`It Feels Like Martial Law All Over Again

By: Bob Boyer

 

This outcry sums up the frightening news I received recently from my friend José (Butch) Dalisay. It arrived by email on Oct. 26, a few days after I had submitted my November article for this column. What Butch told me was more than shocking. It chilled me deeply. Butch was imprisoned during the Marcos martial law era, so he doesn’t make such a comment about the present lightly. His first career was as a journalist, and he remains a journalist on the side, even as he has become a UP Professor and author of numerous books of fiction and non-fiction. Like other journalists everywhere, he has developed a thick skin. And like other journalists, especially in the Philippines, he has acquired a degree of fatalism. Even after Marcos’ martial law, the annual murder rate of journalists in the Philippines remains among the highest in the world.

For the reasons just mentioned, I also took very seriously the conclusion of Butch’s email, which was by the way addressed to a half dozen “US-based friends”: “I hate to be morbid, but if anything happens to me, at least you’ll know why.” I hasten to note that Butch wrote those lines on Oct. 26, and I received his most recent email on Nov. 30, three days ago.

The particular events that have prompted this grim view of such an experienced and toughened journalist are the murders of two people close to him. First came the senseless, inexplicable killing of Lauren Kristel Rosales, shot three times by a fellow passenger, a man on a jeepney. The “unidentified killer walked away” and is still, as I write this, unknown. Lauren was the girlfriend of Butch and his wife’s nephew Gab. They were all very close. Butch and his wife June got word of the murder while on vacation in the U.S. this past July. That’s when they got an online photo of Lauren lying dead on the floor of the jeepney.

Butch wrote about the killing and what it said about the state of affairs in the Philippines. The article appeared in the “Esquire Philippines Magazine,” dated Sept. 19. The printed article’s title sums up its contents: “Collateral Damage.” Lauren and many others have become the innocent victims of the vigilante killings in the war on drugs. As a good journalist and a prudent person, Dalisay does not accuse any individual since, as he says, “We may have our suspects, but we have no proof.” He does, however, raise the question, “So was she collateral damage in the new administration’s all-too-literal war on drugs?” He asks a follow-up question, “Did someone have to scratch his head and say, ‘Sorry boss, I got the wrong one, but I’ll make sure to get it right tomorrow’?”

It was the quest for proof that ledd to the second death, that of Lauren’s brother Petronio Rosales Jr., known to family and friends simply as JR. JR returned from the UK for his sister’s funeral and postponed his return so he could monitor the police’s investigation of his sister’s murder. In Butch’s Oct. 26 email, he made the stunned announcement of JR’s murder: “you all remember Lauren Rosales—our nephew’s girlfriend who was shot dead on her way to work last July . . . ? early yesterday morning, her brother JR . . . was himself shot dead by a motorcycle-riding gunman in Makati.” Butch then included two links to GMA, an online news source that gave further details, also on Oct. 26. GMA is an independent news source that appears to have a strong social justice orientation.

Butch Dalisay reflected near the end of his “Esquire” article that “Our dear, hapless Lauren wasn’t the only collateral damage in this offensive— it’s every citizen’s peace of mind.” In his email about JR’s death, Butch asks for prayers for the family, which is “in shock . . . and won’t even talk to the media anymore,” understandably. “to seek justice is to invite death to one’s door. Pray for Lauren and JR, and God help all of us.”

I’ve asked Butch to let me know if the Catholic Church has spoken out against the vigilantism in the Philippines and I’ve done an archival search on the question in the “Philippine Star” and “The Philippine Daily Inquirer.” The Philippines Catholic Conference of Bishops has pleaded for the “rule of law.” Cardinal Tagle, Archbishop of Manila, seems to have chosen to promote an alternative. He has not openly attacked Dutuerte, but instead of a war on drugs, he has established the “Restorative Justice Ministry,” in Manila, opening the doors of the Church to support arrested drug addicts and pushers in seeking personal and social rehabilitation. Something else to pray for, an alternative to war and collateral damage.

Contact Bob Boyer at robert.boyer@snc.edu or <anamericaninmanila. com>.