The showman of Manila

In a top hat and “barong Tagalog,” Carlos Celdran entertains, and sometimes offends, tourists to the Philippines.

By Carlos H. Conde
GlobalPost.com
Published: March 19, 2009 20:39 ET

MANILA — Carlos Celdran has been called “Manila’s pied piper.” But a more apt description might be a clown with a sledgehammer, who smashes long-held notions about Philippine history and culture.

As the city’s most popular guide, he can often be found leading a pack of 30-odd tourists, many of them westerners, on his weekly tours of the city’s cultural and historical sites.

In addition to drawing on his background in visual and performing arts — Celdran conducts his tours wearing a top hat and “barong Tagalog” (the national shirt for Filipino men), and waving a miniature American flag — he injects his tours with a liberal political bent that is both irreverent and entertaining.

For example, at a recent tour of Intramuros — the “walled city” in Manila where Spaniards protected themselves against a mob of Muslims in the 16th century — Celdran wowed his mostly Caucasian audience with politically charged references, all delivered in his vaudevillian style. He described the Roman Catholic leadership in the Philippines during that period as “Catholic Talibans” running a “theocracy” that suppressed Filipinos’ desire for independence.

And inside the San Agustin Church — considered the mother of Philippine colonial churches — Celdran herded his audience into a chamber filled with tombs of Filipinos who died in World War II. He launched into a tirade against World War II U.S. Gen. Douglas MacArthur, blaming him for destroying Manila (here he showed a photograph of a bomb from a U.S. plane) in an attempt to get rid of the Japanese.

Celdran also ridiculed MacArthur as a showman, alleging that when MacArthur landed on the shores of Leyte, he re-staged the event so a Life magazine photographer could perfectly capture the moment he waded into the water.

“He was a better actor than a general,” Celdran, pipe in hand, boomed, eliciting a faint but firm snicker from one of the elderly Americans in the group.

In a way, Celdran knows whereof he speaks. A pudgy 36-year-old of Spanish, American and Chinese descent, Celdran studied fine arts at the University of the Philippines and graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design before shifting to performing arts. He interned with New York City’s Blue Man Group and later formed a performing arts group in Manila.

He put his interest in Philippine culture and history to use by joining Manila’s Heritage Conservation Society, where he was a volunteer tour guide. “I would wear no costume, and people would get bored halfway through my spiel,” he once told a writer. So Celdran decided to branch out on his own.

His success is well known: In 2007, he was recognized as one of Manila’s “Most Inspiring Entrepreneurs” by the Philippine Center for Entrepreneurship.

Celdran relies heavily on costumes and props, and draws on his theatrical background. He wears a headset connected to the portable speaker dangling from his waist, and has a small music player, which he uses to play Filipino folk songs and “Yankee Doodle Dandy.” To heighten the tension about a tale of Filipinos killed in World War II, he snaps his fingers rhythmically; at another point, he slams shut a book of old pictures so hard that his audience is startled.

Today, his walking tours are by appointment only (he’s strict about confirmations), and they’re limited to 30 tourists. His business grows through word of mouth and on the Internet, despite the rather steep price tag: about 1,000 pesos per person (roughly $20).

In addition to his tour of Intramuros, Celdran offers tours of Manila’s Chinatown and an overnight tour of Corregidor, the island off Manila Bay that the Americans and Filipino used to defend the country from the Japanese during World War II. Growing in popularity is his “Living La Vida Imelda!” tour, which takes visitors to the cultural sites that former first lady Imelda Marcos built in the 1970s and 1980s (this tour involves 1970s attire). “It is infused with disco music, gossip, geo-politics of the Cold War and everything you did not need to know about Imelda,” he said.

Despite the politics that creep into his tours, Celdran pooh-poohs the notion that some might get offended or turned off. “It’s all song and dance,” he whispered as he sashayed down the cobblestones of Intramuros. “Don’t take it seriously.”

Filipino woman changes story on rape case

By Carlos H. Conde
International Herald Tribune
Published: March 18, 2009

MANILA: A Filipino woman who successfully sought the conviction of an American serviceman for raping her in 2005 has changed her story, saying she now has doubts about the events of that night.

The reversal, which the woman made in a sworn statement released to the media Tuesday, has created an uproar in the Philippines, with nationalists accusing the administration of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and the United States of pressuring the woman, who was given the pseudonym Nicole to protect her identity, into changing her story.

It is not clear what the impact this development might have on the fate of Daniel Smith, the U.S. serviceman convicted by a court here in 2006 of raping Nicole. Smith, a Marine lance corporal who has since been jailed inside the U.S. Embassy here, is appealing the conviction before the Court of Appeals.

“I can’t help but entertain doubts on whether the sequence of events in Subic last November of 2005 really occurred the way the court found them to have happened,” Nicole said in her statement, referring to the club at a former U.S. military base where she partied with Smith and his friends.

She said she was too drunk that night and might have been “too friendly” with Smith and might have led him on to think that it was all right to have sex with her inside a van.

“My conscience continues to bother me,” she said. “I would rather risk public outrage than do nothing to help the court in ensuring that justice is served.”

Nicole left the Philippines for the United States last week, where she plans to marry her American fiancé, her mother said. Nicole also received 100,000 pesos, or $2,062, from Smith as compensation, according to Smith’s lawyers.

During the trial, Nicole said she had been raped and had been treated “like a pig” by Smith and his fellow servicemen and that she wanted nothing but the death penalty for him. The case became a rallying point for nationalists who wanted Manila to abrogate an agreement that allows U.S. troops in the Philippines.

With Nicole’s statement, many nationalists now fear that the Philippine Senate may drop plans to review the agreement. Senators had promised to review the pact after Washington failed to turn Smith over to Philippine custody despite a Supreme Court order.

Renato Reyes Jr., secretary general of the nationalist group Bayan, said Nicole’s reversal “should be seen in the context of the U.S. and Arroyo government’s efforts to preserve” the military agreement “at all cost.” Reyes’s group will hold a protest rally at the U.S. embassy on Saturday.

Nicole’s statement has elicited sharp reactions among Filipinos, with many feeling deceived by her. In one community in Manila, four people were stabbed on Wednesday after a melee erupted while they were debating her case, police said.

The U.S. Embassy in Manila is consulting with American government legal experts in Washington on the case, an embassy spokeswoman, Rebecca Thompson, told The Associated Press, without elaborating.

Philippine troops battle kidnappers of aid workers

By Carlos H. Conde
International Herald Tribune
Published: March 17, 2009

MANILA: Clashes between government troops and Abu Sayyaf militants continued to flare in the southern Philippines on Tuesday, with three soldiers killed and 19 wounded, military officials said.

The fighting in the island province of Sulu entered a second day Tuesday as the Philippine military tried to free three Red Cross workers who were kidnapped in January by the Abu Sayyaf rebels. The military augmented its forces with civilian and paramilitary volunteers to try to prevent the group from escaping from the island, officials said.

“They are desperate. They want to get out of the constriction area,” Brig. Gen. Gaudencio Pangilinan, chief spokesman for the military, said at a news briefing in Zamboanga City, in the south. “We have three killed in action as a result of the series of engagements starting yesterday until this morning.”

In addition to the three soldiers, the military had received reports that six militants had been killed, although it had not confirmed those accounts.

General Pangilinan said he was not yet certain about the condition of the three hostages — Andreas Notter from Switzerland, Eugenio Vagni from Italy, and Mary Jean Lacaba of the Philippines.

“There is no word on the hostages,” he said. “But there was no sighting of them, so they might be away from the scene of the fighting.”

The three were kidnapped in Sulu on Jan. 15 while working on a water project at the province’s prison.

The International Committee of the Red Cross issued a plea for their safety.

“We repeat our call that no action should be taken that could put the lives of Mary Jean, Eugenio and Andreas in danger,” Alain Aeschlimann, head of the Red Cross in Asia-Pacific, said in a statement posted on the organization’s Web site.

“The responsibility for their well-being lies with all those involved in this situation.”

On Monday the military reported that Albader Parad, a rebel leader who acknowledged in a video last month that his group had taken the aid workers, had been wounded. The government has posted a reward for his capture or death.

Officials said soldiers overran an Abu Sayyaf camp on Monday and recovered tents and other materials belonging to the militants and hostages.

Also on Monday, Abu Sayyaf rebels threw a grenade into a karaoke bar in Jolo, in Sulu, killing two people, possibly in retaliation for the military offensive, said Lt. Steffani Cacho, a military spokeswoman.

Abu Sayyaf, a group of Islamist separatists with reported links to Al Qaeda, is on a United States government list of foreign terrorist organizations. It has been blamed for a series of kidnappings in the south, as well as some of the country’s worst terrorist attacks.

Mark McDonald contributed reporting from Hong Kong.

Philippines: The resiliency of Abu Sayyaf

Once on the run, a terrorist group makes a comeback

By Carlos H. Conde
GlobalPost.com
Published: March 15, 2009 11:20 ET

MANILA — In 2006, the Philippine armed forces, backed by U.S. military support, launched one of its biggest offensives against the terrorist organization Abu Sayyaf.

The operations resulted in the deaths and capture of the group’s key leaders as well over 200 followers in the two years that followed. Both Manila and Washington hailed as a success the campaign against a band of terrorists known for their kidnappings, beheadings and bombings.

But the atrocities, particularly the kidnappings, continued. Last year, more than 30 people were kidnapped in the Muslim region in the southern Philippines where the Abu Sayyaf is active. And in January, the group made its boldest move in recent years by abducting three workers — two of them foreigners — of the International Committee of the Red Cross. It kidnapped another one, a Sri Lankan peace volunteer, in February.

The local headlines screamed that the Abu Sayyaf “is back.” In truth, they never really left. A confidential government report said that the group raised more than $1.5 million in ransoms last year while its followers grew from 383 in 2007 to 400 in 2008, according to The Associated Press.

The resurgence of the Abu Sayyaf inevitably raises questions not just about the capacity of the Philippine government to deal with the terrorist group, but also about whether the joint Philippine-U.S. counter-terrorism campaign here, dubbed early on as the “second front in the U.S. war against terror” (after Afghanistan), has been effective.

While recognizing the value of the technical, logistical and humanitarian support the Americans have provided to the Philippines, Pete Troilo, director for business intelligence at risk analysis group Pacific Strategies and Assessments, contends that “one need not look past Iraq or Afghanistan to recognize that containing small pockets of rogue elements is nearly impossible, even for the most well-trained and equipped U.S. military units.”

Washington has maintained that its presence in the southern Philippines is mainly for humanitarian purposes, such as building schools and wells, and to advise and train Filipino troops in counter-terrorism. U.S. troops, however, have reportedly taken crucial roles, albeit noncombat ones, in specific campaigns against the Abu Sayyaf, most notably the one in 2002 that resulted in the rescue of Gracia Burnham, an American missionary from Wichita, Kansas, who was kidnapped in 2001. Her husband, also a captive, died in the operation.

The Americans, however, can only do so much in the fight against terrorism here.

For one thing, the Philippine constitution forbids them from engaging directly in combat on Philippine soil. Then there’s the disarray within the Philippine military, an institution that has been characterized repeatedly as ill-equipped and inept and is being buffeted by political scandals and intrigue that often lead to unrest from within — at the same time that it is fighting not just terrorists but communists and separatists.

Mars Buan, a national-security and terrorism expert with Pacific Strategies and Assessments, says the Abu Sayyaf is a “resilient force despite suffering many leadership losses.” The group has likewise linked with Jemaah Islamiyah, the Southeast Asian terror network with believed ties to Al Qaeda, further boosting its image among the militant Islamic set. But to say that it has survived purely because of its resilience would be giving it too much credit, Buan said.

“The Philippine government is partly to blame for the Abu Sayyaf’s continued survival,” Buan said, pointing out that “rarely does the Philippine military maintain a high level of operational tempo.”

Apart from the military’s own troubles, the Abu Sayyaf is also a loosely connected terrorist group, with as many as eight factions that operate autonomously and separately from other factions. “These factions can independently link with other militants, generate funds, plan, and execute terrorist attacks,” Buan said.

Indeed, the loose nature of the Abu Sayyaf can be a public safety nightmare, with many criminal gangs committing acts that are later attributed to the group. According to the police as well as experts, not all kidnappings in the Muslim region were committed by the group. Buan estimated that only 30 percent of these were done by the Abu Sayyaf.

The widespread poverty in the Muslim region — more than half of its residents live below the poverty line, more than twice the national average — has made it prone to criminality. The same poverty led many to join not just the Abu Sayyaf but separatists groups like the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, which has been fighting to reclaim Muslim lands forcibly taken by Christians over the decades. Ongoing peace talks have failed to produce any agreement.

And this poverty has been traced to a Manila-centric policy on the southern Philippines that effectively disenfranchises Muslims. Until Muslims “are given the opportunity to exercise their right to self-determination, problems like that of the Abu Sayyaf will remain or will just take another form,” said Abhoud Syed Lingga, an Islamic scholar who heads the Institute of Islamic Studies in Cotabato City, in the southern Philippines.

Moreover, Lingga says the presence of the U.S. military in Muslim areas only feeds to the resentment many Muslims feel against Manila. “The humanitarian efforts of the U.S. is commendable but it is not the right solution.”

Welcome to the Philippines, the “most murderous country in the world” for journalists

Faced with rising violence, more Filipino journalists are arming themselves.

By Carlos H. Conde
GlobalPost.com
Published: March 5, 2009 14:31 ET

MANILA — The assassins made sure Ernesto Rollin was dead.

The first volley of gunfire sent him reeling to the ground, bloodied. His companion, a woman identified in reports as Ligaya, had walked ahead while Rollin parked his motorcycle. She was startled by the gunshots. She turned around and ran toward Rollin, now slumped on the pavement. But one of the gunmen stopped Ligaya, pointed his gun at the fallen journalist and fired one more bullet into the back of his neck.

Rollin’s assassination is a scene that is being replayed throughout the Philippines with alarming frequency, further cementing the country’s reputation as “the most murderous” country in the world for journalists, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists.

Rollin, 40, was the first Filipino journalist murdered this year. Seven were killed in 2008. And it looks like the violence is not going to stop soon.

Less than a week after Rollin’s murder, another journalist, Ronaldo Doong, was attacked in Digos City, in the southern Philippines. Luckily for Doong, the gunman’s weapon jammed, and he and a companion managed to escape death.

On Mar. 5, Nilo Labares, another radio journalist in Cagayan de Oro City, also in the southern Philippines, was ambushed by gunmen. The motive for the attack was unclear. Labares is known for his hard-hitting on-air commentary that often poked fun at politicians and public figures.

These attacks, and the ones before them — 99 journalists have been murdered in the Philippines since 1986, the year the dictator Ferdinand Marcos, who was notorious for human rights abuses and for jailing journalists, was deposed — have unnerved Filipino journalists for years.

Most of the victims are in the provinces where journalists, although relatively free to air or publish whatever they want, have to contend with warlords, politicians and criminal syndicates. In these communities, particularly where governance is weak, people turn to journalists, oftentimes radio commentators, who can be shrill and rambunctious in their commentary and reports.

Tonette Orejas, a journalist in the province of Pampanga, knows only too well the trouble a journalist can get into. For three years, she carried two weapons in her purse — a .40-caliber Glock and a .22-caliber pistol — after she received death threats for an investigative story she wrote on a Filipino politician for Newsbreak, a news magazine.

Orejas recently stopped carrying the guns after the threats, which came via phone calls or text messages, subsided. “There is no immediate and real danger to me right now,” she said in a phone interview on Thursday.

But for the past three years, she lived on the edge. “A journalist’s life in the Philippines is never normal,” Orejas said. The guns, she said, provided security and comfort. “I didn’t want to be a sitting duck.” Thankfully, she was not attacked and never had to use the weapons.

Orejas isn’t alone in taking these measures. Joel Sy Egco, a reporter for Manila Standard-Today, a Manila-based newspaper, has founded a journalist group called ARMED (Association of Responsible Media), which provides gun training to journalists.

“We must train and be vigilant because our attackers would pounce when we least expect it,” Egco said. He believes that once assassins know that their target could be armed, they would think twice.

The National Union of Journalists of the Philippines views the rise of ARMED as a symptom of the failure by the authorities to stop the killings by prosecuting successfully not just the assassins but the planners behind them. Although the police have arrested suspects in a few of the cases, the conviction rate is low and not one mastermind has been brought to justice. Moreover, several suspects in these killings were police officers.

Then there’s impunity, which is worsened by the fact that extrajudicial killings in the Philippines are not limited to journalists. All over the country, leftist activists, human-rights advocates, farmers and peasants, even minors suspected of having committed petty crimes, have been assassinated. The situation has alarmed human-rights groups here and abroad, with some saying that the abuses have become worse than those during the Marcos dictatorship.

The U.S. State Department, in its 2008 report on human rights expressed concern over the killings. “Arbitrary, unlawful, and extrajudicial killings by elements of the security services and political killings, including killings of journalists, by a variety of actors continued to be major problems,” the Feb. report said. Although the number of killings and disappearances dropped dramatically in recent years, “concerns about impunity persisted.”

To many journalists, the atrocities have forced them to reevaluate their commitment to the career. “Oftentimes, I would wonder if this is all worth it,” said Orejas. “But I always end up telling myself that journalism is my life and damn if I allow my enemies to take that away from me, silence me, or to even kill me.”