ICTJ in the News

November 25, 2009

Taking on a culture of violence

Global Nation - Inquirer

By Benjamin Pimentel

CALIFORNIA, United States -- And so begins the 2010 election season, kicked off by a gruesome reminder of the culture of political violence that has long plagued Philippine society. The massacre in Maguindanao was so brazen it's bound to lead more Filipinos to lose faith in Philippine democracy.

That shouldn't happen, but one can't help but be cynical and expect the crime to end up joining the already long list of unsolved acts of political violence. Maybe a few fall guys will go to prison, but the real culprits, those with the power, will likely escape unscathed. That's what happened with other past acts of political violence. Why should it be different now?

Surely, how can one take seriously the pronouncements about the "urgent need to prevent and suppress the occurrence of several other incidents of lawless violence" of a president who has been accused of some of the most blatant acts of abuse of political power in the nation's history?

But at least Maguindanao drew Malacanang's attention. For in many ways, the culture of violence persists because the nation's leaders for too long have ignored that dark side of Philippine politics.

High time for that to change. And we have much to learn from other nations who also endured traditions of political violence -- and who set up a process to face up to their painful histories.

They've been called truth and reconciliation commissions. The objective is not a witch-hunt, or revenge, but education. It would cover recent cases of politically-motivated violence, and reach back to our recent nightmare that was the Marcos regime.

Here's how it could work: Perpetrators would be given a chance to own up to past political offenses to shed more light on how these crimes happened and why. They could then be granted amnesty for cooperating. The process should be properly documented, and, most important of all, public. There should a public discussion of what is revealed. That way, we have a very open process of learning about what happened that hopefully would help prevent that past from being repeated.

Crazy idea?

Not in El Salvador or Rwanda, where such processes helped these nations confront and learn from their violent histories.

Not in South Africa where such a process has helped a nation that endured decades of racial strife deal with the most painful aspects of the apartheid era. Led by Nobel Prize Peace laureate Bishop Desmond Tutu, perpetrators, both elements of the apartheid regime and even members of the African National Congress, came forward to shed light on past acts of violence, whether it's the bombing of villages, or the torture of dissidents.

The South African process, says lawyer Ruben Carranza of the New York-based International Center for Transitional Justice, was effective in reaching "a minimum goal," to "establish a version of history that publicly and officially strips those who continue to deny their roles" in the violations of human rights.

We never went through such a process, even though we need to, especially given our recent excruciating experience with dictatorship, and the waves of political violence that followed.

The late Cory Aquino's government set up a human rights commission to examine the abuses in the Marcos era. But that process got bogged down, and eventually derailed, by the political turmoil of those years. It didn't take long for many of those accused of committing the atrocities to get back in the limelight as political power brokers.

Is it too late to look back and assess what happened? After all, it's been nearly 25 years since the Marcos nightmare ended.

The Brazilians, led by the popular President Luiz Ignacio Lula, don't think 25 years is too late. Recently, Lula's government announced the creation of a body to look into Brazil's own ugly past, the period between 1964 and 1985 when military dictatorships wreaked havoc on the country that led to the death or disappearance of about 500 people.

My friend Maya Diokno, a human rights lawyer now based in Cambodia, also doesn't think it's too late to start.

"Even if it's been many years since these violations happened, I don't think it's too late to face these truths," she told me. "That will help us break the cycle we're currently in; where government continues to do wrong without shame and accountability, and people continue to accept it."

That passion for human rights is strong in Maya's family. Her father, the late Senator Pepe Diokno, was a giant in the international human rights movement, and led the human rights commission during the Aquino years.

"The consequence of not dealing with these issues has led to people forgetting that these events ever happened, and how bad things were," Maya said. "I think people also have managed to convince themselves that those who were killed, tortured, lost their homes were all insurgents and were therefore somehow ‘different' from them."

"So, people remember the Marcos era as one of peace and prosperity because the violations happened to other people, not them."

Setting up a Truth and Reconciliation won't be easy, Ruben Carranza says. There are technical legal issues to work out. The process will also likely have to include the abuses after the fall of Marcos, and also cover other political players, including the underground Left. But the most important factor will be the political will of the new government.

"You can almost see how this might unfold in the Philippines, if and when someone like Noynoy is elected President. There will be resistance; there could be compromises-any effort to set up a truth commission ought to be done while his political capital hasn't been eroded by issues that are, in many ways, more immediate: unemployment, more natural disasters, defections by unhappy allies. Our presidents only have one term-so if a Truth and Reconciliation is to be set up, it will have to be set up in the first year of his administration."

Does he think it's a good idea?

"Yes, if it is an Aquino government," he said, referring to Sen. Nonoy Aquino. "Probably not if it is a government led by someone who has no record of fighting impunity or specially someone who has reason to try and preserve that impunity."

That perhaps is one ray of hope in the coming elections, that the front runners for the top prize are in a strong position to begin a process of confronting our violent political culture.

I've heard that Noynoy's running mate, Sen. Mar Roxas has long admired Brazil's Lula who is best known for turning around the South American country's once-struggling economy. Lula's bold bid to confront Brazil's violent past is another reason to learn from his example.

There are deeper reasons to hope that an Aquino-Roxas administration could help begin the process of ending the culture of political violence. After all, their fathers were victims of a painful chapter in Philippine history, and became symbols of the fight to end it. Aquino has said that, if elected president, he would refocus the government's efforts on the struggle to recover the ill-gotten wealth from the Marcos years.

Perhaps he and Roxas should take an even bolder step.

"Taking on a culture of violence" originally appeared in the Global Nation - Inquirer.