Mangu-danao Massacre

by Agustin Martin Rodriguez

When my son had his first nightmare and woke up crying, he told me that he had dreamt that monsters ate his mother. I tried to comfort him by telling him that there were no monsters in the real world—only on the computer and on TV where he saw these things. What a lie indeed, for just a few days ago on TV, we were shown the works of monsters in the real world.

Then, we were told that 21 bodies had been found—many of whom were women that were believe to have been raped. Today there is a running body count of 57—many of whom are women said to have been raped and horribly mutilated, journalists, activist lawyers, and motorists who just happened to be in the way.

*Bong Reblando

Manila Bulletin reporter

How could anyone who was not murderously insane order or commit such an act? How depraved and inhuman do you have to be to be able to carry out such a massacre? But of course there are naïve questions from a comfortable middle-aged professor from Quezon City. Who am I to say what unchecked power can do to the soul of a man and a family? Who am I to say what being without prospects except the service of a power hungry tyrant can make one do? Who am I to say what is shocking in Maguindanao where people are kept poor and without development while one family controls all the resources and political power and the national government supports and funds that family’s private army? I really can’t say. I don’t know what it’s like and what I would do if I had so much deadly power or what I might be driven to do if I was the hired gun of such powers. I wouldn’t know how my mind or heart could be unhinged living under those circumstances.

But this I know. Even if I were a powerful man with an army of drug crazed, or fanatical, or power tripping men, I would not be able to act with such impunity if I knew that there was a higher power to stop me from my acts of madness. But these monsters from Maguindanao felt they could do what they wanted without fear perhaps because they were banking on the fact that in this country, politics is still mightier a force than justice. This is the state after all where journalists and activists have been killed without consequence to their killers. Uniformed sociopaths who kidnap and torture farmers and students working for change are still enjoying their freedom while many of their victims are rotting, still unidentified in unmarked graves or trying to live past the horror of their real life nightmare.

If we had a government that could only genuinely function to protect and serve its people, we wouldn’t have any monsters in the real world. But we don’t yet have such a government. Seventy four journalists have been killed and hundreds of activists have also been killed, tortured or kidnapped in the last eight years. There have hardly been any convictions for these cases—not even the celebrated ones like that of Jonas Burgos. Governments were founded to keep the monsters among us in check—not to use them against its citizens.

Sadly for those children of the massacred in Magundanao, our government and political system failed to stop the monsters from killing their mothers.