Nini Quezon-Avanceña, a feisty fighter, turns 100

Soft-spoken yet a feisty fighter for human rights, social justice and peace, Nini Quezon-Avanceña turned 100 years old yesterday.

She has touched the lives of countless people. They include me, my wife and my in-laws. Many joined the celebration of her long and beneficent life via Zoom yesterday morning, hosted by the Assumption Alumnae Association of which she was the first president.

I had the honor of meeting Nini Quezon-Avanceña for the first time in the early 1980s when I was a political detainee of the Marcos dictatorship. It was a memorable moment for me. It was the start of a long friendship, built upon her commitment to work for the freedom, rights and welfare of political detainees. The commitment later extended to the broader struggle of our people against the Marcos dictatorship – and for genuine peace, full democratic rights and against the continuing socio-economic inequities and political iniquities under successive post-dictatorship administrations.

Her warmth and humility immediately struck me, when she and former Supreme Court Justice Cecilia Muñoz-Palma came to visit us at the Bicutan Rehabilitation Center. They were leaders of the Concerned Women of the Philippines. Nini’s close friend, Maria “Maring” Feria, was also a welcome visitor in Bicutan and sustained supporter thereafter.

“Satur, we were told that you called for us,”declared Nini in what I came to know was her straightforward manner. “What can we do for you?” So I briefed them about our prison conditions and the many protest actions we had done, and asked them to support our calls for justice. Subjecting ourselves to prolonged hunger strikes, we had already obtained the release of several imprisoned women, youths and elderly, but it was becoming more and more difficult to do so.

Moreover, even after he had declared a partial lifting of martial law in 1980, supposedly enabling civilian courts to operate, Marcos continued to issue presidential decrees. One of these was PD 1836, which enabled him to issue arrest orders or “presidential commitment orders (PCO),” even as civilian courts were already supposed to be operating.

Our meeting with Nini and Justice Palma led to the formation of a Movement Against the PCO (MAPCO), in which they and the entire Concerned Women of the Philippines took an active role. The MAPCO boosted the campaign, here and abroad, to highlight the struggle of political detainees in Bicutan and other jails throughout the country. “Free All Political Detainees!” became a standard call in the marches and demonstrations that were already filling the streets at the time.

Increasingly isolated, Marcos only persisted in issuing more onerous decrees. In July 1983, he issued PD 1877. As another exception to the proper issuance of arrest warrants by civilian courts, he instituted a “preventive detention action” or PDA which gave any military commander or law enforcement agency his authorization to arrest anyone suspected of being a rebel and to detain him or her up to one year, without need for any other judicial action.

In hindsight, we can say that the PDA was the forerunner of the Anti-Terrorism Act of 2020, because today, state security agents can arrest and detain any suspected “terrorist” up to 40 days or more, by the mere authority of the Anti-Terrorism Council, whose members (mostly retired generals) were appointed by President Duterte.

Marcos’ iron fist was powerless to stop the Filipino people’s resistance. A year after the issuance of PD 1877, senator Benigno Aquino Jr. was killed by military personnel at the tarmac, upon his return to the country. Nationwide protests only continued to explode nationwide, until finally the dictatorship was ousted on Feb. 25, 1986.

In the first year of the Cory Aquino government, Nini Quezon-Avanceña was among those named to constitute the Presidential Human Rights Committee, headed by the late senator Jose “Ka Pepe” Diokno who, with senator Lorenzo M. Tanada and later senator Joker P. Arroyo, had founded the Free Legal Assistance Group (FLAG).

The PHRC reviewed and recommended the annulment of all the repressive decrees issued by Marcos, but Mrs. Aquino did not act on many of them. Thus there are some that remain in effect till now.

The abrogation of all those repressive decrees was the first informal agreement between Ka Pepe and me, as counterpart chief negotiators in the first GRP-NDFP peace talks in 1986-87. Sadly, the formal peace negotiations were aborted by the Mendiola Massacre: state forces fired their guns on the marching farmers demanding genuine agrarian reform on Feb. 21, 1987.

Nini is the only survivor of the three children of President Manuel L. Quezon, the charismatic leader of our country during the Commonwealth period. Her father fiercely asserted Philippine independence from United States colonial rule and, as president, initiated a social justice program; he distributed parts of his family’s agricultural lands to the farmers.

She endured the tragedy of sociopolitical violence when her husband Felipe Buencamino, her mother Doña Aurora and her elder sister Maria Aurora (“Baby”), were all killed in a guerrilla ambush in April 1949. They were traveling to Baler (in what was then Tayabas province) to inaugurate the Quezon Memorial Hospital when members of the Hukbong Mapagpalaya ng Bayan (formerly the Hukbalahap) staged the attack in what was later said to be the result of a mistaken decision.

Widowed so young, Nini married a second time, raising a big family. She has spent her life helping others, particularly the poor, and rightfully enjoys the love and respect of multitudes.

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