Updated: July 11, 2022 09:46 AM GMT
The unfinished journey of Filipino 'desaparecidos'
Protesters demonstrate as they gather at a square during a rally to coincide with the inauguration of Philippine President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. in Manila on June 30. (Photo: AFP)
Every July 11, I always remember that on this day in 1985 Redemptorist priest Fr. Rudy Romano was forcibly taken by armed men while riding his motorcycle in Labangon, Cebu City. On the same day student activist Rolan Levi Ybanez also involuntarily disappeared in Sanciangco St., Cebu City. Local and international interventions to demand their return proved futile.
Asked about his last recollection of Fr. Rudy, Reverend Father Ramon Fruto, who served as the vicar to the Vice-Provincial Superior of the Redemptorists in Visayas and Mindanao and who later became the Vice-Provincial Superior, recalled: “My fellow Redemptorist priest, Fr. Rudy Romano, was fixing the lock of one of our doors in our Cebu monastery when I last chatted with him on July 11, 1985. Before he could finish this task, he got a phone call that he was needed at a meeting. He left at once. I presumed that the meeting had to do with another of his tasks of ‘fixing,’ this time not some lock but some obstacles hindering the progress of society.
“Fr. Rudy was not just an amateur mechanic, but by profession, a missionary sent to bring good news to the poor. He left on his motorcycle. That was the last time I saw him. When he did not appear for Mass, we got worried, for he never missed Mass. On inquiry, we found out that at an intersection along his route, he had been stopped by a group of men, forced into a car and carried off to a place we knew not where.”
Etched in my memory was my personal experience of being part of a mass arrest of protesters in front of Camp Sergio Osmena in Cebu City. We were demanding the release of Fr. Rudy and Rolan Levi. Together with my colleagues in the Visayas Secretariat of Social Action and many other activists, I was arrested and brought to Camp Sotero Cabahug in Cebu City. We were released around 1am when the late Ricardo Cardinal Vidal intervened. Every day, we joined huge rallies for more than two months to demand the release of Fr. Rudy and Rolan Levi. But our collective efforts miserably failed to surface the two human rights defenders, whose noble intention was to work hard to heal society of its ills.
These two cases of enforced disappearances, which to this date remain unresolved, occurred against the catastrophic landscape of harsh repression during the Marcos dictatorship.
With the election of Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr., the Philippines has just entered a new era of its history 50 years after the imposition of martial law by the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos Senior. On the eve of the 37th anniversary of Rolan Levi’s enforced disappearance, his brother Xcy Ybanez reflected:
“Since Ferdinand Marcos Sr., there have already been many presidents from Corazon Aquino to Rodrigo Duterte. There has never been any thorough investigation to identify the perpetrators and hold them accountable for violating human rights. All the more, we did not hope that Duterte could give justice to victims of human rights violations because of his anti-human rights policy. Now Ferdinand Marcos Jr. is the president, we have all the more lost hope that we can attain justice for the disappearance of Levi and many other victims.”
Fr. Rudy and Rolan Levi are among hundreds of desaparecidos who disappeared during the dark years of martial law and sadly during succeeding administrations. Victims of enforced disappearance, the cruelest form of human rights violation, both are a testament to the tyranny of the dark years of the Marcos regime. Their tragic stories are a stark contrast to the so-called “golden years of peace and prosperity” of the Marcos-imposed authoritarian rule.
“These well-documented cases of Fr. Rudy and Rolan Levi are concrete evidence of the violations of human rights during Marcos’ rule. What happened to real people is not hearsay. These are true stories that should never be forgotten and should never be repeated,” Christian Buenafe, O'Carm said.
It has been 11 days since Marcos Jr. assumed the presidency on June 30 at the National Museum of Fine Arts. Just a few hours prior to his oathtaking, another oathtaking of a thousand martial law survivors at the Monument of Heroes was conducted. The names of Fr. Rudy and Rolan Levi are among the hundreds inscribed on the Wall of Remembrance within the huge compound of the Monument of Heroes.
The first-ever face-to-face gathering that I attended since the start of the pandemic, the event was a reunion of martial law survivors — both the victims and those who fought hard for the restoration of democracy.
Led by two martial law survivors, former member of the House of Representatives and former chairperson of the Commission on Human Rights Loretta Ann Rosales and renowned playwright, screenwriter and filmmaker Bonifacio Ilagan, the martial law survivors made the following vow:
“We who fought during the Marcos dictatorship from 1972 to 1986, along with our allies, in response to the Marcos forces to distort Philippine history, confirm that the so-called golden years of the reign of Ferdinand Marcos Sr. were the darkest years in contemporary Philippine history.
“We now declare our position that sitting as president will not absolve you [Marcos Jr.] of historical responsibility; that the Marcos family must admit the robbery committed and must return what was stolen to proper authorities and that unity is based on justice; that the incumbent president must recognize the bitterness that martial law inflicted on the victims, on those killed and on all those who sacrificed — those who have already died and those who are still here on the face of the earth.
“So, on this day, we who have suffered and survived the repression and violence of martial law vow to continue to sacrifice our lives to destroy the distortions and lies that have been widely created and spread in favor of the candidacy of Ferdinand Marcos Jr.”
The oath ended with a pledge to block all attempts to distort history and with a prayer for guidance from the Almighty. An almost vanishing generation, the survivors of martial law have passed the torch to the younger generation who were bequeathed the responsibility of continuing the struggle they had started. If the devastation of martial law declared by the dictator Ferdinand Marcos Sr. 50 years ago continues to affect the lives of millions, the next six years or longer are feared to further bring down the Philippines to utter perdition.
On my way home, I could hear the proclamation speech of Marcos Jr. Claiming to have the biggest political mandate ever in Philippine democracy, president Marcos Jr. stated: “By your vote, you rejected the politics of division.” He repeatedly uttered the word unity in his speech, stating that he listened to the people’s voices calling for unity, unity, unity.
“I am here not to talk about the past. I am here to tell you about your future. A future of sufficiency, even plenty of readily available ways and means to get things done that need doing — by you, by me. We do not look back, but ahead. Up the road that we must take to a place better than the one we lost in the pandemic,” he said.
The promise of a bright future with a deliberate intention to obliterate the past ignores the sufferings of victims of human rights violations, like Fr. Rudy and Rolan Levi and their families. Memory has a special place at the core of justice. It is society's duty to keep victims of human rights violations from the oblivion of forgetting. Truth, memory and justice go together. With the first official presidential speech opting to forget the dark night of repression and resistance, enforced disappearances like that of Fr. Rudy and Rolan Levi, and other equally abominable forms of human rights violations are doomed to be repeated.
In his speech, Marcos Jr. selectively mentioned the past — the so-called glorious past. “My father built more and better roads. Produced more rice than all administrations before his. President Rodrigo Duterte built more and better than all the succeeding administrations succeeding my father’s.”
No matter how colorfully the Marcos administration manicures the dark night of martial law through historical distortion, martial law survivors are strong in their resolve to tell their stories so that the generations of tomorrow will never endure the same sufferings that they experienced. Xzy Ybanez is committed to continuing the search for truth and justice for the enforced disappearance of his brother. And so do many other survivors of a very dark part of our history that should never ever be repeated.
Today, it has been 37 long years of searching, struggling and praying that one day, truth and justice about Fr. Rudy and Rolan Levi’s enforced disappearances will emerge victorious.
Fr. Fruto, in his reflection on today’s anniversary of his brother priest's disappearance further shared: “As Redemptorists, we are called to continue the Redeemer’s work of evangelizing, of bringing good news to the poor.
"Fr. Rudy knew that the poor of today are not just poor because they lack the basic needs of life. They are poor because they are deprived, and deprived because they live under oppression. This realization is echoed in the Church’s encyclical, Gaudium et Spes, in the documents of the Latin American Church and the Asian Bishops’ Conference, and in our own Second Plenary Council’s Acta. This is the spirit that animated and inspired Fr. Rudy to take the side of the poor, deprived and oppressed at great risk to his personal safety under an oppressive martial law regime.”
Fr. Rudy, Rolan Levi and many other desaparecidos dreamed and worked for a society free from poverty and injustice. Wherever they are now, with many other heroes and martyrs, their hearts must be bleeding to see a Philippines whose present leaders admit nothing of the wrongs committed to society during martial law. Such admission is a basic step to dignifying the victims of atrocities. Without admission, remorse is impossible. Without remorse, there can be no genuine reconciliation. Thus, the repeated call for unity can never be forced.
In the present context of Philippine history, paying tribute to Fr. Rudy, Rolan Levi and thousands of other victims of the authoritarian Marcos regime necessitates that, in whatever ways possible, we continue their unfinished journey towards the establishment of God’s Kingdom here on earth.
*The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official editorial position of UCA News.
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