HUMAN RIGHTS AGOG IN BARBARITIES & MADNESS

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

Pleasant day to you all!

The Maoists in Manila have just released the update news that an activist (Left-leaning) is killed every week during the incumbency of President Aquino. Maoists constitute the largest Left group in the country, with an organized force large enough to participate in electoral contests and win legislative posts.

That report is surely a very revealing fact. Not only activists, but media men are also the target of summary executions and assassinations in this country, supposedly a bastion of free press in Asia.

Just recently, a topnotch botanist, Leonardo Co, was sprayed with automatic rifle bullets while conducting research on field, killing him and two of his associates. The army unit that is subject of investigation as culprits claimed that the research team was caught in a crossfire between state and rebel forces.

Human rights constitute a totality of entitlements that we have won after so many hard struggles. So much blood has been sacrificed just to make our world a livable one, blood poured to erect the edifices of prosperity, good working environments, balanced ecology, and exercise of our basic freedoms.

During the regime of the previous president Arroyo, an economist with a doctorate among her credentials, hundreds of human rights-related deaths, largely through summary executions by army and police forces, were recorded. No less than the United Nations Commission on Human Rights sent a team to investigate the human rights situation here, with the findings clearly indicating a bad situation for human rights.

Just recently, another team of experts, this time from the Human Rights Watch, did the investigations about the same theme, with focus on those committed in Mindanao. The feudal-fascistic Ampatuan family became the most focal subject of the research, with findings of gory stories of murders committed by Ampatuan politicians blindly intoxicated with power, using state paramilitary forces to commit heinous crimes.

It surely takes time for civility to take shape everywhere else in our planet. Even the bastions of democracy such as the Philippines fail in the tests of indicating successes in building human rights. In the USA, martial law was almost declared during the Bush era, a cryptic act that could have seen millions of Americans jailed and hundreds of thousands exterminated in concentration camps.

In Europe we are witness to the massive prejudices against immigrants, with Muslims appearing to be the key target of slanders and employment discriminations. Sarkozy expelled Romanian Gypsies just a few months ago, and he seems to watch with glee as his economy burns down like hell.

Power assymetries that we though would disappear with the advent of modernity, keep on being recycled in new forms. Rationality—authentic reason characteristic of authentic persons—is fading and giving way to Madness, as lamented by the contemporary philosophers.

Human right is synonymous to civilization, and the full respect of human rights can only happen in a society of rationality, wisdom, and universal love. Such a society operates on the culture of dialogue, the respect for differences, recognition of talents and competencies, and the essential respect for one’s humanity.

Sadly, such a society is not around yet, even as we need to do colossal spade works to build it. I still recall the likes of Jurgen Habermas, Erich Fromm, and Herbert Marcuse pontificate about the ‘sane society’, the ideal society that is rational, full of compassion (loving behavior), and productive. I resonate well with the minds of these thinkers who contended that no matter how bad the situation is, hope is there in building that culture of civility in a ‘sane society’.

Such a dream of building a future world can be done in a non-exclusionary way. Let us not tire in doing our spade works to build it.

[Philippines, 02 December 2010]

[See: IKONOKLAST: http://erleargonza.blogspot.com,

UNLADTAU: https://unladtau.wordpress.com,

COSMICBUHAY: http://cosmicbuhay.blogspot.com,

BRIGHTWORLD: http://erlefraynebrightworld.wordpress.com, ARTBLOG: http://erleargonza.wordpress.com,

ARGONZAPOEM: http://argonzapoem.blogspot.com]

NEPAL’S NATIONALISTS BETTER NOT SQUANDER SCARCE OPPORTUNITY

Erle Frayne  Argonza

Nationalists are in power today in Nepal. Being a Filipino nationalist, I’d honestly say there is much cause to celebrate the Nepalese nationalist’s victory.

Here in my country, we Filipino nationalists have always been in the margins. No matter what efforts we do to create a modern nation-state, our efforts get stalled by the forces of the ancien regime (landlord-clergy classes) that dominate power in the economic, political and cultural domains in my country.

Nepal is in a very privileged position than the Philippines for that matter. The forces of the ancien regime, typified by the Monarch, were overthrown from power, by way of a parliamentary fiat that abolished the Kingship. Before that, a bloody war was waged by Maoists to forge a modern, secular society. 

All the major parties in power today—Congress, Marxists, Maoists—are harbingers of the Enlightenment principles of reason, liberty, brotherhood, and progress. Much like those liberal revolutionists of France and the USA in the 18^th century, the Nepalese nationalists have smashed the old order and now have to face the formidable challenges ahead as they forge a modern nation-state with a modern economy and scientific culture.

The only competing forces in Nepal now are the nationalists themselves—the three parties concerned. True, ideological differences may be a barrier to their attainment of certain unities or consensus, but they are all united by a common cause of building a modern nation-state,  a cause that began with the demolition of the old order.

Sure, the challenges are very colossal, the tasks formidable. But what nation on Earth started  nationhood with its national life already served unto it like a lake of gold? Every nation started from down below, from rock bottom. From Cromwell’s modern England to Nepal’s post-monarchic states, the same narrative is the glaring truth: start from rock bottom, a nationalist revolution is no ‘tea party’.  

My country started in 1946 as an independent nation with a totally devastated economy. Manila, the jewel of the orient, was leveled back to the Stone Age by ceaseless carpet bombing to flash out the Japanese imperial forces in 1945. Agriculture, manufacturing and retail/wholesale trade were all flat on the ground. A communist insurgency was also brewing as the Cold War was starting.

And so the new Philippine nation had to start from the very scratch. It had to undertake an ambitious 3-year recovery to bring back the normal vibrance of the pre-war economy. Then, in 1948, it began the long road to industrialization, with the implementation of the new Economic Development Program. The Master Plan for Greater Manila Area (50-year plan) began implementation in 1949, which saw Manila’s recovery and expansion to the suburban areas where industries, residences, government offices, new universities, and new commercial centers were to rise and mark the dynamism of the new country.

It was so tough surmounting the gargantuan problems. There was the corruption that was seen in the implementation of the wartime recovery funds ($200 aid from the USA), squatting in Manila, communist insurgency arising, and the lack of technocrats (manpower) to undertake development planning to name a few. And there was landlordism that barred an effective land reform program to take off.

Amid the marginal state of nationalists’ influence and power, the new nation moved on and achieved results gradually. Much like the slow-moving carabao (water buffalo), the economy moved so slowly across the decades, yet it delivered the goods just the same. Because we nationalists are marginal here, it’s taking us a tough time to let the ‘rule of law’ permeate daily life, strengthen our institutions, construct definitive policy environments, and solve poverty.

Because the oligarchic/pro-colonial forces have been the ones in power since the start of the new Philippine republic, they kept on deterring change. Even our political parties here are no modern parties that are founded on solid ideology, but rather are platforms to advance the vested interests of leading political personalities.

Yes, the problems of nationhood are so gargantuan like what we’re going through in my country. But they can be solved. And many sympathetic forces around the world are there who can lend their support when necessary.

So, to our brother and sister Nepalese, most especially the modernist-nationalists, your chance to move up has come. Good luck to your efforts! You shall overcome!

[Writ 02 June 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila]