Cruelty to the poor and democracy

Inquirer Opinion / Columns

Commentary : Cruelty to the poor and democracy

By Denis Murphy
Philippine Daily Inquirer

Posted date: November 29, 2009

CRUELTY TO THE POOR BY GOVERNMENT people or the agents of the powerful are always surprising, since it seems so unnecessary. The urban poor with whom I’ve worked for many years are among the most patient, tolerant and realistic people God ever made. There’s no need for violence of any sort. The people will cooperate in any government plan that is based on consultations and common sense.

Instead, there is an endless tale of violence big and small done to them, which in the end undermines the people’s sense of their dignity and democracy itself, just as long rains loosen the soil on the hillside and eventually bring down the whole hill or mountain.

Cruelty manages to turn first-class citizens into resentful people, willing to scheme and do whatever may be needed to get what they want for themselves. Think of how the people of Estero dela Reina will react to government in the future after their experience with an eviction team of the Metro Manila Development Authority on Nov. 11. The people were told they had to get out of their homes of 20 or more years and relocate to the Norzagaray resettlement area, 40 kilometers or more away. They didn’t want to go, but they had little choice: whether they agreed to go or not their homes would be torn down.

The eviction turned out badly. People including women were injured in violent scuffles with the MMDA. Nothing is uglier than seeing women and even pregnant women and the demolition team fighting over pieces of lumber and G.I. roofing. Finally 10 families left Binondo in an MMDA truck at about 4 p.m. with a cross-section of poor people, the elderly, a few men, women, small children and babies. They arrived at the resettlement area at 8 p.m. because of the heavy traffic. The barangay captain there told them they couldn’t enter because they didn’t have the proper papers. They came back to Binondo at 11 p.m. to sleep on the sidewalk.

An almost similar episode took place a few days earlier. Families from Santolan, Pasig were brought to the Calauan resettlement area, 100 km from Manila. When they got there, they found there were no homes for them. They returned to Santolan, though now they were homeless. The callousness of the officials involved is breathtaking. No one apologizes. Not every poor person has to experience cruelty personally. Word of it travels fast in poor communities.

Sometimes matters turn truly violent. On Oct. 10 in North Fairview, Quezon City, Myrna Porcare, 52, was shot down with a shotgun at a distance of two or three meters by the security guards of the landowner. Her offense was to try to remove a fence put up illegally by the guards. Police watched the incident develop, but didn’t intervene. Myrna’s son was also killed. The killers are now out on bail.

It seems clear in this incident that these guards are not for security at all. No one was threatening them or the landowner, and the police were there to protect the demolition crew. The guards were not needed. Can the rich buy what can be called “special forces,” or “guns for hire,” who can be sent into an area to do whatever the owner wants?

There are even more harsh incidents against the poor in the rural areas, around mining sites, in factories and plantations, and once in a while something like the Maguindanao massacre. People treated unfairly over time lose any sense that they are citizens of a democracy where their rights as human beings under God should be guaranteed and their human freedoms defended. To be a citizen should bring rights and security, and, hence, pride. Even St. Paul was proud to say he was a Roman citizen (Acts 16:37).

Paradoxically, it should be added that Filipino government officials are among the most accessible officials in the world. Hundreds of poor people meet the President every month, troop the halls of the House and Senate, visiting the officials one after the other, or talk to their mayors and Cabinet officers. That is democracy at its best.

Of all the varieties of violence the saddest is that between the demolition teams and the urban poor men and women. The demolition people are urban poor themselves, so it is one poor man trying to keep his family going against another poor man or woman trying to do exactly the same. The powerful have set poor against poor. Nothing destroys more quickly any sense of brotherhood and sisterhood among the poor. It is sinister for that reason.

In the last analysis these cruel ways come down from the top officials and the elite, as do most values in society, so it’s up to the powerful to stop the practice.

On Nov. 18 in front of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources people had a chance to witness how citizens can deal with abuses of authority. The people of Mindoro were there to protest a Norwegian mining company’s activity on the island. There were the governors and bishops of the two provinces, the clergy, mayors, academicians, Fr. Robert Reyes, NGOs, Mangyans and other ordinary people. They were telling the environment secretary they couldn’t accept the permission he gave to the mining company to begin work. They said he had made a big mistake. How in a democracy can a single national official overrule a decision of all the people of an island, who are the most likely to know their situation and what is best for them? The people of Mindoro show the effectiveness of people at different levels of society joining together in search of good law, the proper use of authority—and democracy.

Denis Murphy works with the Urban Poor Associates. His e-mail address is upa@pldtdsl.net.

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Myrna and Celia

Commentary : Myrna and Celia

By Denis Murphy
Philippine Daily Inquirer

Posted date: November 13, 2009

It’s the time to choose the winner of the Urban Poor Person of the Year Award, which is given each year to a person (rich or poor), government official, business person or civil society leader, who, in the opinion of the poor, has done the most for them during the year. Last year’s award went to Chair Leila de Lima of the Commission on Human Rights for her struggle against forced and illegal evictions.

There are a number of nominees for the award. The list includes Myrna Porcare who lived in North Fairview, Quezon City, along the Tullahan River. Myrna was 52, a mother of seven and the leader of the poor people of her area. She was murdered on Oct. 10. She attempted to stop the security guards from setting up fences around her property and that of her neighbors. She tried to remove the fence and for that she was dealt a shotgun blast, from a distance of two to three meters, directly into her chest and stomach. When her 18-year-old son tried to help, he, too, was gunned down. The two bodies lay in the filthy garbage the river had strewn over the area during the “Ondoy” storm. Myrna had been president of the Samasape (Samahan ng Magkakapitbahay sa Pechayan), a people’s organization since 1997. She was re-elected in 1998. “She was the only one who stuck up for our rights,” her sister told me mournfully.

The guards who shot Myrna are now out on bail, but their agency hasn’t stopped intimidating the people. The day after the shooting and the initial hearing before the Quezon City prosecutor, residents of North Fairview were questioned by guards in their area. The guards showed P1,000 bills and asked residents where the witnesses who had testified at the hearing lived. They said they wanted to give the money to the witnesses for their needs. A day later Fr. Robert Reyes and I met more guards sprawled on the floor of a hut not far from Myrna’s house, sleeping with their guns alongside them. They hadn’t a care in the world.

The legal landowner is not known to be very wealthy, so people wonder whether some powerful person(s) may be behind the murders. A few days before the shooting, some 200 police and demolition team members came to evict the few families scheduled for demolition by the court. It is generally believed such support for an eviction on private land requires large amounts of money.

It seems that no good comes to the poor people of the Philippines from the deaths of their good leaders, such as, Myrna and the farmer, factory worker and sugar worker leaders who have been murdered over the last few years. In the Early Church, Christians probably also wondered what good came from the deaths of so many ordinary people at the hands of the Romans. It was only after decades, maybe centuries of reflection, that it was recognized that “the blood of martyrs is the seed of faith.” Someday, Myrna and all the other dead may be recognized as the seed of a finer, more democratic Philippines where all men and women are assured of their human rights.

But not all poor women are leaders, and fortunately not all are killed. There are thousands of women in the slums who lead quite noble lives of caring and sacrifice but are never praised. Celia Regulacion who died very recently of TB in her mid-40s may receive a special award in the name of all these women.

Celia didn’t have money for medicines after she had bought food for her children, but she did buy five or six sticks of cigarettes a day. Her friends say it eased the pain of TB. Her husband didn’t work. She was often coughing and didn’t feel good, but still every day she helped the Kabalikat people’s organization as a census interviewer. She was a tireless talker, funny and always kind, according to her friends.

Toward the end of her life, it didn’t seem to matter to her whether she died or not. She certainly didn’t do all she could to get medicine or pay for a doctor. “She was dying but her sickness didn’t put her down,” her neighbor said. She was as pleasant as ever and she continued to volunteer, but there just wasn’t enough joy in life to keep her going beyond the short life she had been fated. She had lived as long as needed to raise the children. She couldn’t afford to stay in the hospital. Who would buy food for her children? She told her husband to go back to the provinces as she could no longer provide food for him. On her deathbed, she refused to use the breathing equipment, though her children begged her to keep struggling.

Celia had her limitations which sometimes upset her friends, but they miss their old friend. They laugh spontaneously when they talk of her. It seems the handle of her coffin broke and she fell to the ground in the graveyard. They remember Celia had looked angry when they saw her at her wake and that she looked angrier and angrier day by day because she wasn’t being buried. And then, suddenly, the circle of women began laughing.

(Denis Murphy works with the Urban Poor Associates. His email address is upa@pldtdsl.net.)


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Urban Poor Mother, Son Killed

** NEWS RELEASE *** NEWS RELEASE *** NEWS RELEASE **

Urban Poor Mother, Son Killed

Quezon City, 13 October 2009. Maria Myrna Porcare, a vocal leader of Samahan ng Magkakapitbahay sa Pechayan (SAMASAPE), and his son Jimyr Porcare were shot dead by the land owner-hired security guards on October 9, 2009, Friday afternoon over a disputed piece of property in Pechayan, Brgy. North Fairview, a community near Tullahan River.

According to witnesses, the victim was just trying to stop the guards from fencing the area because they were already going beyond what was stated in the court order. The 2.4 hectare Pechayan is home for more than 1,000 informal settler families for about 20 years. The revival of eviction case against a certain Domingo couple at the Metropolitam Trial Court Branch 38 of Quezon City sustained Melecio Lavares’ claim over a portion of land. The land owner was able to secure a writ of execution against Domingo.

However, the guards adamantly continued fencing the entire 2.4 hectares of land which was beyond the court’s order. Thus, settlers resisted. Porcare was killed by a shotgun blast in the stomach. Her son came to rescue his mother but he was also shot dead in the thorax. Carrying shotguns, some 15 security guards are present at the crime scene.

Suspects were charged two counts of homicide with the help of Urban Poor Associates (UPA), a housing rights NGO. The suspects were detained at the Crime Investigation Detection Unit of Camp Karingal on Oct. 9.

Lawyer Ritche Esponilla, UPA legal counsel, said, “We will never tire ourselves prosecuting the two suspects to make sure that justice will be served to the mother and son who were unlawfully killed for fighting over their shelter rights.”

“We are likewise weighing all legal possibilities if we can file charges against the land claimant, the security agency and even against the sheriff for failing to properly supervise the execution of the issued writ which led to this very unfortunate incident,” he added.

Father Robert Reyes, also known as the running priest, in a mass this morning emphasized the greatness of the mother and son who died protecting their rights as a citizen of this country. “The mother died protecting her family’s right to housing and as a consequence her son also died protecting his mother’s right to live. They are heroes of urban poor,” he told residents during the homily.

“The rights of the poor diminished all of a sudden because of the government’s negligence to its duty to serve and protect. But we should not lose hope and instead justice should be served to Myrna and Jimyr’s death by continuing our fight for decent housing,” the Catholic priest added

Task Force Anti-Eviction composed of various people’s organizations and NGOs such as UPA, Community Organizers Multiversity (COM) and Community Organization of the Philippine Enterprise (COPE) Foundation condemn the killing.

The group urges the government to act “with expediency to resolve this crime and to investigate the conduct of demolitions and evictions, may it involve government or private land.” -30-



Maria Myrna Porcare - 42-year-old



Jimyr Porcare - 18-year-old