Arrest of ex-priest
The arrest of former priest Rustico Tan brought back memories of the old days when governments anti-insurgency drive was at its most intense: under the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos and during the terms of former presidents Corazon Aquino and Fidel V. Ramos. The manner of the arrest and the arrested person can be considered our “continuing past” (with apologies to historian Renato Constantino for my borrowing of the phrase).
Tan, who is “Tikoy” to those who personally know him, was arrested in Barangay Pasil in Santander town by police and military elements on Nov. 9, 2017 based on 14 warrants of arrest for multiple murder and three other issued by the courts in Tagbilaran City in Bohol and Dumaguete City in Negros Oriental. Tan was former negotiator representing the National Democratic Front (NDF) in talks with the Cebu Provincial Government from December 1986 to February 1987.
I don’t personally know Tan so I could not really talk about his activities, whether in the underground movement as alleged by the arresting officers or in the mainstream of society as claimed by his relatives and friends. But at his age, I don’t think he can be labeled a New People’s Army (NPA) member as reported by local papers. I heard stories that he is now merely helping organize a “movement” supporting the administration of President Rodrigo Duterte.
What really happened is that Tan’s past overtook him. Those cases filed against him was an offshoot to his having surfaced as an NDF peace talks negotiator. It is not even known if prosecutors have enough proof to make the charges against him stick. But those warrants of arrests are there and have been pending in the courts for years waiting for use by enterprising law enforcers.
As to his having been “missing” for a few days after his arrest, I was not surprised. He had to be interrogated uninterrupted by outside noise. In the end, Tan’s relatives and friends were told he is in Tagbilaran. Still, it showed that the more things change the more they remain the same. Police and military practices against suspected rebels have not changed much through the decades.
And this has given us a glimpse of what may happen once the Duterte administration permanently breaks off peace talks with the NDF. The number of arrests, even the killing of suspected rebels, would rise. That’s why I say Tan is luckier than the many others before him who were arrested during the terms of Marcos, Cory and Ramos— and to a certain extent those of their successors.
I, for one, still carry the mostly psychological scars of a similar experience. My voice and my lips still shake when I say something and people look at me intensely. It’s not often, after all, that one gets subjected to intense interrogation--or gets to worry about what would happen to him or her.
Somebody once asked me, though, whether I had misgivings over how I was treated at that time. My answer was that I have learned to accept that it was one of the realities of the struggle. And I wallow in the thought that things could have been worse then. Whatever rancor I had vanished with that rationalization.