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."  #