NOTES BEHIND BARS: On the subject of the Column

By Mr. Alan Jazmines

(Reprinted from the Philippine Human Rights Update Volume 1, Number I published on September 15, 1985. The writer of the article, Mr Alan Jazmines is a consultant of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines. He was arrested on February 6, 1982 during the Marcos regime. He was released from prison on 1987, when the late former President Corazon Aquino gave a general amnesty for all political prisoners. Jazmines was rearrested on February 14, 2011 and remains detained at the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology - Special Intensive Care Area in Bicutan)

What hurt us political prisoners most is not the torture and physical hardships, though we do not deny that these can be very painful indeed and often leave long-lasting damage; our convictions and faith in the masses ease the pain and help us endure the suffering. Nor is it the pain of seeing our families going hungry while we feel helpless about it; we are able to engage in a little handicraft production to raise some income, however inadequate, for our families to buy something to eat. Not so much, too, the emotional pangs of being separated from our families and loved ones, even if separation really hurts very much – much more than torture; somehow the pain is mitigated when they visit us, although the pain does return when they leave.

What actually hurts most is our separation from the masses we have lived and worked with, the masses whose problems and concerns became and remain our problems and concerns, whose aspirations and struggles continue to be our aspirations and struggles, the masses whose interests and lives we identify with. These are the masses we have studied with and joined in the organizing of trade unions, peasants associations, student, church, women and other sectoral organizations. These are the masses we have defended in court, interviewed and wrote about, gave medical treatment to, taught in school, gave spiritual counsel to, the masses who have become the content, inspiration and audience of our literary and artistic works and presentations. These are the masses whose level of political awareness we have seen develop especially these recent years, with whom we have walked in marches, joined in fasts and hunger strikes for the cause, shared truncheon blows with in strikes, pickets and demonstrations and together witnessed the martyrdom of comrades. These are the masses for whom we have dedicated our lives and for whom we are willing to endure the sacrifice of being imprisoned.

Yet imprisonment is not something we have just accepted passively. For to accept it passively means a passive acceptance of our separation from the masses, their lives, their struggles, the discontinuance of our work with them, our influence upon their lives, our contribution to their struggles. To accept it passively implies a gradual negation of our life’s work, commitment and meaning. To accept political detention passively means political defeat and death.

Conscious of this, we strive to maintain ourselves in the state of continually struggling to be free, to be able to fully relate again with the masses in their struggles. That is why we political prisoners have this incurable obsession for freedom.

There is this great yearning in us to relate with the masses in whatever way we can, even if this falls short of actually obtaining freedom. Achieving this somehow helps in the coping process. Moreover, it concretizes our craving to continue to contribute somehow to the struggle of the masses.

Our contact with the masses, by the very nature of our situation, by the very intent of our imprisonment, is greatly limited. The extreme case is when we are held incommunicado or in isolation, so that we are rarely allowed visitors and our contact with the outside world is extremely limited if not nil. Usually though, our contact with the outside world is confined to the few immediate members of the family who are allowed to visit regularly. Some of us are fortunate to have a number of friends allowed to visit us even if rarely. We also develop new friends from among people sympathetic to political prisoners. Some of us manage to maintain thin and brittle links, through correspondence, with the masses we used to fully relate and work with. Sometimes, we issue statements, read or circulated in symposia and rallies and occasionally published. Oh yes, there are, of course, the radio, TV and periodicals, but then we relate only in a one-way manner with the masses through these media, unless, of course, we are able to express ourselves through these media often enough, if not regularly.

Which brings us to the subject of this column: because with this Human Rights Update, where we have been invited to write a column, now we have a very welcome opportunity to express ourselves and reach out to the masses of the people often enough, in fact with some regularity. In this column, we hope to be able to write not only about our situation, our problems and concerns, our aspirations and struggles, but also about that of the masses of the people – the latter, even if only from the very limited point of view and grasp of the situation of those who remain still very much separated from the mainstream of the people’s struggle.

Still and all, there remains our quest to be free, to be able to relate fully with the masses of the people and contribute our utmost to the mainstream of our people’s struggle, although we sincerely feel that writing a column such as this somehow helps.