing for Swiss Ambassador Ivo Sieber, who hosted a reception the other night at his official residence in Makati to celebrate the enactment of the compensation law for human rights victims of the Marcos regime. This sort of forgiving, if not forgetting, would be unheard of in many societies, Sieber noted.

*  *  *

Such stories aren’t rare in this country. One of Ninoy Aquino’s Army jailers in Nueva Ecija was Voltaire Gazmin, whose kindness to Cory Aquino and their relatives during their visits later made him part of her security team. Today we know Gazmin as the defense secretary of Ninoy and Cory’s only son.

Tina’s only sister has her own story of suffering and forgiveness. The sister happens to be Loretta Ann Pargas Rosales, who now chairs the Commission on Human Rights.

Etta was a 33-year-old mother of two girls, aged 4 and 6, when she was first arrested for possession of Mao Zedong’s Red Book, a month after martial law was imposed in September 1972. The first time was mainly for show. On Etta’s second arrest in 1976, this time as a political dissident, the torture started.

You lose track of the hours and days, Etta told me when I asked her how long the torture lasted. She was repeatedly electrocuted, strangled with a belt, subjected to the water cure and Russian roulette and sexually molested. Based on modern legal descriptions, she and her sister were raped, Etta told me.

When she was finally released, Etta was advised by the military not to go underground again so they could keep an eye on her. If they didn’t know where she was, anything could happen to her, she was warned. Etta heeded the advice, but her experience was so traumatic that every four years from 1976, she worried that she would be picked up and tortured again.

Today Etta can chuckle at the fact that some of her torturers told her through her blindfold that she was getting what she deserved for flunking them in her classes. Like Tina, Etta was a teacher.

What did the soldiers want? The names of her colleagues in the underground. Etta gave them the name and address of Joel Rocamora, knowing full well that he was already in the United States. She got some respite from the torture after supplying his name, but it got worse when they learned that Rocamora was gone.

Etta remembered one of her jailers at the military intelligence compound along West Avenue in Quezon City, Rodolfo Aguinaldo. He later joined military reformist forces and turned against the Marcos dictatorship in 1986.

They later became colleagues in the House of Representatives, where she told him she remembered him as one of her jailers. He was fighting a different enemy at the time, Aguinaldo explained.

When the torture ended, Etta remained in detention for some time, teaching her jailers history and political science. Unlike Tina, however, Etta drew the line upon her release. Before she left her “torture chamber,” her jailers asked if they could visit her to continue their lessons. She said no.

Etta and Tina stress that they bear no grudge against the military. This is believable, considering that their father Rafael Pargas, who died in 1959, was a Navy captain who suffered during the Bataan Death March in World War II. But Etta wants to promote respect for human rights in the military and police.

This is still a struggle in this country, as recent events indicate.

Sorting out compensation claims of human rights victims will also take time. Etta, who will forgo her compensation, is happy enough that the landmark law was finally signed, and by the only son of the most prominent victim of the Marcos regime.

“It must be great to find closure,” Ivo Sieber told the sisters. They wholeheartedly agreed.