The
Saga Of Modesto Tobias At
66, he is the oldest political prisoner at the New Bilibid Prisons. But in
spite of the 12 years he has spent behind bars, he has not wavered in his
beliefs and principles. “There is a bigger cell outside this prison,”
he says. By
LIRA DALANGIN He sits in one of the benches, basking in the vastness
of the room that is so different from his cramped cell, his grizzly hair
gleaming against the sunbeam. There is richness in his voice, beckoning as
he narrates, standing up, walking toward a spot in the room and sitting
again to begin another chapter of his life story.
The cries of his kasama (comrade) being tortured at the
nearby cell still echoes in his mind and the smell of blood that oozed
from his wounds inflicted by punches and blows of rifle butts continues to
haunt him. It has been so for him these past 12 years inside prison. Sixty-six-year-old Modesto Tobias, the oldest political
prisoner at the New Bilibid Prisons in Muntinlupa, will likely remain
there longer. His name is not
on the list of the 49 political prisoners promised their long overdue
freedom by President Gloria
Macapagal-Arroyo. And despite
the pronouncement, human-rights groups are saying they cannot be appeased
by token releases. They are
demanding the release of 212 political prisoners all over the country and
an end to the criminalization of political offenses. Born in 1935 in Leyte to a peasant family, Tobias'
beginnings hardly tell of an unfolding life in the revolutionary movement.
At 18, he began working in a logging
company in their province. A
few years later, he found work in a construction company in Guam and
Indonesia. He was an expert in machines.
"I could operate all kinds of heavy equipment," Tobias
says. But life was far from better back home.
His parents were indebted to the landlord.
The harvests were good but the farmers got only very little from
what they had reaped. And
though skilled with machines, Tobias realized there were none to practice
his skills with as farmers were still using crude farm implements. At first, he didn't understand it all. Then came the
New People's Army (NPA), which opened his eyes to a wider reality.
By the late ‘60s, Tobias was already organizing the farmers in
his community. When martial law came in 1972, arrests became more frequent
among activists and suspected rebels in the countryside.
Tobias decided to join his newfound friends in the hills in Leyte,
a province in eastern Visayas, central Philippines. Tobias was arrested by the Philippine Constabulary in
San Rafael, Tabango town in 1989 with four others. He was brought to a camp in the province where he
suffered all kinds of torture. His
torturers beat him up, at times using slabs of wood or rifle butts, to
squeeze information about Tobias’ other kasama.
But he kept silent, and the more he kept silent, the more beatings
came, his torturers stopping only when Tobias
was unconscious. They
would douse him with cold water afterward to make sure he was not dead. "This is the irrefutable proof," he says,
pointing to an almost disfigured face, stitched from the chin to the right
cheek. For two weeks after
the beating, he narrates, he could not urinate. Only liquid food was inserted in a tube attached to his mouth.
"I almost died. But
they didn't get anything from me," he says. He was held incomunicado for a month while he
underwent “tactical interrogation.”
After that, he and his companions were transferred to the
provincial jail. They were
charged not with rebellion but with common crimes such as homicide and
robbery in band. Two years after the guilty
verdict came out, they were brought to the New Bilibid
Prisons. "It will be my twelfth year
here in April," Tobias says.
(Rolly Anquillano, 39, is the longest detained political prisoner
at the Bilibid. He has
been languishing there for the past 15 years.) Tobias' first five years in detention had been in the
company of common criminals. "I
deliberately did not divulge my identity to the authorities. I even kept quiet about the criminal charges hurled against
me although I knew that there is world of difference between rebels and
common criminals. I did
this in the hope that I would be given pardon by the president because of
old age," he says. One day, a priest from Leyte came looking for him. When
the priest saw Tobias in a meeting of the Batang Samar-Leyte Gang, a group
he helped established for "protection,"
he was aghast. The priest scolded the prison authorities for detaining him
with the common criminals. He was transferred to Building 11 that now
houses 18 political detainees. Hunger Strike Tomorrow, February 22, all political prisoners in the
country will go on hunger strike. As
in the past, Tobias would join the hunger strike. He jokes that he would
be on a diet of candies, crackers, and water. The Arroyo administration is barely a month-old but the
political detainees are already impatient. The hunger strike, they say, is
the "highest form of protest"
against the President's intransigence to the pleas of the political
detainees and their families for freedom. During the term of ousted President Joseph Estrada, the
political prisoners conducted three hunger strikes, the last of which was
a three-day fasting at the start of the
impeachment trial in unity with the sectors calling for Estrada's
resignation. In 1995, during President Fidel Ramos' term, they
staged a 39-day hunger strike to call for their recognition as political
detainees and demand their immediate
release from prison. Ramos
ordered the release of 60 political detainees
all over the country as a "goodwill measure" for the peace talks
then between the National Democratic Front (NDF) and the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP). In 1992, after a 10-day hunger strike, 25 political
detainees were set free before the start of the NDF-GRP peace talks. A total of 212 political detainees are languishing in
jails nationwide, tagged as “common criminals.”
The criminalization of political offenses is one of the
most tyrannical practices that persist up to this day, according to
Dani Beltran, secretary
general of the Ecumenical Movement for Justice and Peace (EMJP). The practice dates back to Marcos time in the ‘70s.
During the presidency of Corazon Aquino,
rebellion, sedition and subversion virtually became nonexistent as
these were merely replaced with charges of
illegal possession of
firearms, kidnapping, murder and other criminal charges. "The practice is iniquitous because there would be
no end to the charges that may be leveled against the person once his
actions as a rebel are dissociated from the fundamental act of
rebellion," says Beltran. "The criminalization of political offenses should
stop. It is the height of
irony that people like Tobias and Anquillano languish in prison for
their political beliefs while the likes of Estrada and his cronies such as
Lucio Tan and Danding
Cojuangco are enjoying their loot," Beltran points out. The years behind bars have apparently not dulled the
principles and the beliefs of Tobias. "I hope I will be released,”
he says, “even for humanitarian considerations.” But if that happens,
he adds, “I won't be
thankful because I know that, out of Bilibid, a bigger prison cell exists
where Filipinos are deprived of genuine freedom and democracy.
We must free ourselves from this bigger detention."
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