Walls will be written with spilled blood!

Another militant killed in Negros Oriental: Eladio Dasi-an! This latest killing is said to bring to at least 232 the number of militants killed since President Macapagal-Arroyo took office in 2001, and to 44 the number of media people murdered during that period. This makes all the more the letter of Archbishop Lagdameo, the present president of CBCP, relevant!

One could readily conclude that this wave of unprecedented killings is reinformed by Gloria's misadvised policy against the rebels. (See previous blog). This is even reflected by an off-tangent appeal of Secretary Bunye, calling on the public "to lend its full cooperation to the campaign against terror and graft by acting as the eyes and ears of the government. In a statement, Press Secretary and Presidential Spokesman Ignacio R. Bunye pointed out that "the fight against terror and graft are both indispensable elements of the country’s political stability." Although I agree that graft should be addressed, the fight against terror is always to eleminate the causes of terrorism or rebellion.

Doronilla's editorial could give us some revealing light. According to a disclosure, the upsurge of killings of Left-wing militants since 2001, totals more than 200 members of the legal Bayan Muna party-list organization. "The principal suspects behind these killings are paramilitary death squads." According to an Inquirer source, documents “don’t say that members of sectoral groups are to be killed but they do use the term neutralize — a term implicitly understood by the underworld of Philippine politics as a go-ahead for death squad assassinations.”

He continues. . ."The emphasis of this strategy on “neutralizing” sectoral/front/legal organizations helps explain why most of the victims of the past five years have been non-combatants and defenseless members of the Left. During that period, the number of murdered aboveground members of the Left has far exceeded fatalities of the New People’s Army in armed encounters with security forces."

Death penalty was officially abolished! Really? Or there is another death penalty the continues to bleed our country and blood of our countrymen is offered as a sacrifice to the gods of this present government: power, money and corruption. Let us not wait that these spilled blood will be written on the walls!

This war policy of President Gloria Macapagal would lead more people to take arms. It will militarize our government. It makes more and more evident that the military is over the civilian authority or it allows itself to be ruled by these "death squads".

The people will be alienated more from its own government when the same allows them to be killed rather than defend and seek justice for them. Justice to a husband and wife also recently killed in Kidapawan: George and Mazel Vigo and to all the defenceless journalists!

Let first justice reign in our land and peace will surely flourish! For there cannot be peace without justice!

Hurrah to the “Culture of Life!”

This culture of death must end! Following the much appreciated decision of the Supreme Court’s denial of Presidential Proclamation 1017, declaring a state of national emergency in February and the so-called “Calibrated Pre-empted Response”, I welcome this another enlightened decision of the Supreme Court.

Nobody has the right to take another man’s right – even the state. Only the Creator has. The right to life is absolute and it is God-given. Abortion, euthanasia, suicide, even killing of fetuses for stem cell research is objectively and intrinsically evil!

By abolishing death penalty in our country we could begin a milestone of affirming the culture of life. This is a good start for change, first of all: a shift of our cultural mentalities which has gone wild to the point of killings, kidnappings, rape, etc.

I do appreciate very much this new and fresh wind of mentality from the Supreme Court. May these good men and women flower and bloom in this country which seem to become a valley of tears, if not a land soaked with blood.