Chapter II

CHAPTER 2




Daily Union News Headquarters
2002

Philippines was in the news now more than ever. The international media was awash with headlines about nearly one hundred dead journalists.

Felicitas Arrantez, front page editor of The Daily Union, was scratching something off her head with her letter opener while talking with her nephew, Rico, who was the Union’s computer geek. They manage to get desks near each other all the time, the ANS --- Aunt and Nephew Section, they were called.

“My, my! They really put us on the spot this time! Look at all these articles and features! My goodness!!!” Felice gasped.

“We’re even more unpopular than the Kling-ons of Star Trek, Tita Felice. Will you stop punishing your scalp, Tita? Your dandruff is falling all over the place. And you're wearing a black blouse, it shows,” Rico said.

Felice suddenly stopped her fingers. “Okay, okay. That's the fiftieth time you reminded me in one week. Anyway, what was I saying? Ah! What the hell do these people think they are doing killing all those poor writers?” Felice asked, as if to herself alone, oblivious to her nephew now.

“They're not people to me Tita."

“Those Abu el-Saif bandits surely want more than just ransoms from their kidnappings. Now they really want to make it big in publicity too! Look at how the news spread like wildfire across the globe.” Cicero Karangalan butted in, interrupting Felice’s habitual reveries. He was one of the Union’s most erudite columnists. He never used to write, but the bug bit him hard and suddenly, he had to fork in his contribution to the Union’s printing load everyday.

Rico looked up at him and smiled. He admired Cicero who doted upon him like a son. And he's really brilliant, Rico believed. He wondered though why Tita Felice never went with Cicero on the date he's been asking for, for already a hundred years he used to complain.

“Oh, hi Ces!” Felice greeted her long time admirer, perennial suitor, and good friend, the Union Wordsmith and Walking Encyclopedia as Cicero was affectionately called behind his back.

“Hello, beautiful,” Cicero winked at lady he had long fancied to be his wife.

Rico read from his computer: “ ‘Whereas dictatorships killed journalists one by one, in the Philippines they kill them by the hundreds,’ ‘Journalists are executioners’ fodder in the Philippine Islands,’ ‘Killing Journalists a pasttime in Mindanao,’ ‘They massacre Journalists in the Philippines,’ newspaper banners and write-ups scream the same topic.

“Failure of intelligence,” Cicero snorted.

“No offense, Ces, but is it really? Is that what it is? We are to blame for what those terrorists suddenly decide to do?” Felice flared.

Cicero was on the defensive, “Not us Fel. The military. The police. The NBI. The President, even.” He smiled wanly at his weak reply.

Felice suddenly hears herself laughing and cussing at the same time, “Ha haaa!!! Shit!!!”

Cicero took out a folded sheet of paper from his wallet and read:

" 'Our worry should be these hardcore groups that are calling themselves freedom fighters, liberation fronts, separatist movements and so forth. By their acts they manifest themselves as purely and plainly as mere coldblooded killers, sociopaths. It even becomes trite just to call them terrorists. These are the wretched of humanity. They worship mayhem, chaos, fear and disorder. And now comes this macabre massacre of almost a hundred innocent members of the media.' I wrote this at the house but I think I would not even want to publish this in my column tomorrow. Makes me sick." he said. "I honestly can't agree with you more, son." he patted Rico on the head while looking forlorn at Felice.

"Well, my dear, its your call. But I like that piece. Let me see it?"

Cicero handed over the article. Then excused himself. On his way to his desk, he was beaming with pride. Then he thought, why did I ever say that article makes me sick?

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Even at her thirty five summers, Dr. Coscolluela’s experience in these macabre scenes were the closest that she could get to an MCI (mass casualty incident) in the jargon of SAR (Search and Rescue) community, the International Committee of the Red Cross and the International Committee of the Red Crescent, Israel's Magon David Adom and all the others in it. She had never actually been in a mass casualty incident before in her life. Or had gone anywhere near one after the fact. Oh, she had her fill of videos, power point presentations, still photos of MCIs from everywhere. But this one really gets to her.

She was not in the Ormoc disaster where more than 8,000 people lay dead in the wake of a huge water and log stampede because some powerful people dug for gold in the tip of an enormous mountain in the island province of Leyte -- famously known as the home province of former Philippine First Lady Mrs. Imelda Marcos; in the same incident in Mindoro Oriental where hundreds perished – again in a log stampede that no one wanted to admit was caused by the illegal logging of the province’s governor; later on, of course she came to Dili. But she had never seen more mangled and badly beaten bodies than this one here in Saluag.

It had been more than seventeen months ago now, when the East Timor situation stabilized — or almost, as they used to kid themselves back there then — as she had arrived at Dili. What she caught up with were the returning batches of military servicemen and a few civilians ending their observation and humanitarian assistance tour in the former Dutch and later Indonesian colony.

The Dili massacre was a thing of the past when she arrived there. She just had mere glimpses of what transpired in the caked blood on the cemetery, the gruesome colored photos at the Australian armed forces-led Head Quarters for the United Nations Task Force on East Timour.

Those pictures made her freeze at the instant she saw them and her innards tumbled. It brought her back to the days before she became a full-fledged doctor at the Inter-Faith World Catechistic Institute (IFWCI) when she and her batch mates formed the Metro Tagaytay City Emergency Response Team. Back then, she got to see the morbid and gory evidences of human pain and injury. She was thankful for the East Timor assignment and wondered why she had to be pulled out suddenly and with the Australian and Filipino doctors outside of the new state. Of course she was a well-respected volunteer of the International Red Cross.

On the helicopter ride to Saluag, however, she rationalized that the Timorese now, far well enough away from true normalcy in their day-to-day lives, are a little more well-off and fortunate than her own fellow Filipinos. Her countrymen are getting to be in a very depressing situation at the moment. The fact that at that time, she did enjoy her stay in Timor, betrayed the change in the mood. The assignment did her good.

Now it is actually Indonesia’s turn to look for succor. In response to the alleged genocide that the erstwhile Indonesian armed forces Chief of Staff General Prabowo Subianto perpetrated, the surviving kin of the victims created vigilante groups out to defend themselves against Prabowo’s troops in the special elite forces, Kopassus, and Kostrad.

The vigilantes gained sympathizers from the People’s Democratic Party (PRD). Student demonstrations marred Indonesia’s otherwise already relatively calm cities (after the Timorese affair) especially following the world renowned Trisakti killings. Then severe hostilities would erupt in Aceh, followed by the now infamous Jema’ah Islamiyyah bombings.

The perpetrators promised there would be more. And there might have been. Eventually she learned from Major Signes that Singapore went into a frenzy of an anti-terrorist crackdown after another MCI – seen the world over – in New York where the historic twin towers of the World Trade Center and a whole wing of the Pentagon were razed to the ground by terrorists using commandeered jet liners as big bombs.

Not too long after, a series of bombings took place in many parts of the globe since, with more of them popping in Israel. In her own country, The Philippines, a series of arrests continue to be made.

Indonesian Fathurrahman al Ghazy was discovered in The Philippines to be hiding at least one ton of bomb component — nitrate, they called it — and hundreds of detonating devices meant to be shipped to Singapore and other destinations. Not a small number of Filipino accomplices who confessed to knowing and working with Al Ghazy were also rounded up.

At some time in the past, two things had been happening south of the Philippine archipelago and very close to where she was now: More than 1,000 Americans soldiers went deep into joint training exercises called “Balikatan 02-1” with Filipino soldiers in Basilan Island nearby while in Zamboanga City, foreigners Malcolm Key, Marie Treacle, Ron Veel, Arminda Vaeter, Scotty O’Donnell, Duke Hanesferd, Mizu Kawashige, Masuko Kahizude, Tanaka Ikeban and Marishita Kaizen, among others, were mentioned in the news to be holding an international observers’ mission on possible human rights violations being committed in the process of the vaunted training exercises.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

As the days and years passed, Brig. Gen. Semeon Aguilar looked back at that day. His memory of it almost fading into the deeper realms of his subconscious. He still could not miss the mixed emotion of being amused and puzzled at the same time. He would not learn about Operation Black Scimitar then, never did. But neither would the late National Security Council (NSC) Project Manager Richard Gloria who had recently died in an ambush after receiving his promotion to NSC Director.

Like Aguilar, Brig. Gen. Nieto Jabbon, a highly decorated soldier, at the very same time was also looking back at those days when the group they had helped form, then just a small, fledgling group of bandits had now become big. So big and too difficult to handle, like their leader Muhammad bin Wadn Hassan. His partner Col. Dolor died recently and he suspected it was because those bandits had grown into a huge monstrous glob.

Brigadier Generals Aguilar and Jabbon shivered at the possibility that they could probably be unaware the price for involvement in the operation was now being collected and someone was making a good job of it. Jabbon tried to perish the thought. So did Aguilar. But deep in their guts, the both of them, thinking at the same time from two places that were far from each other, felt terribly afraid.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Mariko wandered away from the mortuary operational response command post, nearly thirty of the warped bodies passing through her hands as the case anthropologist. She felt slightly sick deep inside her. Yet she knew had not seen the last of it. This was a job to be done and back home in Japan she was well trained for it.

She knew deep in her heart that the job was difficult.

Mariko took something from her pocket. It was a minute diary she had kept for a long time inside her purse where she listed in her native Japanese language, in Hiragana script. She had painstakingly updated the accounts in her diary from time to time. The project began when she was only fourteen, encouraged by her own mother who had been a UN health worker who had been shot at, had figured in a land mine explosion, but survived. Unfortunately, now she had been sick from a parasite that she also got in the line of duty.

Her father, was the chief pastor of a large Shinto sect. She herself doubted her own affiliation to her dad and mom's common religion. But she remained faithful and loving to both of them.

Some of the casualties suffered by her fellow Red Cross volunteer workers and by those in its sister aid organization, the Red Crescent were patiently recorded in her journal as she found them in whatever source she got hold of. Each time she surfs the internet or runs through the micro-fiche library in her school, in her hometown's public library, she took time to search for these historical tidbits.

She would never stop reading and rereading the little book. Its entries grew over the years. The items she wrote in it did not follow a chronological order. She merely kept tabs of the incidents as she found them. Ironic as it seemed, it gave her one of the reasons why she had kept going back to the Japan Red Cross office as a guest and finally to apply as a trainee and then an aid worker. Later, such as on this day, it served as way for affirming the compassionate and courageous vocation that members and volunteers like her have dedicated themselves to.

June 1996. Three Red Cross workers killed in Zaire when unidentified gunmen attacked a supply depot of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies near Goma in eastern Zaire. One Zairean United Nations High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR) security guard also slain in the attack and four others injured.

September 1996. Two Red Cross workers killed in Zaire. The workers were from the Red Cross Society of the Republic of Zaire (ZRC). Three others lost their legs to amputation. They were on board a bus that hit a land mine near Goma, Eastern Zaire.

June 1996. Red Cross worker killed in Uganda. The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) and the Uganda Red Cross Society (URCS) suspended activities in Koboko, North Uganda, after rebels attacked their base. Nine other people died in the attack.

June 5, 1996. Another one-day suspension of aid operations in Burundi. This was a sign of sympathy by IFRC with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) whose three delegates were killed when their vehicles were ambushed on the previous day.

January 1996. Two Red Cross staff members were ambushed in Angola on different occasions.

20 November 1997. Red Cross volunteers placed themselves in harm's way -- serving the public -- while fighting between warring groups raged in Brazzaville, capital of Congo.

12 September 1997. Two Red Cross workers killed in Rwanda when their vehicle was ambushed on the road between Nkamira and Gisenyi. The driver, Shabani Nsanzebahiga and Mr. Bucyensenge, a member of the local Kanama Red Cross committee, were escorting an employee of the Ministry of Youth, Miss Espérance, from the Red Cross youth camp in Nkamira to hospital in Gisenyi. She was also killed.

29 August 1997. Two IFRC delegates evacuated from Pointe-Noir, Congo due to the violence in the area. They flew to Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire.

14 February 1997. Eight aid workers were killed and a general escalation of violence in the past three weeks has been observed. IFRC reduces its staff from Kigali, Rwanda, due to the violence. Twenty-five delegates were scheduled to go to Nairobi. Only six delegates will remain in Kigali to maintain the delegation until operations return to normal.

11 June 1998. A Red Crescent worker of Sudan, Magboul Mamoun, was killed with two employees from the World Food Programme when their vehicle was ambushed Tuesday 9 June.

November 1999. Red Cross and Red Crescent suffer a major drop in global volunteer force. In the last decade, the worldwide volunteer force of the Red Cross and Crescent dropped by more than 50 per cent. Over nine years, number of members and volunteers dropped from 220 million to 105 million since 1990.

November 1999. Six Magen David Adom emergency health workers were injured.

7 March 2002. A Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) paramedic, Ibrahim Assad, killed in his ambulance in Tulkarem, in northern part of West Bank by Israeli army fire while responding to an emergency call.

7 March 2002. Another paramedic, Kamal Hamdan from the United Nations (UNRWA), was also killed in the incident. Two PRCS emergency medical technicians (EMT) injured. Assad is the third Red Cross worker killed in the violence that began in September 2000.

4 March 2002. Dr. Khalil Sulieman, Head of Palestine Red Crescent Society Emergency Medical Service in Jenin was killed. Four other Palestine Red Crescent paramedics, and a volunteer, were injured in the incident.

October 2000. EMT Bassam Balbeisi, was killed in Gaza while trying to save two civilians caught in cross-fire between Palestinians and Israelis.

September - October 2000. Total Palestine Red Cross Society volunteers and personnel injured since September 2000: 140.

After her last entry, there were a still a lot of blank pages. But the last page of the diary contained a short poem:

a breeze comes. a soft voice calls in a whisper;

the sky is a blur, the earth moves. i listen.

then it becomes clear, the sound: oh it is nothing

it's just death, visiting.

Mariko's attention snapped back to the present. The last victim Mariko worked was the peculiar one. Found at the spot about a hundred meters away from the main heap, the disfigured, headless female lay on the table, all shot up with lead they say was from an M-14 rifle. Mariko and the others counted at least thirty eight punctures and more than twenty exit wounds from the woman's legs up to her neck. Besides the punctures injuries, there were four large wounds from a sharp blade.

Earlier before the paramedics transferred her to the command post, Mariko noticed there was a number of minute compact discs littered beside her incongruous frame. Mariko, who was the first to investigate her corpse then, had called upon a female technician to take the CDs to the forensic tent.

Mariko hadn't been able to speak to Rhea, the young techie who lifted the CDs anymore. After the incident, the newcomer at the Air Force Rescue Squadron was suddenly recalled to her home unit. However, she did speak with Ramon and she was told that the discs were from a miniature but powerful digital video camera. Major Signes mentioned that it had up to 500 or even more Mega Pixels resolution -- which Mariko appreciated.

"That is amazing for mini videocam Sir!" she said excitedly. "Must be expensive," she said and Ramon said, "Could only be a spy using that kind camera."

"Yes Sir, and I think images must have be a clear images. Yes?"

"Oh, they are very clear indeed. And the faces of the terrorists are on the discs, nearly every one of them. It appears that the people killed here were secretly held hostages for at least 60 hours -- well, according to the tapes. Then they were killed when they learned from where they kidnapped them that a search party was launched by sixteen governments."

"Oohh! Good! Good!" was all Mariko could say then.

While she walked along the undisturbed part of the beach, Mariko’s hand felt for her cell phone that was in vibrate mode and silently indicating she had a call. Unbuttoning the phone’s holster, she promptly said, “Moshi, moshi. Hai! Otousan!” Her father.

In seconds, Mariko’s disposition changed from concerned to insecure.

“Hai. Dame, dame, otousan!”

“Hitori ja nai, otousan!”

“Ai shi teru, otousan!”

She replaced the cellular phone in the holster at her hip and clipped the button back.

Tears welled in her eyes while she turned back and met Janey. Her instinct was to hug someone, lean on a shoulder and cry out her problem.

“Dr. Jane, my mother just died!” Mariko cried out. She was about to run off to her tent but Janey embraced her.

Janey consoled her, “Do you wish to attend the service for your mother?”

Mariko shook her head, “Actually, it would being more painful. For me more pain. My mother and me Mariko, we very close. But father disapproved my going with Red Cross? He dislike me coming here....”

Jane hugged Mariko again whose frail body was rocking with sobs. “It’s alright Mari, I’ll be here for you. We'll all be here for you.” Jane. The strong, firm voice gone. All feminine and caring. Mariko hugged Jane back hard and forgot where she was. It was for a brief moment, the end of the world for her.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *