Off i go with random stories that can only be experienced firsthand…in UP Diliman.
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Karen Empeño and Sherlyn Cadapan.
Last July 7 2006, i regretted going out of Molave Residence Hall not wearing a red shirt. It was supposed to be a Red Shirt Day, says the University Student Council, to protest the kidnappings of two UP Students tagged as members of the New People’s Army. Naturally i don’t usually go with stuff like that, although i wore a red shirt on a Red Shirt Day during my freshman year, but that was just for going with the trend.
I happened to meet a groupmate at AS Lobby that day, and it so happened that there were members of Sigao-UP there, too. They were shouting on top of their lungs about the injustice of it all, and the cowardice of one fake president. Students were, of course, drawn to them, stopping to look at the tarps laid on the floor. One large poster bore Karen and Sherlyn’s faces along with the words KIDNAPPED; another poster counted off the murdered activists and journalists during GMA’s Dark Reign. As i looked along with others, i felt afraid for my fellow Iskolars. Who knows where they are now or what Palparan’s goons have have made them to become now? I’ve heard of things that happened during the onset of Matrial Law - disappearances, abductions of the worse kind, killings - and now the threats extend to students like us. GMA’s paranoia is scary. Studying in UP Diliman, i sort of expected to be near all the rackets and commotions between activists and political dog bites. But not like this. I fear to wait for the day when someone close to me finds himself/herself in Karen’s blindfolds and Sherlyn’s gags.
Dear Lord, we pray for them in our hearts, and now, even though fairly little, my voice goes out to them, joining hundreds else that disapprove of this cowardice and inhumanity.
FREE KAREN AND SHERLYN!
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The New Collegian
Juan Paolo Colet and his staff are out of the picture, and lookie what thse exits brought in: an all new, all better Philippine Collegian! Changes were evident in the first issue alone, and this week’s print is even better. Nice cover and spread arts, interesting stories, an intriguing comic section. It is something very UP, very Isko, very deserving of readership and admiration.
Thumbs up to the new staff!!!
You can check out all issues of the Collegian here :
http://kule0607.deviantart.com/
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The Germans In Front Of Palma Hall
Imagine this happening to you. Just imagine.
Your first baby killed by a fake widwife (apparently hired by your family).
Your boy, around 10 years old, raped by a 33 year old man in Taytay,kidnapped by rugby boys, sold and trafficked.
Your baby girl, around the same age, a hit and run victim.
You wife is forsaken and abused by her family, is ganged upon by the same family and barangay officials.
Your family abroad strips you and your father of inheritance and they leave you to strarve in a third world Asian country.
And starve you did. You had to beg around the campus of the country’s premier institution, where you graduated. You pick scraps below tables just to feed your family.
You are betrayed by ABS CBN, broadcasting lies and and inaccuracies to cover up your family’s misfortunes.
Even the Catholic Church does nothing but help increase your suffering. The preist and its officials betray you. They don’t even care.
Nobody wants to print or broadcast your story, even the Philippine Collegian doesn’t want it.
To top it all off, your wife finally gets beaten again by her family and the brgy officials, and because of a heart disease she’s carried since then, she dies.
You don’t even have her body. For all you know her family’s still using her to solicit from SSS and others. You just want to get her back and fulfill her wishes of cremation.
And still many still turn a deaf ear. There is no justice to those that could, that must give it.
Imagine all that happening to you.
It happened to one family. The Heimrach’s.
I saw Mr Joseph Heimrach this morning, dressed in a cotton shirt and a journalist’s vest, in dirty pants, and wearing slippers with socks that are tainted with mud. His daughter sits with him, a beautiful creature you wouldn’t think being hit and run over and the government refusing to charge the culprit. They sit on a bench in front of Palma Hall, and alid on the ground before them are posters of their pride and suffering, wet with rain and filthy with dust.
With a sorry heart i talked to Mr J. I asked him what i could do. Fresh from the Encounter with God Retreat, my heart told me something should be done. I’ve read their story (they had handouts, but could not afford to give them away because they had no more xerox.) He told me about what had happened to them, to their kids, how his family stripped him of 250 million worth of German currency and leaving them to starve. How the Philippine government made fun of him and told him
Joe, you have no rights in this country.
How his wife’s family got it all and never stopped until they killed a part of them. How he almost lost his son and his daughter. How he lost his wife.
He spoke to me in English, his german accent there but barely conspicuous. He saw through my affection and said words i could not understand coming from a man who’s life had been so destroyed and trodden.
Do not feel bad for us, do not fear.
Go away from here and be proud of my wife. She needs to go places. Put it on the internet, tell anyone you can.
I normally do not fight for Filipinas, but she was a Filipina wife, and that’s different. That’s why I’m here, so that people will know about her strength. She’s truly a Filipina who we can be proud of. Her only fault was loving me. She died a Christian.
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I walked away with a handshake and a smile from MR J. But i was sad, and here i am, hoping to tell you more. I ask that we pray for these people, that they may recieve justice even while they are here on earth, for surely the judgment reserved for their oppressors are waiting. May we pray for their providence and strength, for now they rely on students who pay for their rent, who give them food and moral support. Write to people you know who has the courage to print such stories. I for one am writing to Reader’s Digest. But we know something more must be done. They are good people. And they need help, so let us give them that.
