SABBATICAL NOTES. TUESDAY. 27 MAY 2014. N1. On the Martial Law thing in Thailand. LET it be said: I am not endorsing this takeover by the military, via a junta it initially called National Peace and Order Maintaining Council of Thailand. I am not a Thai and I have no business minding the already-mired and complex situation of that country. I was in Cambodia when Martial Law was declared in Thailand after days of denial by the same people who declared it. Curiosity got the better of me when I was in that Khmer country. I thought of going to the Bangkok-land to find out for myself what was happening, not from the pronouncements of that countrys officialdom but from the way the everyday Thai person (1) looked at his/her situation, and (3) regarded this new twist in his/her countrys collective life. I do not have reference points of a Martial Law situation except that one I have gone through as a young person in Ilocoslavakia. That, of course, was not for Ilocoslavakia alone but for the entire country, but having only the radio as the convenient way to get something, just something, about what was happening, no one could tell what was this Martial Law thing was all about. One morning, that radio just went rarek. That was the sound of a radio that has no signal, but creates a sound nevertheless, and however much one makes pusipos the dial, no human sound could come off except that almost Martian krrrrrrk-krrrk which to me sounded like rakek. School was out. Newspapers were out. And the red painting on the white capitols walls stopped. The famous names of activists either were in Camp Juan by the hills in the east, or went AWOL. We had heard of phrases that were mantric: benevolent dictatorship, Martial Law-Philippine-style, and that unforgettable New Society formula courtesy of a government think-tank we heard was based at UP Diliman. Many other dissidents and protesters went into hiding. But some were found out, and promptly salvaged, killed, tortured, or kept in detention for so long until their spirit gave way, until they could talk to ants they lured into coming into their detention cells by spreading the sugar of their coffee on the floor. [Monico Atienza, one-time colleague at the UP Diliman, told me of his story about this; others did the same thing, including the luring of rats into their cells. Or roaches.] This went on for nine long years, the longest years one can ever have if those years meant awakening, and in a more exotic sense that summons the inert, sometimes inutile symbolisms of patriarchy, the rite-de-passage thing of circumcision, both literal and figurative. [I remember that I wrote a poetry collection on this, and I entitled it Bunniaganka iti nagan ti asin --I baptize you in the name of salt for a grant with the Cultural Center of the Philippines when at a younger age, I thought I could turn these ugly experiences into something better than ugly through the power of word. I did not have any good memories of the nine years of Martial Law. Even when I was still in the seminary for those many years of formation to the vowed life--and I even went on to have temporary vows--the Martial Law years were scary. I knew of priests, nuns, missioners, and other church workers who either were detained, imprisoned, and even killed. I knew of seminaries being raided. I knew of convents all their books that had references to Marxism, communism, or liberation theology. I knew of a novitiate in the big city raided by the implementors of Martial Law. I knew one death too many. This ML episode of our life in the Philippines bred a different citizenry: one group is the powerful one, with guns for their strength and uncontrollable authority to make people cower; another group is that of the vanquished, not thinking at all but following, not reflecting but submitting, not singing songs of liberation but singing songs of the new society that was about to come, or, perhaps, had come for all peoples of the country. I have no reason to believe now that this ML thing in Thailand is the solution to its problems. But I have questions whether the civilian leaders of the county--after seven months of chaos and disorder and useless bickerings--have the capacity to put order to their own house. For the first few days of Thailands ML, the guns were silent. Yesterday, we got to know that there had been three deaths, with that act of a sowing of terror in one of the provinces. We do not know yet if this is connected to ML, or to something else.
Posted on: Tue, 27 May 2014 03:33:34 +0000
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