Comfort women and the insensitive red-tagging by the police force

Government officials, specifically members of the police force, must understand that one cannot claim to love the nation and yet promote historical ignorance.

The Manila Police District (MPD) came under fire last week after it reposted in its official Facebook account a meme by an anonymous group called Red Alert  red tagging GABRIELA and accusing it of manipulating the Lolas "for show".

The picture used was that of the rally organized on March 2 by the FlowersforLolas Campaign in front of the Japanese Embassy.

The rally was  part of commemoration of  women’s month  and  was meant to reiterate the victims' long-running demand for justice from the Japanese government.

Red Alert originally posted the meme with the statement “Ano daw? Justice for comfort women? Etong mga makakaliwang grupo naman na ito eh, kahit ano na lang maisip na pakulo. Pati Lola ginagamit ng mga destabilizer. Ang gyera ay naganap 80 taon na ang lumipas. Malamang mga bata pa kayo nung nangyari iyon. Comfort women na ba kayo noon?”

The FlowersforLolas Campaign, to which this author is a member,  is dismayed by the utter disrespect and gross ignorance of history exhibited by the MPD elements.

Led by Lila Filipina, I personally met some of the Lolas, including Lola Rosa Henson who was the first to come out, as a reporter in the late 90s when I covered their brave journey in telling the world about this inhuman practice of the Japanese during the war.

Due to their  tender age then , it was a painful experience for them to be  subjected to sexual slavery, rape and other forms of sexual violence during World War 2.

 The victims  have spent their lives in misery, having endured physical injuries, pain and disability, and mental and emotional suffering.

The Lolas are dying without  receiving  a formal apology and legal compensation from Japan. And yet the MPD has been a conduit in disrespecting their plight.

Artist Monique Wilson also  lambasted the MPD saying that such act is not only  completely and utterly imbecilic, but it is a grave affront to the Lolas who have suffered for over 70 years as former sex slaves of WW2, and the continuing neglect and dismissal of their fight for justice over all these long decades.

Issues like violence against women and historical injustices are not  matters for trivialization nor excuse for red-tagging, especially not from an institution known for its crude human rights record, she said.

“How gravely insulting to them to even make accusations that they can be ‘used’, and to belittle, diminish and question their experience,” Wilson said . “It is your duty to educate yourselves on the history of the Lolas, and immerse yourself in the continuing and deepening understanding and consciousness on violence against women issues and how to end  it. Not be the continuing perpetrators  of all forms of abuse.”

 “Take this time to reflect on your blatant fascist misogny. You are mandated to serve  and protect the people, not villify and cause harm and insult with your ignorance.”, Wilson said.

The MPD has taken down the post  last Thursday but it did not issue any apology to the Lolas.

Perhaps it is timely that the MPD must watch the ongoing Rody Vera’s   NANA ROSA play  at the UP Diliman for them to be properly educated of the comfort women issues.

It  is a heartwarming Dulaang UP play which seeks to remind the younger generation that Filipina comfort women existed.

 It pays homage to the courage they displayed when they went public with their story.

From their original number of more than 200 in the late 1990s, less than fifty  survivors are still alive, highlighting a sense of urgency  for them to receive a formal apology and legal compensation from Japan while their voices can still be heard.

It has been almost 75 years   since the war ended on August 15, 1945, and yet the Japanese government refuses to recognize its official accountability to the victims of sexual  slavery.  

Justice has not been given to the Lolas as their fight for unequivocal public apology, accurate historical inclusion, and just compensation continues up to this day.

The FlowersforLolas is an alliance of organizations that includes Lila Pilipina, the organization of Filipino Comfort Women; the Malaya Lolas who are victims of rape by invading Japanese soldiers in Candaba, Pampanga; the Association of Descendants of WaChi guerrillas who fought alongside American soldiers and Filipino guerrillas against the Japanese, and MEMORARE Foundation, composed of descendants of American victims of WW2. Also among its members are prominent individuals who have long been involved in the issue and other patriotic causes.

Kule is the monicker of Philippine Collegian, the official student publication of UP Diliman. Atty. Dennis R. Gorecho heads the seafarers’ division of the Sapalo Velez Bundang Bulilan law offices. For comments, email info@sapalovelez.com, or call 09175025808 or 09088665786).

First Quarter Storm, Voltes V and Martial Law

I was born in the same period when  the First Quarter Storm (FQS)  was  associated with anti-Martial Law protests , mostly led by students and faculty of   the University of the Philippines in Diliman, the same academe  where I later  spent a decade of my student life.

Back in the 1970s, many members of the  UP community participated in protests against the reign of the dictator Ferdinand Marcos, prompting the declaration of Martial Law in 1972.

FQS  was a period of civil unrest with  series of demonstrations, protests, and marches against the Marcos administration mostly organized by students, which took place during the "first quarter of the year 1970” or  from January 26 to March 17, 1970.

On January 26, 1970,  Marcos delivered his State of the Nation Address (SONA) at the old legislative building in Manila as the 7th Congress opened. About 50,000 demonstrators gathered at the Burgos Drive to demand for reforms in the Constitution.

While  Marcos was on his way out, along with wife Imelda, demonstrators booed him and threw sticks and placards at him and his entourage.  

A cardboard coffin was swiftly carried by the students from hand to hand and hurled toward the presidential party, where it landed close to the limousine. The cardboard coffin symbolized the death of democracy.

Security forces, fearing a bomb, hurriedly picked up the coffin and threw it back toward the students who caught it and returned it with greater force, together with a papier mache crocodile that symbolized, among other things, the members of Congress. There was also a shower of empty bottles, rocks and other projectiles.

Anti-riot security forces attacked the demonstrators after Marcos left the scene which caused injuries to several demonstrators.  

Violent dispersals of ensuing   FQS protests were among the first watershed events in which large numbers of Filipino students of the 1970s were radicalized against the Marcos administration.

To commemorate the FQS  50th anniversary, the gates of the Palma Hall, once called Arts and Science building,  in UP Diliman is adorned by a wonderful art piece  of UP  Samasa colleague Toym Leon Imao.

"Nagbabadyang Unos" (the Gathering Storm)  is his  recent art installation   which seemed to consecrate the steps and the Palma Hall lobby that served as venue  to many protest actions and discussion groups.

“We reclaim "red" as a color of passion, courage, love, and sacrifice for our country,  we dismantle the current administration's weaponized "red tagging" and remind this generation through the arts what happened 50 years ago with the First Quarter Storm that planted the seeds of ferment and dissent that led to the toppling of a dictator.” Toym said.

Hovering above it was the design centerpiece of red -painted discarded arm chairs formed like a cloud which is a reminder of the chairs used to barricade the UP Diliman streets during the FQS.

Toym also had  artworks  that reveal how the Japanese cartoon “Voltes V “ is inseparable from the discussion on martial law and the Marcos  regime.  

The cartoon series was about an alien race of horned humans from the planet Boazania out to conquer Earth. It was up to Voltes V to defeat the Boazanians’ giant robots, known as beast fighters, sent to destroy the planet.

Voltes V  may not be provocative and radical in the traditional sense but its story does carry with it the idea of  revolution and resistance. Boazania was also under dictatorial rule from a despotic emperor, who faced an uprising from Boazanians who were discriminated against and enslaved simply because they had no horns.

In 1979, shortly before the series finale, Marcos issued a directive banning Voltes V and other similarly-themed anime series due to concerns about "excessive violence".

The directive also led to speculations at the time that the series was also taken off the air due to its revolutionary undertones.

In 2012, Marcos' son Bongbong defended his father's decision to ban Voltes V, stating that parents before were worried about the excessive violence in the show, so Marcos pulled the show and other robot-based animated series from television to appease their demands.

Depicted in many of  Toym’s artworks are images of Voltes V’s villain characters from Planet Boazania that tried to conquer Earth. It is symbolic of how the military tried to control the freedom of Filipinos in the past.

“Let’s Volt In!” is the popular line associated with Voltes V, which is timely  appropriate with the return of the Marcoses in Philippine politics.  

***

 Kule is the monicker of Philippine Collegian, the official student publication of UP Diliman. Atty. Dennis R. Gorecho heads the seafarers’ division of the Sapalo Velez Bundang Bulilan law offices. For comments, email info@sapalovelez.com, or call 09175025808 or 09088665786).

Comfort woman Lola Felicidad dies without seeing justice from Japan government

The survivors of the heinous  sexual crimes the Japanese committed are dying without  receiving  a formal apology and legal compensation from Japan.

Lola Felicidad delos Reyes, who is a member of Lila Filipina,   died last week  of pneumonia at the Labor Hospital in Quezon City at the age of 92. She was born on November 22, 1928 in Masbate.

Sometime in 1943, Felicidad was only fourteen years old when she was made to sing in front of Japanese soldiers along with her other classmates. Impressed with her performance, she was told that she will receive a gift at the garrison.

However, when she reached the place, she was taken inside a room.   Japanese soldiers forced her down onto the ground. When she struggled, another punched her in the face while another grabbed her legs and held them apart. Then they took turns to rape her.

Lola Felicing did not understand what they were doing to her since  she  had no knowledge about sex. She did not even have her menstruation.

When she begged them to stop, they just laughed.  Whenever she struggled or screamed, they would punch and kick her.

Confused,  frightened, tired and in pain, she drifted in and out of consciousness. For the next three days a succession of soldiers abused her until she was allowed to go home because she became very ill.

Her older sister had been taken by the Japanese just the year before who  died in a comfort house.

Lola Felicing kept silent for almost 40 years.

It was in the late 1990s that she came out as part of Lila Filipina  to tell the world about this inhuman practice of the Japanese during the war  with the hope that such an ordeal will never happen again to any woman.

The demise of Lola Felicing is a sad reality that the Filipino comfort women and those forced into sexual violence by Japanese invasion and occupation troops during World War II are dying without seeing justice.

It has been almost 75 years   since the war ended on August 15, 1945, and yet the Japanese government refuses to recognize its official accountability to the victims of sexual  slavery.  

Justice has not been given to women such as Lola Felicing as their fight for unequivocal public apology, accurate historical inclusion, and just compensation continues up to this day.

To date, the    lifesize statue of two women at Caticlan, Malay, Aklan is the  last remaining   statue that symbolizes the struggles of the Lolas.     

The statue was installed on February 5, 2019 and    stands on the property owned by the family of women’s rights activist Nelia Sancho, who accompanied Lola Felicing in testifying before international venues in the late 1990s.

“The purpose of the statue is to show that there was a war crime in World War II, and that is military sexual slavery. And it is unsettled so we don’t want that it is forgotten. It’s because (the victims) are now old, starting to passed away, and with their death, we don’t want the issue to die down with them,” Sancho said.

Even if it is a reminder of a painful past, the   remaining statue honors the memory, courage and resilience of these Filipino women.

On  December 2017,  Tulay Foundation’s   2-meter-high “Lola” statue of an unnamed woman wearing a traditional Filipino dress, blindfolded, with hands clutched to her chest,  was installed along Roxas Boulevard in Manila.

The Lola statue represented Filipino women’s dignity and stands as “a reminder that wars of aggression must always be opposed, and that sexual slavery and violence should never happen again to any woman, anywhere at any time.”

Four months later   the statue was dismantled under cover of darkness on April 27, 2018 by the DPWH,  allegedly for a drainage improvement project, but seen as  submission to protests from Japan.

Issues of historical revisionism and the government’s submission to Japanese policy were raised by concerned groups led by the Flowers-for-Lolas as they condemned the removal of the statue. President Duterte earlier remarked the state would not want to “antagonize” other countries.

Unfortunately, the statue is now missing.

Despite several follow-ups on the formal turn-over of the LOLA  statue back to Tulay for its reinstallation last  August  2019,  its artist Jonas Roces failed to do so. He  later told Tulay that the Lola statue was taken by unidentified men from his art studio in Cainta Rizal.

Despite the absence of the Lola  statue, a new metal historical marker dedicated to  the Lolas  was unveiled  at the Baclaran church.

Another Lola statue,   a young woman with fists resting on her lap,  has been removed from the  Catholic-run Mary Mother of Mercy  shelter for the elderly and the homeless in San Pedro, Laguna, only two days after its unveiling  January of last year.

From their original number of more than 200 in the late 1990s, less than fifty  survivors are still alive, highlighting a sense of urgency  for them to receive a formal apology and legal compensation from Japan while their voices can still be heard.

 Kule is the monicker of Philippine Collegian, the official student publication of UP Diliman. Atty. Dennis R. Gorecho heads the seafarers’ division of the Sapalo Velez Bundang Bulilan law offices. For comments, email info@sapalovelez.com, or call 09175025808 or 09088665786).