Eliza

SHE PLAYS ON HER MOTHER’S LAP. Occasionally, twisting and turning to look at the unfamiliar faces that surround her and her mother. She gives up a frown while examining each face that she sees and then retreats to a smile returning to her playful demeanor.

Someone calls her name, she turns and quickly a camera captures her image, smiling, unaware of the events that lead to that moment. For an instance, she was taken aback by the camera flash. The photographer tries to get her attention a second time but this time she was too embarrassed to sport the usual beam.

Eliza, only one year old will never again experience how it is to grow up with a father. His father will not be able to send and fetch her from school and buy her ‘baon’. There will be no ‘pasalubong’ or kisses. No fatherly advice or tight embrace. No father to carry her on his shoulders. No father to tell her stories of ‘mangkukulam’ and ‘aswangs’. No father to reprimand her for staying up late with friends or on going on dates. No father to walk her on the isle when she gets married. No father to see her own children grow up.

But she does not realize that yet.

Today she is still oblivious to the grim reality that she is a victim of human rights violation. That her father, Elmer Valdez, was allegedly mistaken by elements of the military and killed on the hills where her father makes a living by making furniture out of bamboo. That they are today before a human rights commission seeking justice.

She is still oblivious to the state her father’s body was found – decomposing, almost beyond recognition because of the extent of the damage it sustained but mostly because it was missing a large portion of the head.

She does not know yet that she has become one of the thousands of victims of human rights atrocities. She does not know that the same has happened to countless others and the peril that many more will suffer the same tragedies still persist.

If she did know, she wouldn’t be smiling. She would be the one protesting against the injustices that thousands have suffered under numerous regimes.

She would protest that under a so-called democratic country, how could anyone suffer such gruesome fate as her father? How could a one-year old be left fatherless under a government that has promised reforms under its slogan of “tuwid na daan”? How could she and her mother be left as victims seeking justice against the same government that promises “pagbabago”?

She would question the government’s true intent in extending the murderous counterinsurgency program “Oplan Bantay Laya.”

She would point out that there is no significant change under this government and the previous one.

She would say that despite the bright yellow color of PNoy’s campaign his first one hundred days are stained red with the blood of victims of state terrorism.

Eliza is only one of the thousands of children stolen of a complete and normal childhood. It will not take long until she will wonder why she no longer sees her father and probably it will take many years before she realize why so.

Until the government makes a true stand for the interest of the people and against the perpetration of human rights violations, until programs such as Oplan Bantay Laya is continued by the government, until the government stands for genuine social change, more Elizas will emerge.