raped

the following article is one that i wrote for a foreign christian communication group. i feel like its not gonna be published because its barely an academic paper, just a short feature. so im posting it here:

Continuing the Vicious Cycle

The death of a 12 year-old girl in

Davao

City

,

Southern Philippines

hogged headlines in recent weeks. Mariannet Amper was found by her family with a nylon cord tied around her neck. Suicide was made the apparent reason though the police have yet to release the results of its investigation. (1)

 

A diary was found under her pillow, which revealed Mariannet’s laments about her failure to go to school because of her family’s extreme poverty. (2)

 

The local media was quick to pick up on this angle and issued headlines about Mariannet’s suicide because of poverty. The news indeed was startling since suicides, especially among children and young people are rare among Filipinos touted as one of the world’s happiest. And for poverty as reason is even more intriguing.

 

The news prompted the Arroyo government to issue an apology, taking immediate responsibility for the incident and urging its line agencies to improve delivery of services to poor, far-flung communities. Pres. Arroyo ordered the education department to mobilize its alternative distance-learning program that would allow a child to study and finish school without having to go to a formal school. (2)

 

Now one can say that all these immediate responses should have been provided in the first place for many Mariannets in the

Philippines

. Poverty is real and felt by about eight out of ten Filipinos. The fact that 3,000 Filipinos leave their families behind everyday to work abroad is already an attestment to this.

 

And Mariannet’s story shows a lot about how poverty – its concept, roots and implications – are treated in a country struggling to even claim its “developing” status.

 

Missing the Point

 

The coverage of Mariannet’s death and the circumstances surrounding it was another case of how sensationalism pervades Philippine media. Local media watchdog groups dubbed the treatment as a “double-rape” of the 12 year-old girl. (3)

 

While poverty may have been a factor in the girl’s demise, the focus on the suicide angle buried other possible causes of death. Medico-legal findings showed Mariannet was raped or had gone through sexual abuse, while the angle of foul play was yet to be ruled out.

 

And with the sensational coverage of her death, Mariannet is again raped by the local media scarred by increasing competition and the never-ending search for scoops. They went beyond reporting and reduced the girl’s life to a commodity for people to consume, robbing the victim and her family’s dignity. (3)

 

More importantly, sensationalism got in the way of making sense of Mariannet’s death. It missed the point that children, along with women, are among the most vulnerable sectors in the country. Hunger and poverty are potent weapons that intensify exploitation and abuse of women and children. In a situation where a family does not have a secure access to resources and basic services are not provided effectively to disadvantaged communities, women and children are further disempowered.

 

Thousands of Filipino families continue to face death from hunger and illness caused by poverty and maldevelopment. IBON estimates that eight out of 10 Filipinos struggle to survive on less than P96 or a little over $2 (US$1=P43) a day, while 46 million Filipinos experience hunger daily. (4)

 

Poverty statistics are reported regularly by local media. But like sex and violence, the issue of poverty has been commodified, sensationalized and glorified by a free-wheeling press that only in the last few years has pulled enough guts to report the continuing extrajudicial killings of journalists along with activists and church people.

 

But to present poverty as a common experience rooted on society’s structural defects and adherence to policies incompatible with the country’s situation has never reached the media’s agenda. Reporting about poverty and hunger has been a black-and-white thing, a phenomenon linked with misconceptions of indolence and lack of drive of people in lower income brackets and assumptions that poverty can be easily solved with the parents finding a job – even if it is only for a short-term, contractual basis, unmindful of the reality that even children are made to quit school and eke a living because of exploitative and backward conditions in the country. Poverty as a commodity has been made to make sense of a TV network or a national daily’s “social responsibility” by showing pictures of Filipino families living in shanties along dead rivers or railroad tracks, with the hope still in the horizon through “make-a-wish” programs and game shows.

 

This however does not preclude the power of local media to present social issues, especially those of poor and marginalized sectors, and offer alternative solutions through documentaries and news features. Some progressive media groups are taking these efforts further by incorporating them to issue-based campaigns, though most of these initiatives are found in the Net, where the commercial limitations of mainstream media are played less. News sites such as bulatlat.com and pinoypress.net provide netizens with alternative sources of information on relevant social issues. The limitation of course is the inability for this information to reach the grassroots, or the sectors in need of awareness and empowerment. This situation thus requires more effort for traditional media to be more judicious, active and responsible in highlighting issues that matter to people most, especially issues that are multifaceted like poverty.

 

This challenge is required even more so of the government.

 

State Responsibility

 

The Arroyo government was indeed right in responding immediately to Mariannet’s story and owing responsibility for her death. The actual situation of people on the ground after all is the most effective yardstick of any government’s development plan. But to “owe up” and follow this with pronouncements of band-aid solutions would not overhaul the people’s situation and prevent children like Mariannet from falling in the same cycle of hunger, poverty and violence.

 

Given the circumstances surrounding the Arroyo regime, such pronouncement may be seen as another attempt to shore up the president’s image which has been battered anew by allegations of corruption and bribery.

 

The government’s response to Mariannet’s story is almost similar to the way it responded to the trashslide that occurred in Payatas,

Manila

’s largest dumpsite in 2000 that buried hundreds of urban poor families living nearby. Three boys who survived the tragedy were made famous by Pres. Gloria Arroyo when she presented them in her first State of the Nation Address in 2001. One of the boys, Jason Vann Banogon, lost his entire family to the tragedy. He along with Erwin Dolera and Jomer Pabalan said to have floated letters turned into paper boats along the

Pasig

River

, appealing for help from the president. And help reportedly did come. After being presented almost like tokens during the 2001 SONA, the three Payatas boys were made the first GMA scholars. Three people’s organizations composed of families that used to live beside the dumpsite were also promised housing and livelihood assistance, and educational assistance for children of victims. (5) The promises however took longer as the usual bureaucratic inefficiencies caused delays in the release of funds for the families of the landslide victims and other Payatas residents. A year after the promises were made, the Payatas beneficiaries continue to struggle finding more stable sources of income, as the yearly stipend of P10,000 from the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) was released in four tranches that usually came late. In a press conference, Jomer said the president failed to provide justice to the landslide victims. (6) But seven years after the tragedy, the website of the DSWD reported that the GMA scholars from Payatas are now finishing their studies in private high schools. Jomer interestingly was not mentioned.

 

As for Mariannet’s case, the government’s responses remain short-sighted and reflective of the way it understands and handles poverty. Pres. Arroyo’s orders of expanding the alternative school program in rural communities may take care of the transportation fare and other school expenses of poor children like Mariannet. But a lot needs to be seen like the actual funds going for this program, its feasibility for rural, far-flung communities, and the quality of learning materials to be provided and whether they can be affordable for poor families.

 

More importantly, it is hard to imagine how education officials can implement this when the country’s education sector remains mired in decades-old problems of lack of school facilities such as classrooms and books. Such situation is rooted in the continuing state policy of prioritizing debt over social services in the yearly budget allocation. From 1995 to 2006, the share of debt servicing in the budget of the Philippine government has risen from 18% to 37%, while the budget for education has dropped from 17% to 14 percent. In 2006, almost 87% of the state’s revenues went for debt payments.

 

The country’s debt-dependent economy can hardly deliver enough funds for the effective delivery of vital services to the people, especially the marginalized sectors.

 

Worse, government agencies have been “redefining” many of its economic indicators in an attempt to maintain the country’s image and “competitiveness” to foreign investors. The daily per capita poverty threshold, for example, has been set at P233 ($5) at the national level early this year. This pales in comparison to IBON computation of the cost of living or the amount needed by a family of six to live decently in a day, which amounts to P560 ($13). The lowering of poverty figures was meant to support the government’s argument that a wage hike is not warranted since Filipinos can still afford to provide for their families’ basic needs everyday. For many Filipinos of course this is almost far from reality. It also provides substance to recent government pronouncements that they are winning the war against poverty and that economic growth in the past months have been “trickling down to the poor”.

 

Apparently, families like those of Mariannet and Jomer are not feeling any trickle of blessing from the supposed economic growth. In a country where the richest 20% of the population still controls about 53% of the national wealth, and where hunger is a reality for two out of three Filipinos, government press releases of GDP growth hardly matter.

 

In one angle of Mariannet’s story, her father told authorities that the girl might have got upset when he couldn’t give P100 needed for a school project. Whether the father’s statement was true or not is beside the point. Behind skyscrapers or ritzy hotels are thousands of poor Filipino communities who scrape every kind of livelihood possible to avoid going hungry and homeless. For many Filipinos, having P100 in their pockets is a big deal. Not having a single peso can mean hunger and death. And they don’t even have to tie a nylon cord around their necks.

 

Like Mariannet, the Filipino society is continually being raped by a vicious cycle of poverty and exploitation. Overhauling this cycle may require the victims to stand up, speak and confront the violators.