| Home Kapatiran
Links
Contact Us
Archive
Issue Number 31, October 2008
|
Kapatiran Issue
No. 31, October 2008
Obituary: KA BEL
- Murray Horton
Congressman Crispin Beltran was universally known as Ka
Bel (ka being an abbreviation for kasama, meaning
comrade. It is widely used in the Philippines and
doesn’t have the “Communist” connotations
that it carries elsewhere – although that is exactly
what many of Ka Bel’s numerous enemies thought that
he was). So I will refer to him throughout as Ka Bel. His
May 2008 accidental death, at the age of 75, came as a
terrible shock to his friends, comrades and colleagues
throughout the Philippines and around the world,
including New Zealand. The actual cause of his death
– he fell off the roof of his very modest home,
having gone up there to fix a leak – seemed so banal
and unlikely as to initially arouse suspicions. More than
one person asked me if I thought that foul play was
involved. But it seems that, having been warned to be
careful by his wife, Ka Bel – who suffered from a
multitude of health problems, including very high blood
pressure – had simply got dizzy after climbing the
ladder, blacked out while on the roof and pitched
headfirst to the unforgiving ground. Several months later
I had an inkling as to how easily this could happen when
I got up on our garage roof for the same reason as Ka Bel
and just after my wife had called out “Be
careful” proceeded to slip and fall flat on my back
right on the edge above our concrete drive –
fortunately I didn’t fall off the roof and the main
injury was to my pride. Both of us thought that this was
taking solidarity with Ka Bel a step too far.
People have expressed disbelief that a 75 year old would
be up on the roof of his house. But that didn’t
surprise me. He was very much down to earth and hands on.
When he stayed at our place in 1999, during his New
Zealand speaking tour, the car decided to play up the day
we had set aside to take him sightseeing. Proclaiming
himself to have been a Manila taxi driver decades ago, he
plunged under the bonnet in an attempt to fix it (in the
end the AA did the trick). Just as many of our
discussions were about everyday practical things as they
were about the high octane politics of the Philippines.
He Defied The Odds And Died A Free Man
It is simultaneously ironic and reassuring that the
Philippines’ most high profile political prisoner of
2006 and 07 should die in such a fashion. He had been a
political prisoner under both Presidents Marcos and
Arroyo, two decades apart. Both took a toll on his
health. In the first instance he escaped from indefinite
detention without charge or trial under martial law and
worked underground as a labour organiser until Marcos was
overthrown and his martial law dictatorship was ended.
Most of the 16 months he spent as a prisoner of Arroyo
was spent in hospital custody, because of his health
problems and the fact that he was in his 70s. To add
insult to injury he (or, more accurately, his supporters
– including the New Zealanders who so generously
donated to the three appeals that the Philippines
Solidarity Network of Aotearoa [PSNA] held in 2006, 07
and 08) had to pay for his own false imprisonment. At the
time of his death he still owed thousands of dollars,
despite having been released in 2007 after all the
trumped up charges were dismissed without getting
anywhere near a trial. The fact that he was released was
a triumph in itself – a commonly held view was that
the regime wanted to see him die in prison while the
interminable Philippine legal process incompetently took
its time.
Having been re-elected to Congress as an Anakpawis Party
List Representative while still in custody, he
immediately resumed his seat and plunged straight back
into the struggle, both in Congress and in the parliament
of the streets, where he had always been a leading light.
Not long after his release in 2007 he was hospitalised
again after being injured in a car crash –
suspicions were aroused as the other vehicle had hit his
but apparently it was a genuine accident. Activists
cynically observed that the regime didn’t dare have
him shot, the favoured method of its political murderers,
as he was too high profile and had too many influential
foreign friends keeping an eye on him to see that he
didn’t come to any harm. Ka Bel had survived more
than two decades as a very high profile, internationally
renowned, trade union leader in a country where workers
are routinely murdered, beaten, imprisoned, tortured, and
terrorised. “At 20 he got his first experience of
State violence when he and his co-workers at the Manila
Yellow Taxicab Company launched a strike against unfair
labour practices. Three co-workers were killed by the
violent attacks of policemen and hired goons. The
experience encouraged Ka Bel to learn more about the
rights of workers and this led him to the path of
militant unionism” (Liberation International,
May-August 2008).
And he survived in a country where unionists have a very
high mortality rate – Ka Lando Olalia, his
predecessor as leader of the Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU, May
First Movement) trade union confederation, had been
abducted, tortured and brutally murdered in one of the
most high profile political murders of the 1980s.
Needless to say, his killers have never been caught and
not much effort has ever been put into trying to identify
them (thousands of political murders later that pattern
continues unabated until today). So, if anything positive
can be taken from his tragic death it is that, after all
of that, he made it to 75 and he died of natural causes
(albeit accidentally), a free man, at his own home and a
serving Congressman – none of those things looked
very likely to feature in his future as recently as mid
2007.
Born Crispin Bertiz Beltran in 1933, Ka Bel had a truly
amazing life. Rather than rehash it all, it’s
simpler to just reprint the CV that he sent PSNA in
advance of his 1999 New Zealand speaking tour.
A Life Lived To The Full
CRISPIN B. BELTRAN, Filipino Citizen, married with 11
children and 19 grandchildren.
Experiences:
1943-1945 Anti-Japanese resistance struggle (WW II) as an
11-year old guerrilla courier
1949-1953 Janitor, self-supporting high school student
1953-1955 Gasoline boy, Messenger-Clerk
1955-1961 Driver (taxi, jeepney, bus and truck)
1955-1961 Union member and then Board Member of the
Yellow Taxi Drivers Union in the Manila Yellow Taxicab
Co.
1961-1964 National Secretary and then President,
Amalgamated Taxi Drivers-Philippine Workers Congress;
Vice-President for Organization PWC-CLP
1964-1975 Asst. Administrator/Chairman of the Organizing
Committee, Confederation of Labor of the Philippines
(CLP)
In 1972, the CLP was dissolved upon the declaration of
Martial Law but he continued to work as an underground
trade union organiser up to 1975.
1976-1978 National Vice-President for Organization,
Federation of Unions of Rizal - Trade Union Congress of
the Philippines (FUR-TUCP)
1978-1982 National Executive Vice-President of the
Philippine Alliance of Nationalist Labor Organizations
(PANALO)
1980-1982 General Secretary of the KMU Labor Center
18 Aug 1982 Arrested and imprisoned by the Marcos Martial
Law regime, one of the more than 100 KMU labour leaders
arrested, in an attempt by the Marcos dictatorship to
crash the whole KMU. He was charged with
"sedition" and "rebellion".
21 Aug 1983 While under military detention, he was
elected National President of the Alliance of Nationalist
and Genuine Labor Organization - Kilusang Mayo Uno (ANGLO
- KMU),formerly PANALO, and was consistently re-elected
every three years up to the present (1999)
21 Nov 1984 Escaped from military detention and
thereafter, worked incognito organising workers and
peasants in the countryside up to May 1986
1986 Upon the assumption in power of Pres. Corazon Aquino
and upon reacquisition of legal status by the undersigned
(charges against him were all dismissed by the Courts),
he:
a) Rejoined the KMU and was reinstated as National
Executive Council Member and National Spokesman starting
June 1986
b) Elected National Executive Vice-President of the
Partido ng Bayan (People's Party) on August 30 - 31, 1986
c) Elected National Vice-President of the Bagong
Alyansang Makabayan (BAYAN or New Patriotic Alliance) on
Sept. 27 - 28, 1986
Dec 1986 up to present Elected Chairperson of KMU in a
National Congress. Re-elected in 1994 and 1998 in
succeeding KMU National Congresses
1994-1998 National Chairperson of BAYAN
1998-present Member of the National Executive Council of
BAYAN
CRISPIN B. BELTRAN, Quezon City, Metro Manila, 25 May
1999
That Rarest Thing – An Honest Politician
Of course, that CV only covers his life up until 1999,
when he was a mere 66 years old. He stood down as KMU
Chairperson and had a whole other career, namely that of
a Congressman. In the 1990s the Philippines adopted a
party list system which reserves a certain number of
Congressional seats for the marginalised sectors of
society, the ones that have been traditionally
under-represented (or completely unrepresented). 2% of
the total vote is enough to get your party one seat;
anything over 3% gets you a maximum of three seats. The
national democratic Left, which had been largely
unrepresented in electoral politics for half a century
(except for an unsuccessful attempt in one 1980s’
election, in which Ka Bel was involved) formed Bayan Muna
(Country First) and ran three candidates, including him,
at the 2001 mid term Congressional elections. Not only
did they win, but Bayan Muna topped the party list vote
by a wide margin, beating well known personalities and
established parties, and scoring 13% (much higher than
they needed to get all three candidates into Congress).
Ka Bel resigned from Congress in late 2003, being
replaced by the next in line on the Bayan Muna list. At
the 2004 mid term Congressional elections he returned to
Congress as one of two Party List Representatives of the
new Anakpawis Party (Ankapawis translates as
“toiling masses”). Despite being in custody he
was re-elected at the 2007 midterm Congressional
elections and was in office when he died in 2008.
Ka Bel was not your typical Philippine trapo (traditional
politician). He vociferously represented the working
class in Congress, fighting for years for improvements in
areas such as the minimum wage. He was the very poorest
Congressman, which is the exact opposite of the
stereotype of the Philippine politician. After his death
the Philippine Daily Inquirer editorialised (21/5/08;
“Ka Bel”): “It may not have been a hero's
death, but it was still a virtuous one, with a timeless
lesson in personal integrity. It showed an astonished
nation that it is possible to remain poor while serving
in Congress, despite the trappings, the generous staffing
budgets, the access to pork barrel funds. Despite all
that, the 75-year-old Beltran remained a member of the
working class he represented. His life may have been
lived according to the loftiest principle; but his death
showed he had lived it with the highest integrity. It is
not only, as his daughter Ofelia Ballate told reporters,
on the day of his sudden death, that he was
‘hands-on with household work’--although this
is no mean thing, this respect for honest labour, for the
work of the hands.
“It is also because he lived a poor man's life, even
when he was already on his third term as a party-list
representative in Congress. His unpainted house in San
Jose del Monte, Bulacan (which is where the fatal
accident happened. Ed.) was his first, bought using a
loan from the Government Service Insurance System (he
paid P5,000 a month in amortisation, his gallant widow,
Rosario "Ka Osang" Beltran, said). He listed
two barong tagalog (formal Filipino man’s shirt.
Ed.) among his assets. He slept in a folding bed. One of
his neighbours summed it up neatly: ‘By his living
here among us, we knew he was not corrupt’".
Most High Profile Political Prisoner
Ka Bel had the unwanted distinction of being the
Philippines most high profile political prisoner of the
immediate past. He was the only serving Leftwing
politician to have actually been arrested in President
Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s shortlived February 2006
declaration of a State of Emergency. Attempts were made
to arrest his five legal Left Congressional colleagues
(representing three Party List Organisations), but they
were all able to evade arrest and reach sanctuary in the
Congress Building, under the protection of the Speaker.
This set off a major constitutional row in its own right,
but the President backed off from sending in troops or
cops to arrest them. All five, who faced the same
non-bailable charge of rebellion as Ka Bel (and it
carries a sentence of life imprisonment) spent a couple
of months living in their workplace until a deal was
struck whereby they could triumphantly march out, without
fear of arrest or imprisonment, to appear in court. But
Ka Bel remained in custody, firstly in prison and then in
hospital. He was in his mid 70s and had numerous health
problems, some of them arising from his first lengthy
spell in custody during the Marcos martial law
dictatorship in the 80s, so there were serious concerns
about whether he would come out alive. The Philippine
judicial system is scandalously slow at the best of
times.
But Ka Bel lost none of his fighting spirit in his new
role as Gloria’s most high profile political
prisoner and he became a global cause celebre, with an
international Free Ka Bel campaign quickly springing up.
PSNA took the initiative in NZ and, as detailed in
Kapatiran 27/28 (which can be read online at
http://www.converge.org.nz/psna/Kapatiran/KapNo27n28/Kap27n28Art/art126.htm),
we got all manner of NZ groups to continuously lobby
NZ’s Prime Minister, Helen Clark (who met Gloria
three times in 2006 & 07, both in the Philippines and
NZ) to personally urge Gloria to release Ka Bel. We also
raised several thousand dollars for his costs (his
hospital bill was hundreds of US dollars per week; to add
insult to injury, he had to pay for his own trumped up
imprisonment). Proportionately, this campaign in little
old New Zealand seemed to have a greater impact than
those in bigger Western countries, and certainly more so
than in any of the Philippines’ Asia/Pacific
neighbours. We had the advantage that Ka Bel was well
known in NZ because of his decades’ long career as
Chair of the KMU. It was in this capacity that PSNA
hosted him on his NZ speaking tour in 1999.
In the end Ka Bel endured 16 months of totally false
imprisonment. He was in custody throughout and beyond the
entire campaign for the May 2007 mid term elections (in
the three years since the 2004 mid term election,
grassroots and midlevel activists of the three Leftwing
Party List Organisations with Representatives in Congress
– Bayan Muna, Anakpawis and Gabriela – had been
the main targets of Gloria’s campaign of systematic
political murders). Despite being the targets of these
murders and relentless intimidation of both the Party
List Organisations themselves and those likely to vote
for them (the military occupied whole slums in Metro
Manila during the 2007 midterm election campaign to
dissuade the inhabitants not to vote the
“wrong” way), those three Party List
Organisations retained their same total of six
Congresspeople between them. They were disappointed that
they didn’t increase their numbers (the aim of this
parliamentary strategy of the legal Left is to build a
sizeable enough bloc in Congress to be a real force; they
were aiming for double figures) but in the circumstances
I think that they did extraordinarily well to survive in
Congress at all, let alone retain their numbers. And Ka
Bel was one of those re-elected, despite being in custody
and still awaiting trial, with the very real possibility
of life imprisonment.
In mid 2007 the whole criminally malicious business came
to an end when a court dismissed all the charges against
all 50 or so defendants charged with rebellion from the
alleged “Right/Left conspiracy” that Gloria
used as a spurious justification for her February 2006
declaration of a State of Emergency. The defendants
ranged from Rightwing serial putschists and military
rebels to the underground and/or exiled leadership of the
Communist Party of the Philippines on the Left, and
included all six of the legal Left Party List
Organisation Representatives and a whole raft of legal
Left activists. It should be noted that the charges
weren’t dismissed as a result of a trial – it
never got as far as a judge actually having to evaluate
the absurd “evidence” that the Government
presented (including that given by hooded witnesses, an
old favourite of all State terrorist regimes). No, the
charges were dismissed before it ever got to trial
because the judges could plainly see that it was all
bullshit and had no hesitation in making their
displeasure publicly known about the courts being used as
instruments of blatantly political repression.
Triumphant Release
But Ka Bel, and Ka Bel alone, remained in custody while
the Government considered an appeal. It duly did so and
had its face slapped again. The courts had already
ordered Ka Bel released due to there no longer being any
charges against him and he was ordered released a second
time. This time the Government had no alternative but to
do so. He had been in custody from February 2006 until
July 2007 and he wasted no time in being sworn in again
at Congress and resuming his duties as a Party List
Organisation Representative of Anakpawis. He remained a
high profile Congressman and a target of the regime in
every sense of the word. I’ve already mentioned that
he was injured (but not too seriously) in a late 2007
Metro Manila traffic “accident” that
justifiably aroused suspicions. And he was targeted by a
representative of Gloria’s party who offered him a
sizeable bribe to sponsor a feeble impeachment motion
drawn up her own party. When Ka Bel refused, the would be
briber doubled the amount on offer (to P2 million). There
is a reptilian cunning behind this – if a
Congressman signs a motion of impeachment, no other
Congressman can put forward another impeachment motion
for a year. Gloria’s party hacks must have thought
that Ka Bel would have jumped at the chance, but he could
see through this transparent manoeuvre, which he
proceeded to make public and denounce.
By happy coincidence, Becky and I happened to be in
Manila, on a long planned family visit, just weeks after
Ka Bel was released. So we were able to go to the
official celebration of his release, along with several
hundred other people (if there were any other foreigners
there, I didn’t see them; the whole thing was in
Filipino, which Becky obligingly translated for me). This
was the first time that we’d seen Ka Bel since
he’d been our guest in 1999 – he immediately
asked: “How is Christchurch?” and introduced us
to his colleagues, saying “I stayed in their
home”. It was great to see him again, and he spent
quite a bit of time chatting to me. His speech was the
centrepiece of the whole hours long event – he
brandished aloft the short and polite speech that his
staff had written for him, worried that the Government
would take any opportunity to have him rearrested and
locked up again. Ka Bel duly read that out, for the
record, then spoke for nearly 90 minutes delivering one
of his classic stemwinding militant speeches, with much
clenched fist saluting, to thunderous applause. The
biggest laugh went up when he detailed how, towards the
end of his hospital imprisonment, he had hatched a plan
to escape disguised as a doctor (he had escaped from his
1980s’ indefinite term of imprisonment and spent a
couple of years with the underground as a labour
organiser until Marcos was overthrown).
Ironically he spoke so long and the event went so much
over time that there was no time for the short speech
that I had been invited to give on behalf of PSNA. No
matter, and anyway, PSNA was among those listed for
thanks by the organisers. Being able to attend that event
was a real privilege and one of the highlights of any of
my several trips to the Philippines (which started in
1987). Sadly it was to be the last time that Becky and I
were ever to see him (we had hoped to do so again during
our Christmas 2008 visit). But we were far from the only
New Zealanders to see him during the past couple of
years. The cover of Kapatiran 27/28 features a photo of
him (in his fetching hospital gown) with Jane Kelsey, who
visited him in custody; he was also visited in hospital
by representatives of Christian World Service. As a free
(Congress)man in 2008, he met with officials of the NZ
National Distribution Union who were in the country on a
trade union exposure tour; and on his last ever overseas
trip, to testify on the human rights crisis to a Canadian
Parliamentary Select Committee, he met with former PSNA
Committee member and old friend, Aziz Choudry, who has
lived in Montreal for several years (Aziz’s tribute
to Ka Bel is in this Special Issue). He was in Canada
just weeks before his death, so Aziz was the last one of
us to see him alive.
Solidarity Beyond The Grave
Our solidarity with Ka Bel did not end with his death.
There was an urgent appeal circulated to help his family
with the costs of his funeral (which was a very big and
prolonged affair, because of the huge numbers of people
who wanted to pay their respects) and to pay the last of
the extortionate hospital bills dating from his 2006/07
detention. He still owed thousands of dollars and had not
been allowed to go from the hospital, when the courts
ordered him released, until an IOU promising to pay the
outstanding amount was signed. So PSNA swung into action
and circulated an online Final Appeal for Ka Bel. We
raised just over $2,000 (one member deposited $1,000 cash
into our bank account) which we duly sent to the
Philippines, plus $1,000 directly from PSNA. All up, our
three separate appeals for Ka Bel (the first two were in
2006 and 07) raised $7,000, in round figures.
And, in July 2008, PSNA hosted a small Christchurch
memorial meeting for Ka Bel. It was timed so that the
speakers could include Cora Fabros, a veteran Philippine
activist and friend of Ka Bel’s, who had arrived in
Christchurch the previous day to start a speaking tour
hosted by the Anti-Bases Campaign. The main Filipino
speaker was Dennis Maga who had been the spokesperson for
the Free Ka Bel Movement during Ka Bel’s
incarceration. Dennis had made a very high profile 2007
NZ speaking tour in that capacity, getting major media
coverage in both NZ and the Philippines for his leading
role in protests against Gloria’s State visit here.
He went back home but not for long and currently lives in
Auckland, working for the trade union movement,
specialising in organising migrant workers (including
those from the Philippines). Dennis spoke at length and
movingly of his years of work with Ka Bel, the man he
credited with getting him involved with the KMU and into
the broader progressive movement. I spoke on behalf of
PSNA; Green MP Keith Locke specially came to Christchurch
to speak of his dealings with Ka Bel during Keith’s
years (1986-91) as national coordinator of Philippines
Solidarity. Messages were read from Jane Kelsey, Aziz
Choudry and Paul Watson, none of whom could be present
(the tributes from Keith, Jane, Aziz and Paul are in this
Special Issue). We viewed a short tribute DVD from his
Philippine colleagues. Becky Horton put together a small
but greatly appreciated display of photos of Ka Bel,
taken both in the Philippines and during his 1999 NZ
speaking tour. Cora Fabros brought a couple of photos of
him which his family had gifted to us, so we added them
to the display. And Cora also brought, from his family,
postcards of thanks for us to distribute to Ka Bel’s
many Kiwi friends and supporters.
Ka Bel Was An Extraordinary Man
He gave an amazing 64 years service as an activist,
risking his life, starting as an 11 year old courier for
the guerrillas fighting the occupying Japanese during
World War 2. He was a great servant of the people, not
only of his native Philippines but globally. He was the
personification of that mouthful of a phrase
“proletarian internationalism”. He was a
charismatic leader and speaker (definitely one of the old
school of clenched fist tubthumpers, and I mean that in a
positive way). For me personally he was a valued
colleague and friend for 20 years. My memories of him are
not just of the political and union variety but range
from a raucous night out in a Manila singalong restaurant
with fellow NZ delegates and KMU leaders in 1989 to
hosting him for a weekend at our Christchurch home at the
start of his 1999 NZ speaking tour. We didn’t just
discuss politics and unionism, he was curious about
everything to do with ordinary New Zealand life, watching
his first ever game of rugby (he must have the been the
jinx, as the All Blacks suffered their biggest ever loss
to the Wallabies), marvelling at the clearness of the
skies and the river, and asking “where are the
guards to keep the squatters off the beach at
night?” (he was surprised to be told that there were
none of either). He had an insatiable curiosity about all
manner of things and found New Zealand and its people
fascinating.
He was endearingly human. Upon arrival at our place I
complimented him on his jet black hair, particularly as
his tour publicity photo, taken in Manila the previous
year, showed him with the expected amount of grey hair
for a man in his mid 60s. He candidly admitted that he
dyed it as “the comrades in the KMU Central
Committee expect me to present a virile image”. I
found him repeatedly weighing himself on the scales in
our spare room – he confessed that his colleagues
had teased him that, as he was coming to the home of
dairy products, he’d get fat during his fortnight in
NZ, a prospect which alarmed him (not good for the virile
image, perhaps?). That room is the coldest and darkest in
our house, so I wondered why he stayed in it while the
rest of the house was much sunnier and warmer. He replied
that he was entranced by the beauty of a tree in blossom
outside his window and just wanted to sit and admire it.
The Philippines has lost a great man who was a much finer
leader than any of the Presidents who make it their
mission to oppress, exploit, assault, abduct, torture,
imprison, frame and murder workers and the poor. The
world has lost one of the finest exponents of genuine
grassroots activism and leadership, a man who lived what
he preached, namely to be at one with the people and to
serve the people. His friends and comrades in New Zealand
have lost a mate, one who exemplified working class
internationalism and whose courage and principled
militancy made him an inspiration to all who had the
privilege of knowing him.
Go to top
|
