Task Force Baptizes in the Philippines
-- A Land of Killings Without Disguise

[Editor's Note: The California-Nevada Annual Conference sent a task-force fact-finding mission to the Philippines Feb. 14-23 to learn first-hand about reports of atrocities.]

By the Rev. Susan Griffin
[Sermon Excerpt; Bethany UMC, San Francisco, March 18, 2007]

It's not as if the government of the Philippines had been hiding much. Since 2001 there have been approximately 800 assassinations of union organizers, human rights advocates, pastors, lawyers, journalists and left-wing political party leaders. In the early days of these killings, the perpetrators wore ski masks and civilian clothes, but were generally believed to be members of the Filipino military. As the numbers have grown with no relief in sight, the killers have ceased to wear anything that disguises who they are. There are stories of known soldiers simply walking into homes, torturing and shooting people.

The army is ostensibly routing out "insurgents," and one assumes they are doing this in complicity with the president of the country. Although it turns out that this is by no means clear, one has to wonder how much, if any, control the president has over a military that regularly threatens coups.

Our task force was authorized by the Annual Conference in 2006. Approximately 17 people were on it, and that group was divided into three to travel to different areas of the Philippines. We were shepherded by the National Council of Churches of the Philippines. On our first working day we were briefed by human rights groups, and then traveled about an hour southwest of Manila to the Union Theological Seminary, which many of our conferences' Filipino ministers had attended. The seminary has set up a sanctuary for refugees from a particular city -- all of whom were endangered because they had the temerity to try to speak to the landowner of a plantation they worked on to follow the law regarding the division of profits for workers. These refugees cannot return home for fear of assassination.

Our group was sent about three hours out to a city named Cabanatuan and spent the next three nights there. The first day we interviewed torture victims. All were members of the United Methodist Church in the tiny village. These people told the horrifying story of national army personnel coming into their village, rounding up all the males and accusing them of being members of the NPA. (That's the armed wing of the Communist party. The NPA does exist, and does engage in armed skirmishes with the Filipino Army. So far as I can tell, however, the NPA does not kill unarmed citizens or union organizers.) The people all denied involvement, but the military made daily appointments for the men to be tortured. The gentleman I interviewed was beaten with fists. His group was ordered to take off their shirts. They were hit and stabbed with sticks. Bags were placed over their heads, which made them feel as if they were suffocating. His wife observed the torture on the third day. He eventually returned home after there was a change in army personnel in the village. However, he is still required to stay at the military station each day. That makes it so he cannot work.

Another part of my group interviewed the 18-year-old son of a couple who were tortured for two days. They committed suicide by taking poison, in an effort to protect their many children from torture. When they were found, they were still alive, but the only car in the village was not available because the military had requisitioned it. They died on the way to a hospital -- two hours away by tricycle down a dirt road.

The next day we visited another village where it was not safe to actually interview. We interviewed the people in a city two hours away. We had to go through a military checkpoint on the one road in. At the church service they had for us, there was beautiful, joyful and lively singing by both the adults and the children. Fresno District Superintendent Vickie Healy and I got mobbed by the children who all wanted to touch our white skin and light-colored hair.

When we arrived at the church, one of the DSs from the Philippines asked whether our group might be willing to baptize the new members (the church was very small, very out of the way; the pastor was a high school graduate but not an ordained pastor). We agreed. After the service, they said they'd head down for the lake. Say what? It was the first time that DS Healy had done a full-immersion baptism. It was my first time participating in any baptism at all. We rolled up our pant-legs and waded out into the warm water of the lake (the floor of which was either extreme deep mud or sharp rocks), and baptized about 25 people. It was a great joy for me. Under the supervision of the DS, I baptized the tortured man and his wife whom I had interviewed the day before. It was my happiest moment of the trip.

Once back in Manila, though, things were pretty bleak again. We interviewed torture victims and the families of people who had been killed in another remote part of the country. They had made a special trip at some danger to themselves to come into Manila to speak with us.

On the last day in Manila, we met with the president's chief of staff, the government commission on human rights, the chief justice of the Supreme Court, and a senator. Although they all expressed support for the victimized and held out hope that things were changing, there have been at least two extra-judicial killings in the last 20 days, and the senator with whom we spoke has been arrested.

All in all, the trip that God sent me on was both extremely sad and extremely spiritual. From torture and death, to baptism and new life. But just like with Moses, I have rarely been so aware of God's presence, supporting me, protecting me. I'm glad I went, and the work will continue here at home with lobbying of legislators and spreading the word in an effort to focus attention on the problems in the Philippines.