Volume 4, Issue No. 61
OPINION/COMMENTARY
/ News That Fears None, Views That Favor Nobody /
Our latest as of Tuesday, May 23, 2023
~ For supposedly criticizing the long gone (Ferdinand E.) Marcos dictatorship, the formerly imprisoned couple and now co-principals of a local tabloid were awarded with certificates of award by the National Ethnic Press and Media Council of Canada during its celebration of World Press Freedom Day 2023 last week. The non-profit NEPMCC might have been misinformed, for the reality is the two recipients, along with other suspected communists, were arrested and charged with rebellion for allegedly working to overthrow the Philippine government.
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HERMIE GARCIA AND MILA GARCIA
Icons for Press Freedom or Plain Subversives?
NEPMCC Extols Couple for 'Criticizing Marcos'
By ROMEO P. MARQUEZ
Editor, The Filipino Web Channel
"There is no argument against a fact". - Roman maxim
TORONTO - Last week a celebration of World Press Freedom Day 2023 took place at Toronto City Hall marking the 30 years since the United Nations proclaimed an international day for press freedom.
In some countries the event is observed every third day of May but for some unknown reason, the local sponsor, the National Ethnic Press and Media Council of Canada (NEPMCC), commemorated it on Friday, May 19 with the usual perfunctory speeches and the awarding of certificates to selected members.
The remarks by Thomas Saras, president and CEO of NEPMCC, and Dr. Tony Ruprecht, a former MPP, punctuated the observance. And despite the spoken tributes, no silent prayer was said to remember and honour the fallen journalists - a total of 58 by the latest count. (Video at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFgYaFvRz8I).
At the outset, let me emphasize that this is not a brief against Saras, the respected founder of the organization he continues to lead since its inception more than three decades ago and whose advocacy has elevated the ethnic press to a level equal to the mainstream press.
With 1,200 media outlets NEPMCC represents, it is widely accepted and recognized in multicultural Canada as "the other voices", albeit in 103 different languages.
At the event, Saras, who is also editor-in-chief at Patrides, A North American Review, might have unwittingly fallen into a pattern of revising some historical facts about the deceased strongman Ferdinand E. Marcos and his declaration of martial law in the Philippines in September 1972. (His 65-year-old son and namesake, Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr., is the current president for a six-year term starting June 30, 2022).
I had experienced being under Marcos' dictatorship and lost my job as a young reporter for what was then the opposition newspaper, The Manila Chronicle, which he had shutdown along with other media entities. (Related video at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrIFXOV-7mU)
In my case, the media closure opened new job opportunities. In no time I was hired as assistant foreign correspondent for the Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun, and later as chief Manila correspondent for Deutsche Presse Agentur, the German news agency. (Related story at: https://filwebchannelmagazine.blogspot.com/2022/09/a-personal-recollection-of-martial-law.html).
At the NEPMCC's "Freedom of the Press Celebrations", Saras and other officials handed certificates of awards to individuals representing 15 publications, among them Hermie Garcia and wife Mila Garcia, the co-principals of the fortnightly Philippine Reporter.
"Hermie Garcia spent 12 years in jail under Marcos for criticizing the Marcos dictatorship and his wife Mila also for a number of years for criticizing the dictatorship of Marcos," states Saras as he called them to the stage to receive the plaque.
It is that declaration that I take issue with, not the grant of the certificate of award, and certainly not the persons giving and receiving it. Saras' characterization is disconcerting at the very least.
To say that the Garcias were incarcerated "for criticizing the Marcos dictatorship" is false; it is wrong; it is a blatant alteration of historical facts.
Working as a foreign correspondent paralleling the martial law years, I can say we in the foreign press corps had wide latitude in criticizing the Marcos administration and not be jailed for doing so.
Besides, agreeing to Saras' statement without question would be tantamount to accepting the age-old communist narrative writ large.
Hermie Garcia himself admitted that he and Mila Garcia were "arrested and charged by the Marcos military with rebellion" in 1974. Journalism or being a critic of Marcos had nothing to do with their imprisonment.
But there is some heroic undertone to what Saras has proclaimed. To non-Filipinos at the NEPMCC, the Garcias appear like paragons of the freedom of the press. No sir, they aren't. They are essentially left-wing ideologues, not journalists.
Hermie Garcia was quite an important figure in the outlawed Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) which, up to now or since its founding 55 years ago, still seeks to overthrow the Philippine government. (Background: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Party_of_the_Philippines).
In December 2017, the Philippine government proclaimed the CPP and its armed wing, the New People's Army (NPA), as "terrorist organizations". Similarly, the United States and the European Union have declared them "foreign terrorist organizations" in 2002 and 2005, respectively. (Video at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbNvmygbKzY).
Hermie Garcia's name is prominently referenced in many archival materials about the CPP. In a recent television interview with a former CPP-NPA leader named Jose Pete Tuason Arce Jr., he mentioned Hermie Garcia as among the founding members of the central committee of the CPP. (Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vI3H38cCA0 at the 23:00 mark)
In another interview, Hermie Garcia was again linked by Peter Mutuc alias Ka Ramon to the communist politburo that had planned the bombing of the Liberal Party rally in Plaza Miranda, Quiapo, Manila. (Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjMMF04CFsg at the 4:00 mark).
This seems consistent with the account of journalist Gregg Jones, a foreign press colleague, who wrote in the Washington Post in August 1989 that CPP founder Jose Ma. Sison "was meeting in a party safehouse in the suburb of Paranaque with Central Committee members Reuben Guevarra, Manuel Collantes, and Hermenigildo Garcia" while their two accomplices were on their way to Plaza Miranda.
Incidentally, the bombing of Plaza Miranda on August 21,1971 was my baptism, literally, of fire and blood as a police reporter for The Manila Chronicle. I covered the criminal aspect of the story for the paper. (Background: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plaza_Miranda_bombing).
Sison died on December 16, 2022 at age 83 in Utrecht, Netherlands where he had taken asylum after being released from prison in March 1986, just weeks after Corazon Aquino became president in the aftermath of the People Power revolution that ousted the strongman Marcos.
All these revelations belie the argument that the Garcias were seized and locked up for criticisms against Marcos. Put simply, they wanted a communist takeover of the Philippine government.
In an article in his paper, Hermie Garcia acknowledged that he and Mila were "compensated with a modest amount" for their arrest, torture and imprisonment as "victims of human rights violations" formalized by the Philippine government in a resolution in February 2017.
"We proudly show to our children, grandchildren, relatives and friends these resolutions from the Philippine government as a proof that when our country needed our people to resist dictatorship and tyranny, we heeded the call and suffered the repression," he wrote.
Hermie Garcia's statement is laced with keywords routinely used by leftists and their sympathizers, such the verb "resist" which implies employing force to achieve a goal, "dictatorship", "tyranny", and "repression".
Note that those buzzwords are vastly different from being just a critic of the Marcos dictatorship that Saras has ascribed.
A friend of the Garcias, the disbarred lawyer-turned-"painter" Joe Rivera, the one with "an uncomplicated", and therefore, simple, "mind", has written a piece sometime ago that practically defended the couple whom he adorably referred to as "the maligned publisher and wife" who "were imprisoned for their militant objection to the dictatorship".
"They spent time in prison not for ordinary crimes but as political prisoners, or prisoners of conscience. After their release from prison, charges of subversion were dropped. There was no criminal record on file, no stigma and nothing to be ashamed of," Rivera wrote.
Nowhere in the record was there a mention that the Garcias' purported criticism of the Marcos dictatorship had set off their years-long confinement. The record speaks of rebellion and subversion they had allegedly engaged in and for which they were jailed.
Before their arrest, nobody knew who Hermie Garcia and Mila Garcia were. In Toronto, they might have succeeding in revising the narrative of who they really are, courtesy of NEPMCC. (Copyright 2023. All Rights Reserved).
