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FOR PUBLICATION
AHRC-ART-068-2009
December 18, 2009
An Article Series on Human Rights and Culture by the Asian Human Rights Commission
HUMAN RIGHTS & CULTURE - Vol. 2, ISSUE NO. 31
Welcome to Vol. 2, Issue No. 31. In this issue we are pleased to introduce a new contributor, Ms. Hasina Kharbhih from India. Her poem Unknown Destination is preceded by the cover illustration entitled, Humanization, by Ahmed M. Elmaroli, from her book of poems. This is followed by our regular section on Human Rights Quotations. This is followed by another poem, The Mindanao Massacre, by our regular contributor, Airyn R. Lentija. In our Human Rights Activists section we pay tribute to Ian ‘Joker’ Subang, another of the journalists who lost his life at Maguindanao.
Publications -- We are pleased to announce the release of two new publications, they are the book, The Phantom Limb: Failing judicial systems, torture and human rights work in Sri Lanka and the latest issue of Article 2. Details of these publications may be found in the Publications section.
As always, the AHRC is grateful to all our contributors and we would like to remind our readers that your comments on this issue and contributions for future issues may be sent to ahrc@ahrc.asia.
You may view the previous issues at: http://hrculture.blog.humanrights.asia/ .
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Humanization
Ahmed M. Elmaroli
Humanization, by Ahmed M. Elmaroli, is the cover illustration for the collection of work by our featured poet this week, Ms. Hasina Kharbhih. The title of the book is Unknown Destination – Poems From India.
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Unknown Destination
Hasina Kharbhih
A voice
What voice was that?
Begun!
Into the dump world of her soul
A yelling in the exalted company
A cold wave of terror
Creeps in the body
In a tear laden voice
A shutter
A frozen shrief
On parched lips
Drop by drop like dew
Has begun to drip
Into the dumb world of her soul
Her heart is now a fallen leaf
It will only rise when the wind blows.
Life is no longer than the Nile
Life can bounce like a ball
Having done whatever it can
Life will go down in the end
And set like the evening sun
The soul making a journey is it a long journey
An endless journey
Those who have gone have never returned.
 Hasina Kharbhih is the founder and president of Impulse NGO Network, an organisation working for chuild rights issues, especially child labour and combating trafficking of woman and children. The organisation is also involved in adolescent health and HIV education training, curriculum building, a village adoption programme and income generating. Hasina was the second person from india to be awarded the Commonwelth Youth Programme Asia Award in 2000, for social development. She has travelled widely through Asia as well as the US and Sweden. She has been a freelance journalist for almost 10 years, writing for newspapers and magazines and is presently writing for Wash Rag, a New York based magazine. In addition to editing books, her poems have been published widely in anthologies in India, China, Japan, Korea, USA, Canada, Ireland and also translated into French. (From the About the Author section in Ms. Kharbhih’s book, Unknown Destination)
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Human Rights Quotations
The fundamental rights of [humanity] are, first: the right of habitation; second, the right to move freely; third, the right to the soil and subsoil, and to the use of it; fourth, the right of freedom of labor and of exchange; fifth, the right to justice; sixth, the right to live within a natural national organization; and seventh, the right to education.
Albert Schweitzer
... the 20th century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: The growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy.
Alex Carey
Peace, in the sense of the absence of war, is of little value to someone who is dying of hunger or cold. It will not remove the pain of torture inflicted on a prisoner of conscience. It does not comfort those who have lost their loved ones in floods caused by senseless deforestation in a neighboring country. Peace can only last where human rights are respected, where the people are fed, and where individuals and nations are free……. A good motivation is what is needed: compassion without dogmatism, without complicated philosophy; just understanding that others are human brothers and sisters and respecting their human rights and dignities. That we humans can help each other is one of our unique human capacities.
H.H. the Dalai Lama
The only thing we have to fear on this planet is Man
Carl Jung
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The Mindanao Massacre
Airyn R. Lentija
Darkness snatch'd the smile
of the little cream dove
upon hearing the cries
of the restless soul;
echoing on the cliffs,
swimming with the waves
and murmuring to the wind
their lament : a painful "WHY?".
Somewhere in the south
on the land of the rising sun,
their blood rising, creeping
on their beloved motherland.
And the little cream dove
slowly begin to weakened.
As if its senses had died
upon visioning the dead
with bullets on their heads,
bodies and legs; hog-tied.
And marketable vice:
to kill, stood still.
Somewhere in the south
of "Pearl of the Orient"
many a souls have cried; restless.
Leaving the little cream dove sigh-
in full speed, fled away
to the mahogany trees.
As the tight air froze the night,
it stiffen'd in cold -numb
and no sweat-drops of heavens
can cure its frozen check.
As the vision of the dead
with bullets on their heads,
bodies and legs ;hog-tide.
Replaying on its mind, on-stop.
Somewhere in the south,
in between darkness and light,
the little cream dove died.
And in silent spirit, rises to heaven.
Leaving the day-break,
restless..stealing..killing..
In search for justice.
Ms. Airyn Lentija works as a domestic helper in Hong Kong. She has enjoyed reading and writing poetry since her days in elementary school. This is Airyn’s third submission and we look forward to receiving more of her work in the future. Further details of Airyn’s work may be found at: http://poetsforhumanrights.ning.com/profile/airyn?xgs=1
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In this issue Human Rights & Culture once again pays tribute to one of the many journalist killed during the recent massacre of human rights activists, journalists and supporters of a local politician in Mindanao
Human Rights Activists -- Ian 'Joker' Subang
 'Joker' pioneers the news format in local radio
Before writing for community newspapers and national dailies in the recent years, forty-six-year-old Ian ‘Joker’ Subang was a veteran broadcast journalist, having worked in the local broadcast industry for decades.
Starting as a reporter for dxCP, a Catholic-owned local radio station in General Santos City in the 80s, he later joined another local radio, the dxDX. The dxDX is a local branch of the Radio Philippines Network (RPN), a government-owned broadcasting network. It is one of the city's oldest stations that continue to operate to this day.
In those days dxDX did not have a news and current affairs program. Joker’s contemporaries have said that one of his huge contributions to the local broadcast industry was defining the role of a real broadcast journalist to that of an entertainer; and the distinction between an AM and FM radio channel.
While working in radio, Ian was also studying for an A.B. at the Ramon Magsaysay Memorial College (RMMC), a local college in the city.
Although their radio station was operating with AM (amplitude modulation), their programming format was similar to that of an FM (frequency modulation) system. Their listeners tuned in to their radios expecting to hear music, not news and commentaries. Their radio announcers were more like disc jockeys rather than the broadcast journalists we know of today.
Joker however, did both; by playing music and broadcasting news and commentaries in between. It was his effort to gradually introduce the news and current affairs format into the city's normally music-based radio. Ian's broadcasting approach was proven a success in terms of keeping his listeners abreast of what was happening in their community, while at the same time entertaining them with music.
Targeted for his news expose
Joker also was no stranger to election-related violence.
On one occasion, in his radio programme Ian had exposed the 'secret meeting' he personally became aware of in which a plot was hatched by the city's ruling elite, who at the time were unpopular, to sabotage the election rally and campaigns to their advantage. In those days, a popular politician was contesting the election against the party of a ruling-elite.
In the meeting, the political party plotted to disrupt the election by instigating violence to purposely declare a failure of the election in the city, which would allow the incumbent officials to stay in power. Joker’s expose had caught this powerful political clan unprepared. They did not expect that the news and commentaries would come from a radio station they thought only played music.
However, after Joker’s expose, he had to go into hiding after he started receiving threats to his life. He ceased broadcasting for a considerable amount of time and was only able to get back on air and resume his profession after the incident settled down. The ruling party at the time lost the election.
From broadcasting to print journalism
Joker’s professional career in print journalism began in 1985 when the Mindanao Bulletin, a community newspaper in General Santos City, also started its weekly publication. Like Bong Reblando, one of the 30 murdered journalists in Maguindanao massacre, Joker was also in the paper’s pool of writers for many years.
His years of experience with the Mindanao Bulletin gave him the opportunity of writing as a stringer to the national dailies, one of whom was the Pilipino Star Ngayon, a national daily tabloid and an affiliate of the Philippine Star, an English language national daily newspaper.
Joker made headlines for his stories also regarding the decades-old conflict in Mindanao, bloody bomb blasts, high profile kidnappings, local politics and the like.
Before he joined the Socsargen Today, the community newspaper he was writing for at the time of his death, he had already written stories covering the areas of central Mindanao to several community newspapers. Among them were the Dadiangas Times and the Southern Review, all in General Santos City.
Ian Subang was known to his friends and contemporaries as 'Joker' for his good sense of humour. He was good at making his friends and fellow journalists laugh with his petty jokes, which both entertained and relaxed his colleagues, as they were covering media events and press conferences. He was one of those usually present at any press conference called by private individuals or public officials.
Joker’s usual partner in media coverage, Jerry Adlaw, was one of his contemporaries and personal friends. In fact, they were more like brothers. There was hardly any media coverage and press conferences that one of them was absent from or not present with the other. The duo was always together.
Like Joker, Jerry is also a veteran local journalist in the same city. He himself has a good sense of humour. However, Jerry was not present when Joker joined the convoy to cover the November 23 filing of the certificate of candidacy of the Mangudadatus in Maguindanao province which resulted in the murder of the 30 journalists. Jerry's absence from his friend on that day saved his life.
Ian ‘Joker’ Subang is survived by his four children and wife, Malou.
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Publications
The Phantom Limb: Failing judicial systems, torture and human rights work in Sri Lanka
A Study of Police Torture in Sri Lanka by Morten Koch Andersen and Basil Fernando
 The Asian Human Rights Commission wishes to inform you about the publication of a new book on the failing judicial systems and the issue of the endemic torture practiced at police stations in Sri Lanka.
This study is a result of the cooperation between the Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) and the Rehabilitation and Research Centre for Torture Victims (RCT).
The study was done in January 2008 and the data was processed during April and May 2008 at the AHRC office in Hong Kong. The idea and outline of the study was developed by Basil Fernando of the Asian Human Rights Commission and the processing and analysis of the data and the writing of the report was completed by Morten Koch Andersen of RCT.
The study seeks to explore the routine use of torture by the police and illuminate the widespread violence and human rights violations that are part of everyday life in Sri Lanka. It seeks to show the apparent neglect of the Sri Lankan state to stop these atrocities and provide adequate protection and remedies for the victims by ignoring publicly available information provided by state commissioned investigations and reports on the continuously declining state of affairs in the police force and the general deteriorating of human rights in the country.
Much human rights reporting that focus on crisis and immediate risks, dangers and sufferings tend to overlook historic processes and social ordering systems -- such as caste -- in their (often case based) illustrative descriptions of repressive practices, misuse and mismanagement of authority and the inadequacy of the justice system to protect the citizens. However, it is the proposition of the study that to investigate torture practices and the apparent inability to change the current state of affairs one has to explore the logics based in deep rooted social systems and attitudes. This insight offers an explanation for the socioeconomic bias in the enactment of torture and the reluctance and resistance to change in the criminal justice and political system. In this regard, caste as an ever present social ordering system in South Asia and Sri Lanka appears to be a viable and fundamental issue to include in the analysis to understand current human rights abuses.
The argument is that a 'debris' of the caste system somehow orders social perceptions, relations and actions in the unfolding of the criminal justice system, especially in the images of the mariginalized laboring poor. To do this, we will look into the interconnectedness of the early judicial system and administration and the caste system.
[Published in November 2009 jointly by the Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC), Hong Kong and the Rehabilitation and Research Centre for Torture Victims (RCT), Denmark. 80 pages, ISBN: 978-962-8314-47-8]
Article 2, Vol.8. No.4 is now available.
 Article 2 is a quarterly publication of the Asian Legal Resource Centre
This issue covers the following:
An essay on abysmal lawlessness & the zero status of Sri Lankans
By Basil Fernando, Director, Asian Human Rights Commission & Asian Legal Resource Centre, Hong Kong, with staff of the commission
The distinction between genuine and counterfeit actions for justice
The lost meaning of legality
The predominance of the security apparatus
The disappearance of truth through propaganda
The superman controller
Destroyed public institutions
The zero status of citizens
Further information on Article 2 may be found at: www.article2.org
 We are also pleased to announce that the next issue of Ethics in Action is now available. In this issue, Vol. 3 No. 5, we have an article on the appeal to help flood victims in the Philippines; there is a report on the abuse and humiliation of three Pakistani women and how the case casts shame on the country's justice system; and also in Pakistan the issue of love marriages - women and the rule of law. The continuation of the Prevention of Terrorism Act in Sri Lanka is a crime against the country's children and the terrible situation in the Philippines that makes it necessary for the Police to offer guns to journalists at risk are just some of the articles included in this issue.
Ethics in Action online version: www.ethicsinaction.asia
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The Asian Human Rights Commission is regularly issuing this article series on Human Rights and Culture in which various cultural expressions, poems, stories, pictures and other forms of cultural expression that are based on the theme of justice, will be published. A pivotal issue in modern literature is justice, particularly the enormous unleashing of injustice under fascist, communist and other authoritarian regime including those that pursue an unbridled market economy have generated responses from created writers. This search for justice is at the very essence of being human. Human beings are part of nature and part of each other. Perhaps the lines of John Donne are most relevant: “... any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde;”
Contemporary mass culture promotes violence and destruction. There are those who are opposed to mass culture and want to reclaim the best traditions of human culture within which justice remains a core issue. This column will provide space for those who wish to share their creative initiatives.
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About AHRC: The Asian Human Rights Commission is a regional non-governmental organisation monitoring and lobbying human rights issues in Asia. The Hong Kong-based group was founded in 1984.
Posted on 2009-12-18
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