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Young lives interrupted.

Among those honored by Bantayog ng mga Bayani were 19-year-old students whose lives were terminated abruptly during martial law.

One dreamed of becoming a doctor. Another wanted to be a lawyer. The third, from a family of nationalists, loved poetry.

DELIA CORTEZ

Though at the time only a high school student, Delia, then already a member of Samahang Demokratiko ng Kabataan (SDK), led schoolmates and friends in protesting tuition increases, higher oil prices and the brutalities of the Marcos regime.

People remembered her as a petite, good-looking girl with a pleasant voice and fine manners. A consistent honor student, Delia was also a leader in various student organizations and an officer in her army training class.

She was heavily influenced by her two activist brothers. Her father was a farmer while her mother was a fish stall owner/vendor.

Although she once dreamed of becoming a doctor after graduating from high school, Delia did not go to college. When martial law was declared in 1972, Delia kept on meeting in secret with women and mothers, forming a women’s organizing group in Samal, Bataan province, and promoting women’s rights.

Hiding in the forest

By December 1974, Delia and six others were already targets of an intensive military hunt. This prompted Delia to hide in the forest, after which she joined an armed propaganda unit.

In the forest, she was admired for her sincerity and perseverance. There, Delia used only palay sacks for blankets at night, had her bare feet punctured with thorns, and learned to eat sweet potatoes with bagoong to survive. Her backpack, which she had with her at all times, was heavy with reading and writing materials.

By 1975, Delia was already practicing acupuncture healing in communities in San Luis, Pampanga province, where she also counseled women with family and marital problems.

In 1976, she returned to Samal and continued organizing villagers. She died in January 1977 after she was shot in the chest in Sungkit, Abucay, Bataan province. She was 19.

LORENZO C. LANSANG

Lorenzo Bonifacio “Nik” Lansang was a student activist who dropped out of Philippine Science High School (PSHS) during the martial law years. He was caught and killed by military forces in Southern Tagalog in 1976. His name is etched on the Bantayog ng mga Bayani monument.

Named after the late Sen. Lorenzo Tañada and Andres Bonifacio, Nik’s nickname was short for “Sputnik,” the satellite that was launched on Oct. 4, 1957, a few days before he was born on Oct. 11.

Nik came from an illustrious family of writers and nationalists. His father, the late Jose A. Lansang, was a former dean of Lyceum of the Philippines’ School of Journalism and a former managing editor of the Philippine Herald before martial law was declared in 1972.

Nik’s mother, Flora Celi, was a stalwart of the UP College of Social Welfare and Community Development and the first recipient of the Gawad Tandang Sora Lifetime Achievement Award.

His uncle Teodosio, detained after the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, was one of those involved in filing petitions against the writ suspension.

Poet, community organizer

The youngest of six children, Nik was considered a genius by his family. He started reading at age 3, was good in memorization and was said to discuss authoritatively events of World War I and II. He was also a poet and an essayist.

As a sixth grader, he had read and become engrossed with Amado Guerrero’s “Philippine Society and Revolution,” and other books about sociopolitical theories.

He finished grade school with the best academic record in the history of UP Elementary School, and graduated “with highest honors,” the only time the school had given such an award.

Nik’s political involvement deepened when he entered PSHS in 1969, joining SDK.

When Marcos suspended the writ of habeas corpus in 1971, he went even more deeply into organizing fellow high school students toward a broad antifascist front. He left school by his second year, lived with a poor family in Tondo, Manila, and became a full-time youth and community organizer.

At 16, Nik joined the underground movement. For about three years, he lived in Mauban, Quezon province, until he was killed during a military raid on Feb. 18, 1976, in Barangay (village) Cassiay. He was 19 years old.

Three of his comrades, including one pregnant woman, were also killed in the raid by Constabulary forces of the martial law regime.

DENNIS DEVERATURDA

Dennis was a student at UP Diliman when he and two friends were accosted by soldiers in a house in Botolan, Zambales province, in February 1972. At the time, he had been working with Zambales farmers, discussing issues and helping them in planting and harvesting.

Dennis, who wanted to be a lawyer, entered UP in 1968. He joined the UP Nationalist Corps and SDK.

As a full-blown activist, Dennis was scolded by his parents for skipping class. However, he said he was already committed to working toward reforms.

Not doing so was like “covering one’s eyes with textbooks in order to blind oneself to injustice,” he said.

Liliosa Hilao, who died at the age of 23, was the first reported case of a student activist who died in detention during martial law.

Her asthma may have prevented Lilli—as friends called her—from joining rallies but she found other ways to express her conviction.

A consistent honor student in elementary and high school, she studied communication arts at Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila (PLM), where she became an editor at PLM’s school paper, “Hasik.”

An active student despite being sickly, Lilli was a leader, the student president of the communication arts department and a representative to PLM’s student central government.

A secretary of the Women’s Club of Pamantasan, Lilli organized the Communication Arts Club in PLM. She was also a member of the College Editors Guild of the Philippines.

Death came for Lilli in April 1973 when she was abducted by drunken soldiers looking for her brother. Troopers from the Constabulary Anti-Narcotics Unit (Canu) raided the family’s house and Lilli demanded a search warrant. In response, the soldiers slapped her.

She was later handcuffed and taken in for questioning. When a brother-in-law came to see her at the camp, her face was swollen. She said she was tortured.

The following day, Lilli was dead.

According to an official Canu report, Lilli committed suicide by drinking muriatic acid. But postmortem findings showed she was tortured.

Her face was severely swollen. Her lips bore cigarette burns. She had 11 injection marks in her arms and deep handcuff marks on her wrists. Her torso was badly bruised with finger marks and gun-barrel marks. It was also possible she was sexually abused.

Lilli died before she could graduate. Because she was a consistent scholar, a vacant seat was reserved for her during the ceremonies. She was given posthumous cum laude honors.

Another young activist, Jan Quimpo, was at the Hilao residence when soldiers from Canu abducted him, along with Lilli and two other Philippine Science High School (PSHS) students.

Jan, along with his brother Ishmael “Jun” Quimpo, was exposed to student demonstrations that marked the turbulent days of the early 1970s after their family moved near Manila’s university belt.

Jan, the first activist of the family, was described as a mild-mannered boy with an occasional rebellious streak. He was 13 when he was awarded a scholarship at PSHS.

After being exposed to rundown facilities, late monthly stipends and substandard living conditions in what was supposed to be a highly regarded institution, he joined his fellow scholars in protesting their poor conditions.

Alliances formed

When the student protests in Metro Manila against the abuses of the Marcos administration escalated in 1970, several PSHS students, including Jan, joined the rallies. They forged alliances with college activists from the University of the Philippines (UP), particularly Kabataang Makabayan (KM).

Jan’s ambition changed to being a “kadre,” or someone dedicated to serving the masses in a revolutionary way. He started spending time with squatter families, eking out a living mostly by quarrying adobe blocks.

In 1971, an increase in gas prices triggered widespread demonstrations by students and transport workers. In UP Diliman, a student was shot dead at a student barricade.

(FIRST MARTYR Liliosa Hilao was the first student leader to die while in detention during the martial law regime of Ferdinand Marcos. Aged 23, Hilao was allegedly tortured after she was abducted by Constabulary troopers in 1973. PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE LOPEZ MEMORIAL MUSEUM COLLECTION)

Students responded by blockading the university gates from police and soldiers, triggering the putting up of what was called the Diliman Commune. Jan, a high school senior at PSHS at that time, took part in that event.

Recruitment work

Within PSHS, students held daily protests and walked out of their classes. The faculty could not find enough students to fill the classrooms. Eventually, school officials simply allowed the two most senior batches to graduate. Jan was among them.

While Jan passed the entrance exams for college at UP Diliman, he went to school not to attend classes but to meet fellow activists and recruit others. Soon, he dropped out and worked full-time as an activist.

Packing his bags, he left home and lived at the KM headquarters.

On April 4, 1973, Jan was at the house of schoolmate Marie Hilao when a group of antinarcotics troopers came demanding to see Marie’s brother, who was also an activist. Failing to find their target, they took Jan, two other PSHS students and two of Marie’s sisters.

All were subjected to physical and psychological torture. Marie’s sister Lilli died as a result.

After Lilli’s death, the torture sessions ceased. Jan was moved to a detention cell and, three months later, was released.

Never seen again

In October 1977, Constabulary troopers raided the Quimpo house looking for Jan’s brother Jun, who was out at the time. The troopers left without arresting anyone.

Two weeks later, Jan left home, saying he was coming back for dinner. He never returned. All attempts by the family to find him failed.

(YOUTH activist Jun Quimpo is shown in this photo which appeared in the San Beda College high school yearbook of 1974. He was shot in the back in 1981 by a former comrade who had surrendered to the authorities.)

They received reports that Jan was seen in several public places, curiously turning away if a friend tried to approach him. The conclusion they made was that he had been arrested and was likely being used to trace other activists.

But these reports stopped coming in not long after. Jan was never seen again. He was 23.

Jan’s brother Jun is remembered by friends and family as a talented college dropout who chose to work for the poor and devote his life to the cause of the downtrodden.

Only 13 when the First Quarter Storm erupted, Jun was caught in the spirit of his time. He wanted to participate, and felt he was spoiled by his easy life.

In 1971, 14-year-old Jun joined the KM chapter in San Beda and participated in rallies.

First exposure

When martial law was declared, Jun was enrolled at UP Diliman. He joined the youth committee of the Consultative Committee on Student Affairs—an alternative to the Marcos-banned student councils.

But Jun was more interested in community work. His first community exposure was at Constitution Hills in Quezon City, then a relocation area for squatters. It is now the site of the House of Representatives.

He also became a member of Alyansa ng Maralita sa Tatalon, a big slum community in Quezon City, where he continued his organizing work, engaging residents in political discussions and urging them to step out of their idleness, hopelessness, and beer-drinking sprees, and take responsibility for their future.

It was during this time that Jun began writing songs, through which he expressed his views and dreams.

At first, he would take existing protest songs and change their lyrics, like those for the Sanggunian, a song composed in 1975 which advocated the restoration of the student councils under martial law.

With a guitar, he would sing for hours, inspiring people and making them feel strong.

After Jun was arrested and detained for 10 days in 1976 for participating in a rally of 5,000 informal settlers in front of Manila Cathedral, he decided to leave the city, give up college and join the antimartial law underground movement in the rural areas, where he worked for the next five years.

In December 1981, in Kalasitan, Muñoz, Nueva Ecija province, Jun was having a meal when someone shot him from the back several times.

A certain Juan Simon, Jun’s former comrade who had surrendered to the Constabulary, admitted responsibility for the slaying. Jun was 24 years old.

The dark days of martial law are past but the ghost of suppression of the truth lives on among cyberhackers who attempt to cast a veil of forgetfulness over the blood of martyrs when they recently hacked the website of Bantayog ng mga Bayani.

Bantayog, a memorial honoring individuals who defied the repressive Marcos regime, has recognized 253 heroes, about half of them young people between 14 and 30 years of age, including 69 students.

Of the 136 young heroes, one died of “natural causes”—Abraham Sarmiento Jr., who died months after being released from solitary confinement in Camp Crame, during which he was deprived of medical attention.

The rest were killed, massacred and tortured. At least 20 simply disappeared.

Data on computers can be stolen or lost, but some truths are so precious they must be safeguarded in the hearts and minds.

To forget is to live in a darker world.

The least that can be done for those who sacrificed so much is to keep them alive in our memories. As Bantayog puts it: “In honoring our martyrs, we proclaim our determination to be free forever.”

As the guardians of Bantayog rebuild their website to keep alive the stories of these freedom fighters, Inquirer Research also traces the sacrifice of the young heroes who fought a dictator and laid down their lives so future generations can be free.

A martyr at 14

Fourteen-year-old Rovena Franco is the youngest name on Bantayog’s list. She was the youngest fatality in the Escalante massacre, during which 19 other people age 30 and younger died while staging a protest on Sept. 20, 1985, to commemorate the 13th anniversary of martial law in New Escalante, Negros Occidental.

Rovena had been working at a sugar hacienda since she was 12, stopping her schooling upon reaching Grade 5. Her parents, Bernaldo and Tessi Franco, were also hacienda workers. Rovena was the second offspring in a brood of five.

Rovena, a helper in the home of the owners of Hacienda Rick, was with friends and family during the protest demonstration. She was among those wounded when shooting erupted.

Taken to Foundation Hospital, she bled to death.

Volcano explodes

Rovena’s mother said the hospital doctors were prevented by the military from attending to Rovena.

The province of Negros Occidental, well known as a sugar producer, had been called a “social volcano” waiting to explode as the sugar industry crisis of the 1970s left many farm workers without livelihood.

As the economic gap between the rich and the poor widened, Negros became ripe for a social explosion.

The Escalante massacre, remembered by the town as “Bloody Thursday,” happened during a nationwide “welga ng bayan” (general strike). The three-day strike started on Sept. 19, when thousands of protesters held a vigil in front of the Escalante town hall.

The following day, the protesters filled the streets, surrounded by armed soldiers, policemen and paramilitary forces deployed to disperse the crowd.

Gunfire at noon

Shooting started around noon. First, water cannons were fired; then, tear gas followed. Chants of “Bigas, hindi tear gas!” (Rice, not tear gas!) heightened the tension.

Gunfire erupted at past noon. Many farm workers were instantly killed.

Other victims of the massacre who were also in their teens included Norberto Locanilao, 16; Maria Luz Mondejar, 16; Michael Dayanan, 17; Angelina Lape, 17; Ronilo Santa Ana, 17; William Alegre, 18; Alex Labatos, 18; Claro Monares, 18; Manuel Tan, 18; and Cesar Tejones, 18.

All of them worked in the hacienda, like Rovena.

The other victims were in their 20s, like Nenita Orot (20), Juvelyn Jaravello (21), Rogelio Megallen Jr. (21), Rodolfo Montealto (21), Rodolfo Mahinay (23) and Edgardo Salili (23). They were also hacienda workers, except Juvelyn, who was a community organizer.

First shot

Juvelyn was leading the chanting when the massacre began. She was killed by the first shot that rang out during the protest.

She was the first Escalante martyr recognized by Bantayog in 1992. She and the rest of the Escalante martyrs were also honored as heroes by Bantayog in December 2013.

The town of Escalente has not forgotten the massacre and continues to honor its young martyrs with annual activities. A monument in their memory stands on the same spot where their blood was spilled for democracy.

Wall of Remembrance

The Bantayog ng mga Bayani (Monument of Heroes), located in Quezon City, features a black granite Wall of Remembrance, where the names of those who fought against the Marcos regime are etched.

The wall stands a few meters from a 13.7-meter (45-foot) bronze monument by renowned sculptor Eduardo Castrillo. The monument depicts a defiant mother raising up a fallen son.

The monument, the commemorative wall and other structures at the Bantayog complex are dedicated to the nation’s modern-day martyrs who fought against all odds to help restore freedom, justice, truth and democracy in the country.

The Bantayog complex now includes an auditorium, a library, archives and a museum. Bantayog’s 1.5-hectare property was donated by the administration of Corazon Aquino, through Landbank, the year after the Marcos dictatorship was toppled and Aquino took power in 1986.

MANILA – For farmers, allowing 100 percent foreign ownership of land and extending the government’s agrarian reform program spell doom.

The House of Representatives passed resolution of both Houses No. 1 or the Charter change bill on second reading last week. The resolution seeks to remove the protectionist economic provisions of the Constitution to give foreigners 100-percent ownership of land, utilities, media, and other resources. Meanwhile, House Bill 4296, a bill seeking to extend the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) for another two years is likely to be approved by the House plenary before the June 11 adjournment.

The Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) said that the lifting of the 60-40 limit on land ownership via Charter change would pave the way for the 100 percent ownership of lands by foreigners while an extended CARP will guarantee the protection of foreign interests in agriculture.

Rafael Mariano, KMP chairperson, said, “Where shall Aquino’s Cha-cha get the lands to be put up for sale to foreigners?”

The group said it is expecting “an increase in land reform reversals, exemptions, and land re-concentration under Aquino’s Cha-cha.”

“Aquino’s twin anti-peasant legislations, the Cha-cha and CARP extension bills, are bound to worsen land-grabbing and forced eviction of farmers in the countryside,” Mariano said.

Based on monitoring by independent think-tank Ibon Foundation, several foreign corporations from 14 countries have agribusiness interests in the Philippines, mostly for food and biofuel production. A number of these corporations have entered into lease or concession agreements covering thousands of hectares of land in different parts of the country.

In a press conference, June 2, Mariano said lease agreements such as by American corporations Dole and Del Monte covering 200,000 hectares of land would be converted into 100-percent ownership once Charter change is approved.

Mariano said “CARP served as a legal cover to local and foreign land-grabbing with so-called leaseback and agri-business venture arrangements.”

Other foreign agribusiness corporations are already eyeing at investments in the Philippines.

According to a report by Wall Street Journal posted by farmlandgrab.org, the World Bank and the Japan International Cooperation Agency are preparing a $250-million loan package to support foreign investment in agriculture in Mindanao alone.

The same report quoted John Perrine, chairman of banana exporter Unifrutti Group, saying foreign companies waiting for the loan package have made commitments to invest a total of $366 million in about 18,700 hectares of land.

Among the corporations are South Korea’s Jinwon and Chalmers, which plans a $61 million, 2,000-hectare banana plantation; U.S.-based Volcafe, a subsidiary of ED&F Man, which proposes to build a $52 million, 4,000-hectare coffee plantation, and Kennemer Foods Int., a U.S.-based supplier to chocolate-maker Mars, which is looking at a cocoa project. Two Japanese companies also plan to develop 4,000 hectares of bananas and 2,700 hectares of pineapples, according to Perrine.

Meanwhile, a report by Davao Today states that the Philippine Palm Oil Development Council has proposed a road map of developing 300,000 hectares for oil palm in the next ten years with Mindanao as a main investment area.

Joseph Canlas, chairperson of the Alyansa ng Magbubukid sa Gitnang Luson (AMGL), said the Apeco project covering over 12,000 hectares of land in Aurora province and the Clark Green City project covering over 9,000 hectares in Tarlac would lure in foreign investors.

Canlas said both projects have already displaced farmers and indigenous peoples.

TANDAG, Surigao del Sur – She was steady. She was subtle, holding her bag on her lap while waiting for the camera to roll. It was her first time to talk to a media crew with filming gears. It was her first time to talk about what really happened on the 1st of September to people she even doesn’t know. It was her first time to talk about Lumad culture and beliefs without her husband. She is Jocelyn Campos.

She is the widow of Dionel Campos, one of the three Lumad who were allegedly killed by paramilitary groups in Diatagon Village in Lianga, Surigao del Sur. She was not in the village when it happened. She was working on something that day. “Nadatnan ko na lang na nakahandusay ang asawa ko, butas na ang ulo at umaagos na ang dugo niya sa lupa,” (When I arrived, my husband was already lifeless, with a hole in his head and blood flowing in the dirt.) she said.

“Gusto nilang patayin ang mga Lumad, uubusin nila ang mga lider para matakot ang lahat. Wala naman kaming ibang gusto kundi alagaan ang lupang ninuno. Bakit kailangang gawin nila iyon sa asawa ko?” (They want to kill all Lumad; they intend to execute all our leaders to frighten everybody. All we want is to take care of our ancestral land. Why did they do this to my husband?)

According to Jocelyn, her husband performed his duties as one of the leaders of their village. One of their beliefs as Lumad is to protect the environment as the primary source of their food and livelihood. “Ang buhay namin nasa bundok, doon kami magtatanim para meron kaming makakain at ikakabuhay. Ilang beses na kaming nag-ii bakwit dahil lagi kaming nahaharas. Dahil gusto nilang umalis kami sa lugar namin.” (Our lives are in the mountains; we plant crops for our food. We had to evacuate several times already because of harassments. They want us to leave our community.), she said.

Pursuit of a better life

“We maybe primitive but we are not backward,” Jocelyn said in Visayan language. She was talking about how the Lumad dedicate their lives to protect ‘Lupang Ninuno’ (ancestral land). She admitted that the root of this tragedy was because her husband chose to fight for their clan’s interest, for their ancestral land. She told this reporter that a true Lumad is a protector of nature, vanguard of the mountains and army of the environment.

“We know that businessmen and capitalists have a huge interest in our lands. They want to pursue mining and logging but we, the Lumad don’t want mining operations in our areas. We know the bad things that it will bring. Andap Valley is rich, they want us to vacant the complex and make way for the entry of large scale mining,” said Jocelyn in Visaya.

Andap Valley is a complex covering mountains areas of Marihatag, San Miguel, San Agustin, Tago, Cagwait and Lianga in Surigao del Sur. Jocelyn said they witnessed how mining destroyed Claver in Surigao del Norte.

She believed that the capitalists and mining companies are using the government to suppress them. Utilizing the AFP and its paramilitary groups as private armies, she said these capitalists and the Philippine government are conniving to kill the people.

“The government is not taking action to give justice to the victims of the killings. There is no government… there is no justice. We are looking for the real government, for real justice. It is painful for me,” she said.

“I have been asking for so long: Why do poor people remain poor and why do rich people become even richer? Is it because they have money and we have nothing? We are always caught in the cross fire. Even in education, we are discriminated against. The Lumad community strived hard to put up a school, but what did they do? They are accusing us of supporting the NPA, they are accusing us of using the school as training ground for communists,” Jocelyn added.

Children in the cross fire

(Manobo kids who fled with their parents to escape the conflict in LIanga town in Surigao del Sur have to endure the harsh environment of the evacuation center. (Photo by Mark Z. Saludes / Bulatlat.com)

Jocelyn said her husband dreamed of a better future for their kids and the rest of the Lumad children in their community. Dionel tried hard to fulfill that dream and when the time came that a school was built for their children, he knew it would change their lives.

“All we want is for our children to know how to read, write and have a better life ahead of them. The Lumad took a stand to protect the environment and give our children education but they don’t want us to do that. The government and the capitalists want us to remain uneducated, primitive and weak,” Jocelyn said.

The Alternative Learning Center for Agricultural and Livelihood Development (ALCADEV) has no choice but to transfer and resume its classes at the Surigao Sports Complex in Tandag, Surigao del Sur, which serves as the evacuation center for more than 3,000 Lumad who fled their villages.

“Whenever we vacate our village and live in evacuation centers like this the most affected are the kids and their education. It was a relief when ALCADEV decided to continue classes,” Jocelyn added.

Eufemia Cullamat, 55 years old and niece of the slain Datu Bello Sinzo said evacuations are common for them. There were large groups of Manobos who vacated their villages in 2005 and 2009 because of harassments and a killing incident.

“We are not used to this and we don’t want our children to grow with fear. We want to go back to our communities but it will only happen if the government will disarm its paramilitary groups,” Cullamat said in her native tongue.

We are not NPAs

Sitting on a pile of firewood, Jocelyn and her two kids patiently wait for their turn during the distribution of food from different food aid providers. Suppressing a teary eye, Jocelyn told this reporter that it hurts so much every time she hears people especially in the government and the military tagging them as Reds.

“We are not NPAs, we have no firearms. We just want a normal and peaceful life. Lumad don’t want conflicts nor taking up arms. My husband died serving his people in a peaceful way. If we are communists or supporters of NPA, we will not be here. We will be in the mountains or in their doorsteps,” said Jocelyn.

More than ten years after the war on drugs wreaked havoc on many Lahu ethnic minority families in the hilly northern Thai-Myanmar border, arbitrary abuses and discrimination from Thai state authorities continue as they struggle to come to terms with their traumatic past.

It was almost noon and the sun shone mercilessly bright above a small single-room shack, roofed with bamboo thatch. Emerging from its creaking door, Na-ue Jalo, a 68-year-old Lahu widower, smiled faintly and gestured for us to enter her modest home. Living in a run-down bamboo house with a nephew with physical challenges and a cat, she told us that she should fix the house before the approaching monsoon rains. At her age, however, fixing an old wooden house inherited from her husband, Jawa, could be too much of a task for her. Not seeing even a glimpse of her husband’s shadow for more than decade, Na-ue said “I still have hope that he might one day return” while casting her eyes downwards, staring at a beam of light through a crack in the bamboo floor.

Like Na-ue, many other families of Lahu, an ethnic minority in northern Thailand, are still tormented by the unknown fate of their loved ones who disappeared during the height of the ‘war on drugs’ initiated under Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra’s administration in 2003. According to Human Rights Watch, between February and April 2003, the controversial PM’s measure to crack down on the narcotics trade cost almost 3,000 lives, nearly half of which were not related to drug trafficking. As they struggle to overcome their losses, arbitrary arrests, evictions, and other forms of unfair treatment by the Thai state authorities continue as if salt is being rubbed into their open wounds.

(Na-ue Jalo, a 68 years-old Lahu widower, whose husband, Jawa, disappeared after he was arrested by the border rangers in the midst of the war on drugs)

Wounds that don’t heal

Living along the Thai-Myanmar border districts of Mae Ai, Fang, Chai Prakan, and Chiang Dao of Chiang Mai and Mae Sai District of Chiang Rai, one of the most active drug trafficking routes from Wa State in Myanmar, many Lahu families bore the brunt of the war on drugs.

Although about 90 per cent of about 120,000-150,000 Lahu ethnic have Thai citizenship and more than half can speak Thai, they are still viewed by the Thai authorities as foreigners. Coupled with unfair stereotypes that the Lahu and many hill minorities are opium farmers, forest encroachers, and narcotics traffickers, they suffered torture, summary executions, and enforced disappearances during the anti-drugs war. Sila Jahae, the President of the Lahu Association who has been active in fighting for justice for the Lahu and other hill minorities, was one of those who suffered such a fate.

(Sila Jahae, the President of the Lahu Association who has been active in fighting for justice for the Lahu and other hill minorities. He himself suffered from torture and arbitrary detention in the hands of state authorities in 2003)

Sila was detained in a Ranger camp in Fang District in Chiang Mai twice in 2003. He reported that the Rangers put him and other Lahu tribesmen in holes 2-3 metres wide and four metres deep. At the detention facility, they were repeatedly brought up from the holes for interrogation and beaten, threatened with execution, or electrocuted. Sila’s father is also one of the victims of the war on drugs. Although he himself could not recount the ordeal because of his neurological complications, Sila told us that his father was taken away from a lychee farm and put into the hole under false drug charges for two months.

“We urinated and excreted in the detention hole.” Sila recounted his trauma. “Sometimes the officers would kick and use their rifles to hit 8-10 detainees who were loaded into each tiny hole. There were three holes all together.”

The rangers told us “Thaksin (the former PM) has allowed us to arrest you people dead or alive.” said Sila. He added that he does not know if Thaksin really gave the officers a blank cheque to arbitrarily prosecute and kill Lahu people through drug allegations.

(The holes used to detain Lahu people and other who were accused of drug trafficking during the narcotic war, which were already buried)

In addition to arbitrary arrest and detention, the Lahu Association President mentioned that when the authorities came to arrest Lahu people, they tended to search houses and confiscate Lahu households’ valuables without returning them. Since many Lahu families, especially those who cannot read or write Thai, usually keep cash, gold, and other possessions in their homes, some lost their life savings and even vehicles.

Jadae Kae-ka, 47, another Lahu who was put into a hole for five days during the war on drugs in 2003 and remained in custody on drug accusations for another three months, told us that the Rangers searched his house and took 60,000 baht in cash. “The officers would mark well-to-do houses and come to search them,” said Sila. “Some Lahu people also made false drug accusations against each other. In 2006, 30-40 people fled to Myanmar.”    

(Jadae Kae-ka, 47, another Lahu victim of the war on drugs)

For other Lahu, the cuts of the war on drugs go much deeper. According to Sila, more than 20 Lahu have suffered enforced disappearance at the hands of the Army Border Rangers and the Thai police during the purge on drug trafficking networks between 2003 and 2006.

The Ja-ue family of Nong Pai village in Fang is one such family. In February 2005, during the New Year celebration of the Lahu, the family lost five members forever. Naga, the eldest and the mother of four of the family, told us that Jaka, her son, and Yalo and Nasri, a son and daughter-in-law, disappeared without their bodies ever being found, while Pichit, her husband, and Jakaa, the eldest son, were summarily executed. The bodies of her husband and eldest son were found the next day after the five were arrested on drug allegations. The family added that they were shot in the head with bruises and other injuries all over their bodies. The media at that time reported that Pichit and Jakaa were summarily killed by the authorities for trafficking drugs, but the family maintained that they were not involved in the narcotics trade.

As for the other three, however, no one knows what happened to them after they were arrested. “I still believe that my children are alive,” said Naga. Napla, the sister of Jaka and Jakaa, told us “Deep down, we still have hope that they might still be alive.” She added “These days, when the authorities come into the area, we’d be afraid”. Nothing concrete has been done to investigate the deaths and enforced disappearances of the Ja-ue family.

(Naga Ja-ue (left) holds a picture of Pichit, her late husband, while her daughter, Namai Ja-ue (right), holds a picture of Jakaa, her brother, both of whom were summarily executed by the authorities in 2005)

According to Jahae Srirasmi, the Ador, or Lahu religious leader of Nong Pai Village, the unknown fates of many Lahu who disappeared during the war on drugs continue cast a dark shadow upon many Lahu families because the families could not perform proper religious ceremonies for their lost members. He added that his son-in-law was also killed during the height of the narcotics war.

Unending Ordeal

Although it has been more than the decade since the war on drugs was implemented and scrapped altogether when Thaksin was ousted by the coup d’état in 2006, there has been no prosecution of Rangers or police officers who were allegedly involved in torture, summary killings and enforced disappearances in Lahu communities.

Arbitrary arrests and prosecutions of Lahu people by state authorities continue until now. On 25 November 2014, military officers arrested Jako Ja-mea and charged him with possessing narcotic substances after they reportedly found illicit drugs around his farm and house. In the case file, the officers wrote that a spy reported that Jako possessed illegal drugs and was involved in a drug trafficking ring with two other Lahu in Tha Ton Subdistrict of Mae Ai. According to the Peace Foundation, a civil society group which has been providing legal assistance to many Lahu and other ethnic minorities in Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai, however, there are many inconsistencies in the report of Jako’s arrest.

The Foundation pointed out that the authorities did not record the name of the ‘spy’ who made the accusations against Jako. Moreover, the officers mentioned in the file that three Lahu tribesmen are involved, but one of the suspects was released on the day of the arrest. The Foundation added that contrary to the case file, which states that 2000 narcotic pills were found in a hole next to a corn field of the suspect and another 60 pills next to Jako’s house adjacent to a village creek, the footage evidence shows that there is no corn field in the area and that the house of the suspect is nowhere near the creek.

Nadao Aimu, Jako’s wife, maintains that her husband is innocent. She said that the authorities and another Lahu tribesman who owes her husband money planted drugs on Jako. Speaking in Lahu, Nadao added that the officers also hit Jako’s head with batons to the point that he lost consciousness and claimed that they had to do so to prevent his escape. Jako is still in custody.

(Nadao Aimu, Jako’s wife, who maintains that her Lahu husband is innocent)

In 24 March 2013, police officers stopped the pickup truck of Thongchat Panpakarin, a Lahu man, when he was driving home in Fang District of Chiang Mai from a festival with four other Lahu, five Hmong, and two Lisu. The officer searched the car and claimed that the car was stolen from another person before arresting Thongchat and the others. The police took them to the Narcotics Control Board district centre where they were interrogated and later informed that they were charged with drug trafficking.

“The narcotics control officers detained us there for two days. They asked me if I know the guys from other tribes whom I offered a free ride to and when I said I didn’t know them before, they repeatedly hit and electrocuted us,” said Thongchat. “They put plastic bags over our heads and punched us; when we were about to faint from suffocation, they removed the bags and questioned us all over again.” He added that the interrogation officers tried to force him to sign a statement, but he refused because the officers did not allow him to read it.  

After two days of interrogation, the police brought Thongchat and 11 other suspects to Bangkok and imprisoned them in Bangkok Remand Prison during the trial. In the end, two Lisu tribesmen who fought the case up the Supreme Court received the death penalty and five Hmong pleaded guilty and were sentenced to long years in prison. Thongchat and four fellow Lahu, who always pleaded innocent, were acquitted after being held in the remand prison for a year and nine months.

“There was no apology. My family had to spend a lot of money to go visit me in Bangkok and my daughter’s pickup truck was confiscated for 11 months, but there is no compensation whatsoever from the authorities,” said Thongchat. “I am fortunate because my family is supportive but for the other Lahu their wives left them.”

(Thongchat Panpakarin, a Lahu man who was imprisoned in Bangkok Remand Prison for almost two years, but was later acquitted from the drug trafficking charges)

Sila said that it is easy for the authorities to randomly pick on and abuse Lahu people along the border because of the lack of development in the region and the fact that most Lahu families are undereducated. “In the past they thought of us as vegetable or fish; if they wanted to kill then they just killed us,” the head of the Lahu Association told us.

In another recent case, four Rangers stopped Anuwat Pudlek, a Lahu teenager driving a motorcycle at a check point between Nong Pai and Huai Nok Kok villages in Fang District, Chiang Mai, in late 2014. He was taken into the bushes where he was held by two officers while another beat him and asked if he had been taking illicit drugs. When he denied this, the Ranger continued to hit him until he had no choice but to confess to stop the beating.

Anuwat told us that the Rangers simply let him go after he confessed as if nothing had happened. He added that the officers might have beaten him because they mistakenly thought that he was another Lahu who messed with them earlier.

(Anuwat Pudlek, a Lahu teenager, who was randomly stopped and tortured by Rangers)

Under the current junta regime, adding to the arbitrary abuses and discrimination, the forest protection policy of the military government has made numerous Lahu families jobless. After the junta’s National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO) issued Order No. 64/2014 in June 2014 to crack down on encroachers in protected areas and poachers, hundreds of acres of farmland used by the Lahu people have been reclaimed by the Royal Forest Department. Although according to NCPO Order No. 67/2014, the forest policy does not apply to poor people and those who had settled in protected areas prior to the enactment of Order No. 64/2014, the authorities took a hard stance against Lahu communities who have been settled in the area for many generations. In July 2015, Pa-ae Kirirasami, 57, Witoon Kiriratsami, Pa-ae’s 22-year-old son, and Jakui Japalo, 37, farmers of Huai Nok Kok Village, Fang District, have been charged with encroaching into Doi Pha Hom Pok National Park and assaulting officers on duty.

Pa-ae, the religious leader of the village, told Prachatai in May 2015 that he was beaten by the authorities, his right ring finger was broken and he had to have six stitches on his scalp. He said that on that day he went to check the irrigation system of the village. When he ran into some National Park officials, he ran away. He said the officers caught him and beat him on the head. Later his son and other villagers came to rescue him and tried to take him to the hospital. The National Park officials instead allegedly blocked and surrounded the villagers. The situation became tense and both sides engaged in a brief clash. The incident ended when the military came to impose law and order at the request of the National Park officials. The village’s spiritual leader added that he has farmed there for the last 20 years.

(Pa-ae Kirirasami, an Ador of Hui Nok Kok Village, who is now charged with land encroachment along with two other villagers)

Kam Nalu, the former Ador of Huai Nok Kok, told us “We can’t farm and we are going to starve. We usually start farming in May, but now we can’t do anything.” Sila pointed out that the authorities reclaimed the farmlands of Lahu people, but allowed Thanatorn Orange Farm, a large orange producer in the area who occupies more than one square kilometre of land, to continue farming. “Why do they let the capitalists do it [farm] while picking on the villagers who only own tiny plots?” asked the Lahu Association leader.

…while I had many things to say, I did not have the words to say them. Painfully aware of my intentions, I watched helplessly as language became an obstacle. It became clear that it would be necessary to invent a new language…all the dictionary had to offer seemed to be meager, pale, lifeless. 

While this is certainly not to suggest that the Holocaust and Hurricane Katrina are comparable historical tragedies, the idea of a writer seeking, and ultimately failing, to capture the full essence of destruction is not uncommon. We see this today, in the psychological toll exacted on black journalists who are constantly forced to report on black death at the hands of police. They find themselves writing the same story merely with different victims, unsure if they are doing justice to the families and communities. We’ve seen this over centuries with writers that have sought to transport their readers into the pillage and ruination of war, knowing that nothing will fully capture what it means to be in such close proximity to state-sanctioned slaughter. This is not new, and yet, here I am, attempting to use words to describe what simply cannot be described.

I can tell you about the stool hanging from the light, but I have no words to tell you what I saw in my mother’s eyes as she watched generations of work swept away within a matter of days. I can tell you about the mold on the walls of our home, but I have no words to describe the palpable silence of an entire city that rested heavy on my skin. I can tell you about the broken glass spread out across the floor, but I have no words to tell you how it felt to be rendered refugee by the rest of the world, to be made more charity case than human. There are no words for these things, no language to encapsulate all that happened. So for many years following the storm, I simply gave up trying to. What was the point? How can we understand that which we cannot name?

I have spent the past week rediscovering photographs of our home after the storm, their frayed edges and blurred images previously locked away in Ziploc bags and boxes in the attic. I’ve sat on the phone with my mother for hours revisiting all that transpired over those days and weeks, each of her words a spark serving as catalysts to memories I did not realize were still there. I’ve spent more time than I should have watching YouTube videos of news reports from August and September 2005, feeling a tightness in my chest that I have not felt for a decade. I have done these things not because I want to, but because I am scared of misremembering. Scared of ten-year anniversary speeches from politicians where I  hear only partial, revisionist truths. I want to remember so that I can help tell a larger truth, so that I don’t forget what I saw and don’t forget why it happened.

I write because it gives me the opportunity to wrestle with questions that cannot be answered anywhere beyond my own pen. I am a writer because I want to understand. It is, in many ways, a selfish task, to commit oneself to the privilege of searching for meaning. But what does it mean to write when writing cannot help you understand? When it fails to help you answer the questions you have put forth?

Ernest Hemingway once said, “We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.” For so long, I had told myself that I could not write about Hurricane Katrina until I was a talented enough writer to do it justice – until I had mastered this language and wielded it with perfect precision to capture what happened with indisputable authority and dexterity. I know now, that such a moment will never come. I know that I still feel deeply inadequate to tell a story I spent so many years trying to forget. All I can do is commit myself to the questions, to the seeking of a larger more honest truth, and accept that this might ultimately be more important than any answers that do or do not come.

The first key attribute of power is its monopoly of force, selectively applied both in actuality and through intimation. But even this asset has its political limitations, and other strategies are needed to safeguard the military’s role.

Enter the 2008 Constitution which for the army stands like the proverbial fortress on the hill. The military believes that as long as the charter remains intact, it has no reason to feel nervous. It can feel secure behind the fortress walls and watch over political machinations in the valley below.

Outside this fortress, yet more defensive lines are deployed to defend the system. One of these is represented by the ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), formed to contest Burma’s last general election in 2010.

However, after the party’s poor performance in 2012 by-elections, it became obvious to the military-dominated establishment that additional strategies were needed.

To this end, the government has allowed, if not fostered, the rise of Buddhist nationalist group, Ma Ba Tha, to help defend its position.

The group, known in English as the Association for the Protection of Race and Religion, has increasingly waded into the political arena, with prominent monks at recent rallies denouncing Burma’s main opposition party, the National League for Democracy (NLD).

Proxy political parties are another way the USDP—and by extension the military—can shore up its position. These parties may win some parliamentary seats in the coming Nov. 8 election and then be called on to support the military-backed party in the legislature, including, most significantly, the selection of the president.

Just how close some of the over 90 contesting political parties are to the USDP is difficult to assess.

One of the largest parties in terms of candidate submissions, the newly formed National Development Party, is led by former presidential advisor Nay Zin Latt. The Myanmar Farmers Development Party is another large entity rumored to be a USDP proxy.

There are also several coopted ethnic parties that could prove crucial to the ruling party’s fortunes post-November.

Pro-regime militias are yet another government bulwark, permitted to pursue their varied business interests, both legal and illegal, in return for loyalty to Naypyidaw.

Some of these armed groups could play an obstructionist type role ahead of the election, as exemplified by the recent warning issued by Zakhung Ting Ying, the leader of the New Democratic Army–Kachin, against NLD candidates campaigning in his constituency.

A final block in this defensive architecture is embodied by the military’s penetration of state institutions and the economy. Wherever you look—the home affairs ministry, the police, the general administration, the judiciary, the electoral commission, the human rights commission—ex-military men have assumed high-ranking roles.

A similar situation is evident in the economy, with military-backed conglomerates and cronies with deep links to army officials. Once it became obvious that the ruling party might lose the coming election, the military has made additional efforts to inject more ex-officers into state institutions and strengthen its position in the bureaucracy.

With these well-planned defensive lines in place—the constitution, proxy political parties, militias and influence in state institutions and the economy—the military can feel confident in its position.

There are several important conclusions to deduce from this resilient architecture.

Firstly, the military and the USDP are not the same, but they share a symbiosis of interests. The USDP will protect the vested interests of the military, and the military is ready to endorse USDP-led government.

But the military institution is not overwhelmingly dependent on the ruling party—as evident in the various other strategies of control explained above. Therefore, even if the USDP does not win the election, the military does not need to stage a coup.

Many political and economic elites have also been coopted; given a small stake in the system and therefore an interest in defending the status quo.

But in this system, individual powerbrokers are not important. If necessary, they can be quickly replaced, as was former ruling party leader and ex-general Shwe Mann.

The guardians of this system have shown a remarkable capacity for advanced planning, strategy and patience. They have also shown flexibility; an ability to change course if one or another strategies are failing.

Burma’s opposition parties themselves need to develop better long-term strategies and stamp their own vision on an improved system of governance and society. Governance through force and cooption cannot last forever.

The “stay in your lane” approach is the “progressive version” of the ethnic succession model because it appears to reject assimilation as a dominant framework and ideal by recognizing settler colonialism and the on-going captivity of Native Americans. It is critical of white supremacy and Black nationalism by claiming the latter, like the former, is a colonizing politic. According to this account, Black people are not only confused about being American, they are confused about slavery and anti-Blackness. On-going captivity as well as the demand for space, territory, land, and sovereignty are treated as the racial formation and political domain of (non-Black) Indigenous peoples. Black people’s demand for community control or other markers of Black space and sovereignty are thus taken as mimicking white people as settlers and cultural appropriators.

This critique of Black nationalism assumes Black people have no ethical standing to make political demands or claims regarding ownership to space, land, and social boundaries – or for sovereignty – because they are not Indigenous. This claim serves to reinforce the reading of Black protest towards Asian storeowners as gestures of xenophobia, American-centrism, and identification with or acting like whites. According to this, the demand that Black lives be affirmed and bodily integrity respected,however articulated, gets read as immoral in terms of misidentifying with land, capitalism, the American project, whiteness, and settlement as well as an appropriation of an Indigenous political demand. In short, it means regardless of the ideological differences expressed by Black people, demands for dignity or political protest are usually read as suspect in some way. This then, requires Black people remain vulnerable to predation and the social mobility aspirations of non-Black people of color so as not to be accused of political immorality.

The belief that Blacks have no ethical standing to make political demands or claims associated with sovereignty (however constructed) or Black space or land hinges, then, on the recognition of Native Americans and Indigenous peoples in the Americas as the “original peoples,” the “truly captive,” and thus the “true” owners of land and claims to sovereignty. I am not suggesting that this non-Black demand, directed at Black people to “recognize” Indigenous peoples and settler colonialism, is sincerely concerned with Native Americans or critical of ongoing genocide. Indeed, we may consider how the demand by non-Blacks, that Black people recognize they are not Indigenous to the United States or that they are the descendants of slaves, weaponizes anti-Native American genocide to disavow anti-Blackness and capitalism––as well as fetishizes (the loss of) land and property in its “recognition” of settler colonialism, thereby ignoring internal debates among Indigenous peoples and between Black people and Native Americans regarding visions of decolonization. In the process, the immigrant’s status as settler disappears from the conversation.

Think here of the way immigrant rights activists defend immigration and a desire for citizenship (and make strange communion, at least rhetorically, with Indigenous peoples) by pointing out to white xenophobes that Christopher Columbus was “the first illegal immigrant.” Relevant to discussions of Black-Korean conflict, Black people––like the white xenophobes who supposedly forgot about Columbus––are depicted as seeking to exclude immigrants while purportedly forgetting that, from an “Indigenous perspective,” they have no legible claim to the nation or territory—a legible claim we are told immigrants (as settlers) supposedly care about. Critics of what is constructed as Black nationalism can thus conceal their anti-Blackness by posing as pro-Indigenous, “reminding” Black people they are not the “truly captive” nor the “original owners” of land, and that sovereignty is the political domain of Indigenous peoples.

This conflation of Black people who protest their treatment by Asian storeowners with Americans, xenophobes, and settlers is coupled, of course, with an unwillingness to recognize non-Black people of color’s role in anti-Black terror and captivity.

In response to Black people reporting in academic surveys and interviews that Asian storeowners treat them as criminals, many Asian American scholars, pundits, and activists reframe these accounts as indicative of “mutual misunderstanding” or “mutual stereotyping.” According to this narration, we are told yes, Korean immigrant storeowners may have “stereotypes” about Black people as criminals but in return, African Americans are xenophobic and treat Asians as foreigners.

Black people’s desire to live with dignity and free from the constant threat of captivity gets read as Black nationalism and Black nationalism is generally framed in Korean immigrant entrepreneurship literature as American-centric, irrational, violent, and opportunist. Boycotts, calls for community control, and organized challenges to Korean-owned liquor stores in Black neighborhoods are depicted as racist and xenophobic. On more than one occasion, Asian Americanists falsely equate Black protest targeting or affecting Korean-owned businesses with state violence and white supremacy, such as the U.S. government’s internment of Japanese Americans or the 1982 beating and subsequent death of Vincent Chin.

The use of ‘mutual’ misunderstanding suggests shared status or power, with each group contributing to each other’s vulnerability and suffering. While some concede that yes, Black people and Asian Americans don’t have the same power or aren’t “treated the same” (by whites or the state), they will often return to a comparative framework to suggest that we are nevertheless “similar” and that once Black people and Asian Americans realize this, Black-Asian conflict will decrease.

The employment of the mutual misunderstanding framework suggests Asian storeowners desireidentification with, and from Black customers across class and race lines. Yet many studies of Asian immigrant storeowners show they hold racist views of Black people and associate them with negative qualities purportedly absent among Asians. And when Asian Americanists emphasize that Asian storeowners do identify with Black customers, the timing of such pronouncements seem preemptive. Solicited comments often appear, in print at least, when the store is considered at risk of being the target of a protest during urban uprisings, such as recently in Ferguson, Missouri, and Baltimore, Maryland. The fear of another 1992 Los Angeles Riots is explicitly or implicitly expressed in such commentaries. We get quotes from Asian immigrant storeowners saying some variation of, “We don’t have any problems with Blacks.” As a preemptive gesture, we can consider how to read this as, “We don’t want a problem with Blacks,” which of course is different from “We don’t want problems for Blacks.This preemptive move maintains the mutual misunderstanding framework and in the process, keeps analyses prioritizing Black suffering off the grid of progressive discourse. An example of commentary prioritizing the banality of Black suffering is this social media post, shared with permission, written by my colleague Marcel Purnell after protests began in Baltimore in response to the police killing of Freddie Gray:

Some things are not, on the whole, being placed in context, which leads folks (including colleagues) to under describe conditions of black life. Many mom and pop stores in black neighborhoods in Baltimore are non-black owned and staffed. Bulletproof glass is often between the customer and cashier. Many of these non-black owned businesses have never and would never employ black people. Black people know which businesses treat them with dignity and which businesses do not.

It’s silly to suggest, even at the level of rhetoric, that mom and pop stores, simply because they do business in black neighborhoods, love black people and don’t also contribute to everyday black suffering. I am reminded that buying crab chips and tropical skittles at mom and pop stores around Baltimore was too often an occasion fraught with anxiety. I knew many kept pistols and bats behind the registers and were unafraid to use them.

What is particularly pernicious about the mutual misunderstanding approach is it recognizes Black suffering only to throw it in Black people’s faces. That is, the structuring logic of the mutual misunderstanding framework requires the recognition of anti-Blackness and to a certain degree, of slavery. But the mutual misunderstanding framework simultaneously suggests Black people protesting their mistreatment are perpetrators of racism against non-Black people of color. Racial power, then, is reduced to stereotypes and not considered in terms of who is in the structural position to determine or participate in the captivity or freedom of another group. This, of course, is a variation of the “reverse racism” claim.

Related, coalitional gestures often involve Asian Americans and our allies pointing out the “immorality” of Black protest towards Asian-owned businesses, basically saying to Black people, “You should know better because you too have been oppressed.” In the process, Asian Americanists suggest similarity or sameness with Blacks and thus obscure Black captivity and our relationship to it. For example, among some promoting Black-Asian coalition, Black protests and political organizing directed at Asian-owned businesses are treated as examples of misdirected rage that should instead target white supremacy, corporations, or the police. According to this account, Asian Americans, non-Black people of color, and immigrant storeowners have no relationship to white supremacy, corporations, or the police.

In some variations, the mutual misunderstanding framework casts Black people as akin to whites. We are to assume Black political demands are driven by territorial beef with “newcomers.” This is the logic of the ethnic succession model, which is unfortunately applied to the study of Black-Korean conflict. According to this approach, there is likely to be tension between long-time residents, who’ve established themselves in an area, with new ethnic and racial groups entering the space. I say it’s unfortunately applied because the ethnic succession model does not know what to do with the afterlife of slavery as it casts Blacks as akin to white immigrants who have become assimilated and American, as having control of space and land they can demarcate as “Black space,” and in that position block new immigrants seeking to enter “Black space.” In short, the ethnic succession model assumes Black people can defend themselves from non-Blacks without political punishment. The ethnic succession model also does not know what to do with anti-Black terror, emphasizing competition and conflict between “established” groups and “newcomers.”

The first challenge is that before the Cambodian repatriation agreement was signed, practically every other ethnic community was experiencing deportations.  This is especially the case for Mexicans and Central Americans who have been particularly targeted by border patrol and state police.  After 9-11, South Asian, Middle Eastern and African immigrants have experienced increased moments of “crisis” through racial profiling, special registrations and violence.  This raises the question, how do folks get sympathy for Cambodian deportation from other immigrant groups if they have been experiencing deportation all along?  How do people strategize around Cambodian deportation in a way that does not say to other immigrant communities that their detentions and deportations never mattered?

The second challenge for Cambodian activists is to figure out how to frame the deportation of immigrants in a way that does not exploit racist images of other groups.  For example, despite the obvious connections between INS systems and the larger Prison Industrial Complex (PIC), there is a difference between how the imprisonment of Asian immigrants versus that of other groups, namely Blacks, gets framed.  Generally, Asian immigrants are viewed as “good,” whereas Blacks are viewed as “bad.”  Progressives depict Asian immigrants as hard workers who sometimes fall on bad times that make them commit crimes to survive.  Implicitly (and explicitly), Blacks are viewed as lazy, unwilling to work hard, and therefore criminal by nature.  The result is that when Asian immigrants get locked up, they get some sympathy that Blacks (and to a certain extent, Latino/as) don’t.  

Activists—especially after 9-11—often frame immigrants as victims of injustice or xenophobia (fear of foreigners) who do not deserve to be in the prison system.  The process of which immigrants get sympathy is highly racialized, as noted by how many post-9-11 activists have been relatively silent on border patrol’s violence towards Mexican and Central Americans that has no doubt contributed to the fact that along with Blacks, Brown people make up two thirds of the US prison population.  The implicit message is that some groups “deserve” to be in prison, and others do not.  Some experienced injustice, and others did not.  Some are worth fighting for, and others are not.  Subsequently, the state violence against certain bodies, particularly those of Black, Brown and Native, is considered necessary, whereas that against other groups is not.

In the case of Cambodians, they tend to get sympathy because they are refugees who were often pushed by the US government into Black neighborhoods when they got to the US.  Because they live near Blacks in poor urban neighborhoods, Cambodians have somewhat been pitied by different activists and academics.  This, however, is a somewhat strategic sympathy, because it seems to serve ulterior motives.  For one, Asian American politics tends to fetishize poor Southeast Asians because they are considered “dark” and “poor.”  That is, Asian American activists often draw attention to Southeast Asians to challenge the model minority myth and “prove” to other people that not all Asian Americans are “successful.”  This does not necessarily mean that Asian America as a political project is necessarily committed to “darker” and “poorer” Asians, a point that many Southeast Asians have pointed out.  It just means that when one wants to refute the idea of Asian American success and homogenization, Asian American activists of all types quickly pull out the Southeast Asian as a way to deflect these critiques.

This is not to suggest that Asian American activists—or anyone for that matter— do not have a reason to be concerned about poor Southeast Asians.  Anyone who is structurally mistreated and subject to state violence should garner sympathy.  Yet many Asian American activists, including Southeast Asians, generally do not bring up Southeast Asian poverty in a manner that is sympathetic to all those who are pushed into urban poverty.  In other words, many Asian American activists point out that Cambodians are living in similar conditions with many of the Black people (who, like anyone living in urban poverty, have been structurally forced into their situation).  This analysis tends to bring a certain aspect of sympathy for the existence of poor Southeast Asians.  Yet this pity does not necessarily sympathize with Black people living in the same conditions of urban poverty.  Instead, it is the type of pity that says, “These poor Asians, how did they end up there?”  In this case, “there” means living near, and “like” Blacks.

It is precisely their proximity to Blacks that sometimes make Cambodians more sympathetic “victims.”  Cambodian poverty and incarceration is “understandable” and even “expected” because they live in “urban” (read: Black) areas.  In this way, what is taken as Cambodian “criminality” is viewed as a “learned” behavior and unwittingly linked to Black people.  This helps perpetuate the racist image of the Black criminal that has substantiated the US’ violent containment and killing of Black bodies.  Subsequently, these ideas about Cambodian “criminality” tend to ignore critical questions: What is crime?  How does it get socially defined?  Who defines what a crime is?  Who gets labeled a criminal (even before an arrest)?  Whose bodies and existence are considered criminal, no matter what one does or does not do?  Who benefits from how crime is defined?  Who gets sympathy when they go to jail?  Who does not?  

Overall, Southeast Asian activists have some major immediate challenges facing them in their campaign to end Cambodian deportations.  The most obvious is stopping deportation in a post 9-11 era.  But there are two other important immediate challenges.  First, figuring out how to sympathetically frame Cambodian deportation in a way that does not minimize the experience of deportation in other immigrant communities.  Second, figuring out how to talk about immigrant detainees/deportees without reproducing racist stereotypes of Blacks and other non-white groups who are forced into urban poverty and who have been incarcerated at alarming rates.  These might not seem crucial issues in the campaign to end Cambodian deportation.  But if they are not considered, there are serious consequences for non-Cambodians and an overall movement for social justice.

For queers to make things work can be pressure as well as a project. You know that if there is a break up it can fulfil an expectation that such relationships are less lasting, less secure; fragile. There is a kind of queer fatalism at stake here: that to be on a queer path is to hurtle toward a miserable fate; queer as self-shattering. And then if things do shatter (as they do tend to do) you have fulfilled an expectation that “this” is where being queer led you to.

We can note from these examples of queer or mixed intimacies how some relationships are assumed to be inherently broken, as if their fate is to break. And this is difficult: the assumption of fragility can make something fragile; just think of how you can becomeclumsier when you are trying to be careful not to break what easily breaks. Or think of how if you are already known as the clumsy one, you might become even more afraid of breakage, because you know that if there is a breakage, you will be judged as the one who is behind it. The harder you try the more you seem to slip up. Or think of how leaving the accepted social paths can be to leave behind support systems, those institutional ways of holding, protecting, nurturing. To leave a support system can mean to become more fragile, less protected from the bumps of ordinary life. And though fragility might be a consequence it can be recruited as cause: as if you willfully caused your own damage by leaving the safety of a brightly lit path. No wonder so much queer and feminist invention comes from creating our own support systems.

Becoming the cause of your own damage: we are back to the figure of the feminist killjoy. To give a cause to damage is to contain a mess, to mop up a spillage. The figure of the feminist killjoy is rather like that of the broken jug: she too flies off the handle, an expression used to indicate the suddenness of anger.

“Phantoms Playing Double-Dutch: Why the Fight for Dyett is Bigger than One Chicago School Closing” by Eve L. Ewing, published 26 August 2015, is a incredibly written and stirring piece on a community’s hunger strike against the closure of the last open enrollment school in Chicago, located in a predominantly Black neighborhood. 

“We can trace the origin of the killings with impunity to the Marcos dictatorship’s having abetted the brutal ways by which paramilitary groups freely carried out political killings and other human rights violations,” Ocampo said in a keynote speech during the 5th Congress of the Cordillera Human Rights Alliance (CHRA).

Ocampo condemned the Sept. 1 murders of “lumad” (indigenous) leaders Emerito Samarca, Dionel Campos and Jovelo Bello Sinzo in Lianga, Surigao del Sur province, allegedly by armed indigenous members of the Magahat-Bagani paramilitary group.

Paramilitary groups were a phenomenon which Marcos’ successors, beginning with the late President Corazon Aquino, had failed to cure, Ocampo said.

“After Marcos’ ouster and Cory’s (Aquino) ascent to the presidency, there was a strong public clamor to dismantle the Cafgu (Citizen Armed Forces Geographical Units) and other paramilitary groups,” he said.

“Rather than heed the clamor —by whoever’s advice [which] we ought to find out—she legitimized the Cafgu by issuing Executive Order No. 264, placing them under [the supervision of the] Armed Forces of the Philippines,” Ocampo said.

The net effect of Aquino’s decision to retain Cafgus, he said, was to “enable the martial law mind-set to prevail in her administration and thereafter.”

Ocampo said the revolutionary government spawned by the 1986 People Power Revolution, and the restored government led by Aquino, also failed to cleanse the AFP of Marcos’ influence when she did not order a “top-down roster review” to identify, prosecute or weed out corrupt officers and those involved in gross human rights violations.

The Commission on Human Rights and various international human rights organizations have identified the Cafgus and the militias as “notorious human rights violators” in the course of Aquino’s six-year term and the administrations of subsequent presidents, including her son, incumbent President Aquino, he said.

“It is about time we let this ugly truth out for good measure,” Ocampo said, now that the killings in Mindanao are being waged by militias and indigenous Filipinos who compose paramilitary groups.

“Although these groups exist separately from the Cafgu, the Special Civilian Armed Auxiliary and the Investment Defense Force, they nevertheless serve as the AFP’s force multiplier in its counterinsurgency campaign and as protectors of big business intruding into the lands of peasants and indigenous peoples,” he said, quoting a report from the rights group, Karapatan.

Ocampo said: “In 2015, per Karapatan’s reckoning, there has been an uptick in extrajudicial and political killings. In the first half of the year, 33 were summarily killed—an average of one to two [murders] per week. As of this month, the total number of political killings has exceeded 780 under President Aquino’s watch.”

The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines, in a Sept. 13 statement, asked the Aquino administration to conduct “an honest, thorough, impartial and speedy investigation [of the Surigao del Sur killings] so the guilty may be held to account.”

“It troubled the bishops that the paramilitary groups, which the government uses for counterinsurgency operations, do not fall under a clear established and accessible chain of command,” unlike the “regular channels of accountability” governing the actions of the police and the military, Ocampo said.

On Monday, CHRA and members of the Cordillera Peoples Alliance staged a rally along downtown Baguio to condemn the atrocities attributed to martial law.

"I am president. I am the most powerful man in the Philippines. All that I have dreamt of I have. More accurately, I have all the material things I want of life--a wife who is loving and is a partner in the things I do, bright children who will carry my name, a life well lived, all. But I feel a discontent."

“The pattern of subversion is slowly emerging. The danger is now apparent to me but not to most people. (I see) the conspiracy to grab power and assassinate me ... the terrorism ... the pink intellectuals, writers, professors and students and fellow travelers. And I am certain this is just the beginning. The newspapermen I have on my list are busy placing the government in disrepute and holding it in contempt before the people. . . . The slow chipping at the people's confidence in government authority (will continue).”

"Reminded me of the conspiracy going on now against me by all the envious men who have failed. Remind me to have my guards around me always. I have often wondered why Caesar had no protection when he was assassinated. At what point of anarchy would a Julius Caesar take over the (U.S.) government as a dictator? Although. . . it may be difficult to control the U.S. from one central point as it has too many centers of power. Who waits beyond our Rubicon?"