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UP, artists reiterate call for release of Ericson Acosta

Bulatlat
http://bulatlat.com/main/2012/02/11/up-artists-reiterate-call-for-release-of-ericson-acosta-2/

MANILA – Members of the University of the Philippines (UP) community, artists and colleagues marked the first year of detention of Ericson Acosta in a press conference and music jam, at UP Palma Hall, Feb. 10.

Acosta, 39, was arrested on Feb. 13 last year by elements of the 34th Infantry Battalion (IB) of the Philippine Army in San Jorge, Samar. He is charged with illegal possession of explosives and detained at the Calbayog Sub-Provincial Jail.

Acosta is former editor of Philippine Collegian, student publication of UP-Diliman and founding member of cultural group Alay Sining.

Marjohara Tucay, editor in chief of Philippine Collegian, decried the slow justice system in the country. “The Department of Justice has not issued a resolution [on Acosta’s case] despite the fact that the current Justice Secretary was chairwoman of Commission on Human Rights,” Tucay said in his speech.

Acosta’s lawyers have filed a petition for review before the DOJ on September 1 last year. In its petition, Acosta’s counsels from the National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers (NUPL) stated several irregularities and human rights violations in Acosta’s arrest and detention, including the absence of any warrant, denial of the right to counsel and other violations of the Miranda doctrine or rights of persons being arrested.

Roselle Pineda, a member of the Congress of Teachers for Nationalism and Democracy (Contend)-UP, said the charges filed against Acosta are fabricated. “He did not possess any firearms. He only has sharp words,” Pineda said.

Pineda sang Tracy Chapman’s Revolution.

Noel Colina, a member of the Free Ericson Acosta Campaign (FEAC) said Acosta has only continued the progressive tradition of Philippine Collegian, that is “to give voice to the oppressed.”

“He served as the voice of the peasants in Samar who were victims of land grabbing and other forms of exploitation. He conducted a research and wrote about this. His work is an extension of what he used to do inside the university,” Colina, who was a student activist in UP at the time he met Acosta, said.

Dennis Longid, another member of FEAC and former student regent of UP, related that he found it difficult to explain to his four-year-old daughter why Acosta is detained. “I told her Tito Ericson is only helping the poor and she told me she no longer wants to help the poor because she could also be detained. What would happen to our society if no one would serve the marginalized sectors?” Longid said.

Roland Tolentino, dean of the UP College of Mass Communications and president of Contend-UP, slammed the violations of the rights of UP students. Besides Acosta, Tolentino cited the arrest and detention of film student Maricon Montajes and the enforced disappearance of Sherlyn Cadapan and Karen Empeño.

“Even if it has become dangerous to integrate with the masses, the scholars of the nation know it has to be done,” Tolentino said in his speech.

Tolentino read Acosta’s poem Pambihira.

“It is important for us to bear witness to truth of injustice,” writer Epifanio San Juan Jr. said.

Award-winning scriptwriter and playwright Ricky Lee, award-winning director and actor Bibeth Orteza who is also a member of the UP Board of Regents, song writer Jess Santiago, visual artist Boy Dominguez attended the event.

Young rappers Blkd and Lanseta performed during the event.

Text by RONALYN V. OLEA
Photos by FRED DABU AND RONALYN V. OLEA

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Regroup!: Conversations with Kerima Tariman
(This article was first published in print in issue 25 of the Philippine Collegian on 08 February 2012.)
by Sarah Raymundo*
http://www.philippinecollegian.org/regroup-conversations-with-kerima-tariman/

For a couple of weeks now, I have been working closely with Kerima Lorena Tariman, a cultural activist since the late ‘90s. She has published poems and other literary works in various anthologies, and was the founding chairperson of cultural organization Kabataang Artista para sa Tunay na Kalayaan in 2000.
In the same year, Kerima was arrested and detained while she was managing editor of the Philippine Collegian. While imprisonment and torture are no longer alien to her, she will never be accustomed to her husband, cultural worker Ericson Acosta’s situation in prison.
 

My work with Ericson began when we were convenors of the Student Alliance for the Advancement of
Democratic in Rights in UP (STAND UP). Our goal to organize different student organizations into a political party was difficult, to say the least. It is very humbling to see how activists of the different organizations under STAND UP are now at the forefront of the struggle against budget cuts and all forms of repression.
 

On February 13, 2011, Ericson was arrested in Western Samar and has since become a political prisoner.
 

This conversation is the result of our initial plan to draft a statement for a press conference and cultural activity to be organized by the All UP Academic Employees Union (AUPAEU) and the Free Ericson Acosta Campaign to be held this February 10, 11:30-1:00pm at the Palma Hall lobby, UP Diliman.
Political involvement is a defining feature of the march toward progress. It is alarming how government assumes sovereign prerogative to detain social activists and label them terrorists. The prospects of promoting genuine respect for human rights are thoroughly imperilled by the lawlessness of legitimate power.
 

The fight for freedom is foreclosed when there are more than 350 political prisoners unjustly detained. Meanwhile, the Aquino government claims change and righteousness while it remains loyal to the dictates of foreign interests. Ericson has remained steadfast in his political work even behind bars. Beyond this lies our people’s infinite potential for ushering in a new order.
On UP and activism
 

Sarah Raymundo (SR): Is there any experience from our undergraduate days in UP that resonates with your current undertakings?
 

Kerima Tariman (KT): When I entered UP, I was particularly struck by the determination of young radicals to establish a broad alliance of mass organizations under the banner of National Democracy (ND). As you know, it was a very challenging period. National democrats were not very popular. With the split in the student movement, the ND line was severely being discredited at the time.
 

SR: I distinctly remember that newbies of this period joined the movement as walk-ins. Small numbers of activists stake their claims at the tambayans between the Faculty Center and Palma Hall. That specific area was a space for educational discussion-jamming , and those who were curious enough would gravitate around mojo sandal-wearing activists who sang and talked about lingering social ills.
 

KT: True. It was their persistence under conditions of marginalization and stigma that hit me. Looking back, if the young activists then succumbed to populism, I would have had a different view of the necessary connection between the Iskolar ng Bayan and the basic masses. I personally would have not survived my ordeal in 2000 if not for the commitment instilled upon us back then.
 

SR: I have come to appreciate that commitment as a way of deriving a whole regime of consequences from the First Quarter Storm of the 1970s and the great challenges that shook the movement in the 1980s. It is an endeavour to provide consistency to the practicable truth of the revolution amidst declarations of its failure. This commitment means to proceed with the intention to rectify—a reminder of the need to always begin anew and not merely continue. However, I clearly recall a time when certain figures in the University called this dogmatism, even naiveté. We called it remoulding and hoped that we would never get old.
 

KT: We got old?
 

SR: (Laughter) Of course! How did you reconcile these vile insinuations with your stakes as an artist? We know how the gatekeepers in the arts tend to disavow anything ‘political.’
 

KT: I’ve been exposed to state-sponsored art forms since I was a kid. The Cultural Center of the Philippines—where my father served as employee in the 80s—became, by default, a playground for me and my two sisters. I went to a state-run high school for the arts. This background has actually made it easier for me to see how art is utilized politically, wittingly or unwittingly. But I view the movement as the only venue for me to understand art in theory and in actual practice.
 

SR: Even the Art for art’s sake movement was a bold claim against feudalism. Nothing can be more political than a claim to autonomy at a time when art was being dwarfed by feudal patronage. That this claim has been diluted and de-historicized is a stumbling block to understanding art as a form of labor.
 

KT: When one creates art without being apologetic about its political implications, one is actually being quite ethical. Concretely, one is defining her position between reaction and revolution.
 

SR: I have always noted the bluntness in your poetry.
 

KT: Poetry is something that I share with my husband. But I feel we have come to go beyond poetry on account of Maoist aesthetics.
On imprisonment and state repression
 

SR: Your arrest in 2000 created a stir in the cultural scene. But what really shocked me was a feature article by your father (Pablo Tariman) in the Inquirer…there was a picture of a 3-year old ballerina who went to ballet school with the Marcos couple’s youngest daughter. You never told me about those ballet lessons. But seriously, I was shocked that someone close to me can actually be held in prison for doing what we are all supposed to do as scholars who claim to serve the people. What do you recall of that time?
 

KT: I was in Isabela on a Basic Masses Integration program. I was only hoping to gain better understanding of the peasant situation in that area. I was all the while keeping an open mind despite petty inconveniences. Of course imprisonment was such a remote idea. But the whole experience, from living with the peasants to my arrest and detention, is an indispensable lesson on the reality of class struggle.
 

SR: It was indeed an unmistakable validation of the instrumental role of the State in the violent suppression inflicted on peasants and their advocates. My initial shock was followed by a need to forge stronger ties with fellow activists across sectors.
 

KT: Interestingly, even non-activists came through for me. I observe the same now in our campaign to free Ericson. Not all of our supporters share the same advocacy for national democracy. But I appreciate their recognition of the role of activists and their respect for human rights.
 

SR: Extra-judicial killings and forced disappearances have mainly targeted organized peasants. Can you tell us how those who have decided to align themselves with the peasant struggle fall victim to state fascism?
 

KT: At the time of his arrest, Ericson was a volunteer researcher for KAPAWA, a local peasant organization in Western Samar. He wrote articles and reports on large-scale foreign mining and human rights violations. Like most cases of illegal arrests, Ericson has been made to appear like a terrorist, what with trumped- up criminal charges and tedious legal processes that have only delayed the delivery of justice.
 

SR: What do you think is he missing now?
 

KT: Aside from monitoring the progress of our son’s two front teeth, he is also being deprived of other simple joys. And I am not even talking about seeing movies or splurging on ice cream. Our work as peasant advocates has altered our preferences and lifestyle. I realized this about us when I read his prison diary entries that poignantly depict his yearning for sky and sea. ?
 

*Sarah Raymundo is a faculty member of the UP Diliman Center for International Studies. She is currently the public relations officer of the AUPAEU -System and the secretary-general of the Congress of Teachers/Educators for Nationalism and Democracy.

Two poems:
Free the artist! Free the people!
 

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Icarus in Catechism Class

by Dominador Ilio

Or make us angels all, with dirty feet,
without wings, chanting the beatitudes
Without exultation nor thought, counting
The silver halos on the heads of saints,
and ignoring the pastels on the stunning
Stained glass windows.

This morning Daedalus
My father scraping the wax of last night’s taper
Spoke of escape from this dark labyrinth,
This walled-in wilderness where the blackbirds twitter
Homilies from the pulpit.

O I wait
The noon. Soon the minutes will glibly run
into the decades full of women and sinners –
O hour of my death, O let the noon bell ring,
I want to go home I want to put on my wings.

 

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Author's note on the poem:

In Greek mythology, Icarus was the son of Daedalus, the architect of the labyrinth of Knossos in Crete where the minotaur was imprisoned. King Minos also imprisoned Daedalus and Icarus for they knew the secret of the minotaur. So in order to escape, father and son devised wings which they put on using wax. They flew out of the labyrinth, but the ambitious Icarus flew close to the sun which melted the wax and thus fell into the Icarian sea.

In this poem, Icarus is brought to the present, but in a different labyrinth or prison. The prison is that of organized institutions, the walled-in wilderness. Thus he says the he is made to conform – “make us angels chanting the beatitudes” without thinking or appreciation of the beautiful. So, Icarus in revolt, is in a hurry to go and put on his wings to escape.
 

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About the author:

Dominador Ilio was a literary editor of the Philippine Collegian in the late 30s. His short stories and poems were published in the national magazines, even in publications in the US and Asia then and until the late 80s. He was inducted to the prestigious UP Writers Club and won some awards for his literary work, one of which is his poem, To the Filipino Youth.

While studying for his masters in hydraulics in the early 50s at the University of Iowa, Prof Ilio also attended the world-famous Iowa Writer’s Workshop handled by the poet Paul Engle where he honed to perfection his skills as a poet. Studying for a graduate degree in hydraulics under experts like Dr. Hunter Rouse and studying poetry and writing poems under Paul Engle was something of an extraordinary feat.

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This is no love poem
by Pia Montalban

This is no love poem
No love, no art work, no poem
No music nor rhythm
But of images

Of farmers exultant
Though they break their backs,
Or their bones creak,
With every slash of their sickles,
The heavy strokes
Wounding light in the fiery heat of noon,
The gaunt-faced sons of earth,
Bringing home harvests of gold
To the people's granary,
Where no greedy landlords are in sight.
For centuries, the land robbers
Had squeezed their souls dry
In constant toil.
It may be that their time is up.

But this is no love poem
No love, no art work, no poem
But of history

Of workers milling around a lingering twilight.
Pounding their hammers with their might,
Ecstatic at the thought of freedom,
Yet battling still, long dreaded ills
Of feudal bondage, barratry,
Imperialism
Storing up for the people’s cause,
Building a new commune in the new place
Freed from the landlord-minded President
From the imperialist ogres
Of IMF-World
Bank and Uncle Sam, The warmongers,
From oppression
And poverty and wretchedness
That, like a python, had wound
Around them to the end.

But this is no love poem
No love, no art work, no poem
No fictive tale but of radiant truth.

As throngs of men
And women march
Out of their homes
With new-found hope,
Gathering strength
As from a blasting storm,
Defiant now of lying saints or heroes
Or of murderer Presidents
Who speak with forked tongues,
As the throng march out into the streets
Flooding the cities,
Ready to offer their lives for freedom
To them would come such happiness,
Such love
No poem would express,
No art suffice to render.

This is no love poem
No piece of art, no song

Only a sense
Of how it is to tell of battles won,
Of folding in to feel the surge of triumph
Though brief perhaps,
Within this flashpoint moment
Of the people's war.