St. Valentine's Day massacre
St. Valentine's Day massacre
Posted 11:24pm (Mla time) Feb 15, 2005
By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A14 of the February 16, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer
THE IMAGES were grim and struck a contrast with the cheerfulness of the world. Throughout the day last Monday, all you heard on radio, saw on TV, and read in the newspapers were messages of love. The front pages carried pictures of the kiss-fest that had taken place at the Manila Bay area and other places in the country, Mayor Lito Atienza and wife at the head of them. The TV talk shows during the weekend were all about love, and even HBO and the other movie channels featured movies about love.
At the end of the day, all you saw were images of death.
The one I felt particularly outraged about was the footage of a boy being carried out of the bus terminal in Davao City. You could not see his face because the camera was behind the man who carried him in his arms to a police van. But you could see his legs dangling limply on the side. I do not know if he was the same boy who was reported to have died. I did see the part when ABS-CBN was talking to its Davao correspondent and the guy was getting word that an 11-year-old boy who had been taken bleeding to a hospital had just died. I thought of his parents and felt my blood boil.
More than any other image, that was the one that drove home to me the horror of what had happened. The wreckage of the bus that shattered from an explosion in Makati was grim too, as well as the appearance of those who survived the blast, their heads covered with bandages at the Makati Medical Center. Most of them were not lovers who were going out for a stroll, most of them were folk coming home tired and bedraggled from the day's labors. Those sights were grim, too, but none of them grimmer than that of the legs of a boy sticking out of the side of a man carrying him.
It drove home to me two things in particular. One was the thick veil that language puts before our eyes or minds. The words "war," "retaliation," "bombing," "attrition," "acts of violence," "terrorism," and even "massacre," are dangled before us and somehow the blood and spattered brains are swept away, somehow the screams of terror and cries of grief and lamentation are muted. That was what filled the newspapers and TV news days before the bombings, and that was what filled the newspapers and TV news after the bombings. Well, war and terrorism and retaliation mean nothing to those who fall in the line of fire and the people who love them. Tell those things to the parents of the kid who died. It's murder, the snuffing of a life, the life of your mother and father, brother and sister, son and daughter. The numbers do not matter, they do not contain the gravity of the deed. A dead boy does.
The second is the truth, often buried in the thicket of war, that it is the innocent rather than the guilty who are the first victims of this stupidity, and that the pursuit of peace, however arduous and however it offends our instinct to lash out or strike back, remains not only the best option but the only one there really is. None of this may justify the escalation of the conflict in Mindanao, which cannot be solved by obliterating the groups that speak for the Muslims. The effort to obliterate them will not obliterate them, it will obliterate the ordinary Muslim folk who, like the rest of us, go home tired and bedraggled from the day's labors. Who, like the rest of us, have children. But which murder now will be hidden from view with the words, "deployment," "containment," preemptive strike." You won't see the limp form of a child dangling from his mother's arms who is beside herself with grief.
The reports say the Abu Sayyaf has owned up to the bombings, claiming they were their Valentine's Day gift to Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. I take that as a provisional truth, until the Abu Sayyaf or the MILF or any other Muslim organization denies it or is able to disprove it. That may be the Abu Sayyaf's idea of humor, but it is not so the rest of the world's. I was tempted to say the civilized world's, but that is not so at all, it is the entire human species'. It is an obscenity, one that betrays all that we hold to be human. If the Abu Sayyaf did this, then they should be punished harshly, as their crime befits, not just by the government but by their Muslim brethren as well. They have wronged everyone, including those whose cause they presume to advance.
They have not weakened Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, they have strengthened her. They have justified her own acts of terrorism, done in the name of fighting it, wreaked here and abroad, in Muslim Mindanao and Iraq. They have made everyone forget the corruption in her government, the hypocrisy of her government's token concern for the public, the rottenness of her generals who steal from their own men and send them to their deaths. They have made Filipinos believe all over again in John Wayne, come with the US marines to rescue us from the jaws of death with night-vision and dark intent.
They have not strengthened the Muslim cause, they have weakened it. They have raised an anti-Muslim hysteria in many parts of the country, one that has died down over the years with the patent ability of Christians and Muslims to live peacefully and in a neighborly way also in many parts of the country. As 9/11 amply shows, terrorism is counterproductive. It does not bring sympathy to the cause it espouses, it brings opprobrium to it. It does not show the cause to be strong, it shows it to be cowardly-or no better than the tyranny it proposes to end.
They have not protected the Muslim community with the might of truth and principle, they have exposed it to the terrible march of fire and sword. The murder of the children will now truly be hidden by the black veil of fighting terrorism, ending savagery, keeping the peace.
They might as well have bombed their own.
Posted 11:24pm (Mla time) Feb 15, 2005
By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A14 of the February 16, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer
THE IMAGES were grim and struck a contrast with the cheerfulness of the world. Throughout the day last Monday, all you heard on radio, saw on TV, and read in the newspapers were messages of love. The front pages carried pictures of the kiss-fest that had taken place at the Manila Bay area and other places in the country, Mayor Lito Atienza and wife at the head of them. The TV talk shows during the weekend were all about love, and even HBO and the other movie channels featured movies about love.
At the end of the day, all you saw were images of death.
The one I felt particularly outraged about was the footage of a boy being carried out of the bus terminal in Davao City. You could not see his face because the camera was behind the man who carried him in his arms to a police van. But you could see his legs dangling limply on the side. I do not know if he was the same boy who was reported to have died. I did see the part when ABS-CBN was talking to its Davao correspondent and the guy was getting word that an 11-year-old boy who had been taken bleeding to a hospital had just died. I thought of his parents and felt my blood boil.
More than any other image, that was the one that drove home to me the horror of what had happened. The wreckage of the bus that shattered from an explosion in Makati was grim too, as well as the appearance of those who survived the blast, their heads covered with bandages at the Makati Medical Center. Most of them were not lovers who were going out for a stroll, most of them were folk coming home tired and bedraggled from the day's labors. Those sights were grim, too, but none of them grimmer than that of the legs of a boy sticking out of the side of a man carrying him.
It drove home to me two things in particular. One was the thick veil that language puts before our eyes or minds. The words "war," "retaliation," "bombing," "attrition," "acts of violence," "terrorism," and even "massacre," are dangled before us and somehow the blood and spattered brains are swept away, somehow the screams of terror and cries of grief and lamentation are muted. That was what filled the newspapers and TV news days before the bombings, and that was what filled the newspapers and TV news after the bombings. Well, war and terrorism and retaliation mean nothing to those who fall in the line of fire and the people who love them. Tell those things to the parents of the kid who died. It's murder, the snuffing of a life, the life of your mother and father, brother and sister, son and daughter. The numbers do not matter, they do not contain the gravity of the deed. A dead boy does.
The second is the truth, often buried in the thicket of war, that it is the innocent rather than the guilty who are the first victims of this stupidity, and that the pursuit of peace, however arduous and however it offends our instinct to lash out or strike back, remains not only the best option but the only one there really is. None of this may justify the escalation of the conflict in Mindanao, which cannot be solved by obliterating the groups that speak for the Muslims. The effort to obliterate them will not obliterate them, it will obliterate the ordinary Muslim folk who, like the rest of us, go home tired and bedraggled from the day's labors. Who, like the rest of us, have children. But which murder now will be hidden from view with the words, "deployment," "containment," preemptive strike." You won't see the limp form of a child dangling from his mother's arms who is beside herself with grief.
The reports say the Abu Sayyaf has owned up to the bombings, claiming they were their Valentine's Day gift to Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. I take that as a provisional truth, until the Abu Sayyaf or the MILF or any other Muslim organization denies it or is able to disprove it. That may be the Abu Sayyaf's idea of humor, but it is not so the rest of the world's. I was tempted to say the civilized world's, but that is not so at all, it is the entire human species'. It is an obscenity, one that betrays all that we hold to be human. If the Abu Sayyaf did this, then they should be punished harshly, as their crime befits, not just by the government but by their Muslim brethren as well. They have wronged everyone, including those whose cause they presume to advance.
They have not weakened Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, they have strengthened her. They have justified her own acts of terrorism, done in the name of fighting it, wreaked here and abroad, in Muslim Mindanao and Iraq. They have made everyone forget the corruption in her government, the hypocrisy of her government's token concern for the public, the rottenness of her generals who steal from their own men and send them to their deaths. They have made Filipinos believe all over again in John Wayne, come with the US marines to rescue us from the jaws of death with night-vision and dark intent.
They have not strengthened the Muslim cause, they have weakened it. They have raised an anti-Muslim hysteria in many parts of the country, one that has died down over the years with the patent ability of Christians and Muslims to live peacefully and in a neighborly way also in many parts of the country. As 9/11 amply shows, terrorism is counterproductive. It does not bring sympathy to the cause it espouses, it brings opprobrium to it. It does not show the cause to be strong, it shows it to be cowardly-or no better than the tyranny it proposes to end.
They have not protected the Muslim community with the might of truth and principle, they have exposed it to the terrible march of fire and sword. The murder of the children will now truly be hidden by the black veil of fighting terrorism, ending savagery, keeping the peace.
They might as well have bombed their own.
posted by Dante at 12:00 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home