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PRIMARYANG BATIS 2: GUNITA NG TORTYUR SA PANAHON NG BATAS

MILITAR

Primaryang batis mula sa: Sonny Melencio, “How I Escaped the Clutched of the 5th CSU,” sa Tibak Rising:
Activism in the Days of Martial Law, ed. Ferdinand C. Llanes (Mandaluyong City: Anvil Publishing, Inc., 2012), 56-
63.

Sipi mula sa gunita ni Sonny Melencio

[…]

I remember I was then clutching an envelope that contained copies of Ang Bayan and other documents
which I had to give to the comrades in the apartment. When the man started to slap me and shove me
around, I dropped the envelope to the floor and pushed it under a big bookshelf. Of course, they saw it.
One of them retrieved the envelope. He opened it and looked inside. One document was about the
building of an urban armed partisan unit…

They punched me hard. Someone cocked his revolver and started playing Russian roulette with it,
pressing the gun against my temple.

I heard sounds from two-way radios. Soon they put a blindfold on my eyes. I heard some more people
arrive, and the sound of a car engine idling near the door. They put me in the car, sandwiched between
two persons in the backseat. One pushed my head down on the car floor while the car moved.

[…]

Still blindfolded, I was brought to the second floor of a building or an apartment. I had to climb the steep
stairs pulled by one of my captors, so I kept stumbling in the dark. They removed the blindfold when I
was already in an air-conditioned room. They made me sit near a desk strangely positioned in middle of
the dark room. A big-bodied man, looking like a body-builder, came in.

He bombarded me with questions… Then he asked me who I was. I gave a false name and concocted a
story about why I was in that place… I soon fount out that the bulky interrogator was Col. Rodolfo
Aguinaldo of the dreaded 5th Constabulary Security Unit, a known torturer and murderer of political
activists.

Aguinaldo retrieved from the wall cabinet a folder which he said was my “dossier.” He read out some
portions of it. I tried to keep a poker face because all the information he had read was true.

Then he ordered me to write everything I knew about the movement. He said he was interested in
knowing where Filemon was, where the Manila-Rizal regional committee of the CPP was headquartered,
and for me to implicate in my statement Dodong Nemenzo, Charito Planas, and others I don’t remember
now. He gave me a pen and a pad of paper.

[…]

Aguinaldo grabbed my shirt and shook his closed fist near my face. He said he could have me “salvaged”
if I did not cooperate. Then he opened the door and called on the other men sitting inside what looked like
a living room. One came over to tie a string around my neck making motions of strangling me. Others
taunted me and shouted what they would do to harm me. I sensed most of them were drunk.
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[…]

Aguinaldo said he would leave me in the room so I could have a few minutes alone to write down
“everything” I knew. When he came back, I still didn’t have anything substantial written down. I said I
really didn’t know the whereabouts of my comrades.

He brought me to the next room where he introduced me to a man who was supposedly a military
“doctor.” He took my blood pressure and examined my body. I knew that they were checking my bodily
resistance to torture, which they subjected me to later on.

[…]

I was blindfolded again and brought down to the car. They shoved me into the trunk and I was brought to
a military safe house, an apartment where they used to torture abducted activists before ‘salvaging’ them
or sending them to prison.

Still blindfolded, I was again pulled up to the second floor of the house. The beating began as soon as I
landed on the floor. I sensed that there were two or three people alternating in thrashing me. One kept
punching me, another one was kicking me, and I felt someone was repeatedly beating my shin with a
stick.

[…]

The first night of my capture was a full night of torture without rest, my body felt numb from the beating.
After a while, the beating did not hurt much anymore. To rest my body, I would pretend that the blows hit
me so hard and tossed me up a few feet away. Also during successive punching, I would drop to the floor
and roll my body over three times. This gave me time to breathe and prepare my body for more blows.

My torturers probably sensed that the beating was not hurting me anymore. So they stripped me naked,
made me lie down on a spring-wired bed (without a mattress), and tied both my hands to the bed posts.
The “water cure” began.

They put a towel on my face and poured water onto it. I heard the water drip into the banyera under the
bed. Much of it seeped through my nose and pain shot up my head. It was suffocating and painful. I
pretended to lose consciousness every now and then and every time I did this, the stopped pouring water.
Then they would slap me hard to “revive” me so they could pour water again. While this was happening,
another was puncturing my body and genitals with a lighted cigarette. But I could not feel it and only
knew it was happening when someone said he was making an ashtray out of my body.

However harsh this torture was, I know other comrades before me had undergone much worse torture.
Before my abduction, I already knew about cases wherein comrades were subjected to electric shock,
burning of genitals, and other atrocities. The thought that many comrades suffered more severe torture
and yet never cooperated with the military steeled my resolve to remain steadfast. Repeatedly I would
psyche up myself, “If they could bear it, I should be able to bear it, too.”

[…]

It was morning when the torture stopped. They left me alone in the room still blindfolded and tied to the
cot. I had high fever the whole day. They forced me to eat rice and drink coffee. Some would grill me
over and over again about my contacts in the movement…
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[…]

The torture continued during the whole period I was held captive. It was not as vicious as the first night
and it became more of mental torture. They would say this or that comrade of yours was arrested and was
already cooperating with the military (but none of it was true and was simply part of “psy-war” methods).
In the dead of the night, someone would barge into the room and hit me on my face, stomach or whatever
that could hurt me. Then he would promptly leave.

[…]

On the eleventh day of my captivity, I complained to the keeper who brought me food that morning about
the swelling on my right wrist due to the tight handcuffs I had on. He loosened the handcuffs a bit then
left.

The first thing I knew I was able to slip my right hand out of the handcuffs. Then I untied my left wrist
tied to the post by my own belt. I thought, “This is it. No turning back now. I could not put my hand back
into the handcuffs, so if they would see me out of it, I would be harshly tortured again.”

I climbed out of bed and opened the door of my room. There was a narrow hallway leading to other
rooms on my floor. I tiptoed my way to the hallway, and halfway through I saw the stairs leading to the
ground floor. I saw the kitchen downstairs, and I saw the keeper, with his back facing me, busily cooking
something. I spotted a room straight ahead of the hallway. I went toward the room and my heart leapt
when I opened the door – it led to a veranda.

I dashed to the veranda. I was about to jump when I saw an owner-type jeep drive in from the corner and
parked right in front of the apartment. I was afraid they had seen me. I hunched near the balustrade and
prepared for the worst. Some men got down the car and entered the apartment. I heard them talking
loudly with the keeper.

Soon I heard them leave. Without hesitation, I jumped from the veranda to the street below. It was a bad
fall. I broke my ankle. The apartment was one of those high-ceiling ones, so I guess I made a 10-foot
jump. Both the high jump and my weak condition contributed to the bad fall. I did not know about the
broken ankle until later. I sprinted away as fat as I could. I ran as if someone were chasing me. I kept
reminding myself to run eastward, run eastward, run eastward.

The streets widened and then there was car traffic. I was right at the comer of a busy street along Timog
Avenue. I flagged down the approaching cars. I was in a spin, panicking that my captors could be chasing
me already. No taxis stopped for me. I was losing time. I went to the middle of the street to block the
traffic. The cars just swerved around me.

[…]

I had not imagined that I looked very strange at that time. I had no shoes… my hair was scruffy and my
face gaunt. I looked like a drug addict in the streets.

A Sakbayan-model car slowed down. A man was driving with his wife in the passenger front seat. I
jumped in into the open rear section of the car. The man asked me what the problem was. I said I was
being chased by a street gang, that’s why I lost my shoes, my wallet, and my school books.
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The car went fast, and the driver told me I had to get down and get a taxi as his wife was becoming
terrified. I guessed it was the way I looked that made them nervous. At the corner of Timog Avenue and
Quezon Boulevard, the car stopped and the man flagged down a taxi.

I profusely thanked the man and his wife and jumped into the waiting taxi. I gave the driver the address.
Along the way, the driver noticed my looks. He asked me whether I had money for the fare. And I said,
just get me to the address and my "mom" would pay. I repeatedly stressed the word "mom" to make it
appear that I belonged to a family who had money so the driver would not worry about money and drive
me home to safety.

But the driver was not only worried about his pay. When he heard of my alibi about a street gang stealing
everything from me, he said he didn't want to get tangled in any trouble. Next thing he said he didn't mind
if he didn't get paid but could I please try another taxi. He stopped in front of a traffic outpost near the
corner of Edsa and P. Tuazon in Cubao. He said I should talk to the police about what happened, he asked
me to disembark, and then sped off.

The traffic policeman heard my story and decided it was the rambling of a drug addict. He made a
statement that would become another punch line in the retelling of my plight to comrades: "Guapo ka pa
naman, pero sinisira mo ang buhay mo sa droga. Tingnan mo ang sarili mo ngayon." I thought, please,
just get me out of this situation. The military might be looking for me and here I am now, in the middle of
a public road, with a traffic policeman making me out to be a drug addict.

And then the police saw the extent of the problem. He noticed that foot was already swollen and I was
limping. He motioned me to sit down on a cemented bench near the outpost and said, "Okay, I'll help you
get another taxi," and cursed the taxi driver who refused to bring me home and left me in the street.

The police flagged an empty bus that passed by and instructed the conductor to bring me close to my
home. I was dropped off near a street corner, and I stumbled onto the street upon alighting from the bus. I
could barely stand up because of my swollen foot. I kept falling every time I tried to walk. Two male
passersby saw my predicament. I explained to them the situation and where I wanted to go. They pulled
my arms over their shoulders and started to carry me to my destination. Fortunately, a taxi passed by.
They told the driver about my situation, and asked him to bring me to my place.

The rest is history for me. I was on the run for the next two months, moving from place to place to secure
myself as the raid that led to my arrest scuttled the operations of many Party units. I was on crutches for
almost four months as the swelling on my broken ankle did not subside easily.

All this time after my escape, the humanity that I longed for during my captivity showed its face—the
kindness and caring of those who took care of me whether they knew what really happened to me or not. I
saw it again in my comrades' dedication to the struggles, and the continuing fight of more and more
people for a better deal, a better life, and a better future for humankind.