Bruce Van Voorhis
Published by Asian Human Rights Commission

In March 1996, the Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) organised its first Human Rights and Spirituality Workshop in Hong Kong. One of the participants at that first gathering of human rights activists from throughout Asia was Sr. Mariani Dimaranan of Task Force Detainees of the Philippines (TFDP). After the meeting, Sr. Mariani felt that such a workshop would be valuable to others in the Philippines. Thus, through the efforts of Sr. Mariani and with the help of the AHRC, another workshop was held in Baguio in central Luzon from 18 to 22 October 1997. Not to Hurt the Womb That Gave Birth: Dynamics of Neglect and Dynamics of Solidarity is the product of the sharing of the lives and spirituality of the 35 people who participated in this second workshop - women and men spanning several generations of activism whose spiritual resources spring from their lives lived as Catholics, Protestants, Muslims and indigenous people. Except for one notable exception - the input of Bishop Julio Xavier Labayen - the participants themselves were the resource people for this workshop in a model that the AHRC has used in other meetings.

Consequently, this collection of people with a wealth of rich experiences forged from years of suffering and struggle, both past and present, is the foundation on which the contents of this book rests. Within this general outline are the stories of people’s lives during the 20-year dictatorship of President Ferdinand Marcos as well as present day human rights violations. In sharing their lives, the participants described the pain and abuse that the Filipino people have endured and with which they continue to cope as individuals, as communities and as a nation. It is evident that the abuse imposed on the people under Marcos has not died with him, that the physical, emotional and psychological scars of decades of countless inhuman acts remain embedded in the psyche and lives of Filipinos today.

Underlying all human rights violations, of course, is a denial of life and a lack of respect for its value. One force opposing the negation of life is the other major topic of the workshop and of this book - spirituality. While a disregard for human rights and the environment demeans life in all of its forms, spirituality proclaims the sanctity and worth of life. Human rights violations and the degradation of the environment can take place because we have forgotten our own links with life in all of its manifestations or at least tend to ignore them. In our world today with its emphasis on globalisation, on economic growth, on gross national product (GNP) and other economic indicators, a respect for life, both human and of the natural world, is no more central to our societies in Asia and elsewhere. People and the environment have become expendable; they have a price and have become part of the cost-benefit analysis of corporations and governments; they can be sacrificed for ever greater economic growth that seems to never be satisfied and must constantly continue to increase. Because the value of life is reduced to being a unit of production or consumption, life loses its meaning and value. Hence, it becomes easier to exploit, to abuse, to extinguish life. Consequently, a sub-theme present in this book is the need to re-evaluate the meaning of life and our responsibility within society to ensure its preservation. Like the discussion about human rights, the thoughts shared by the participants about spirituality have meaning at an individual, communal and national level. They integrate the individual with other people and with Nature in interlinking relationships of life.

Since this meeting was held, a third human rights and spirituality workshop was held in the Philippines in Tagaytay City in November 1997 through the collaboration once again of Sr. Mariani and the AHRC. Two of the statements from the participants of this gathering are included at the end of this book. A fourth human rights and spirituality workshop is planned in the Philippines in March 1998.

This book, however, is not only confined to the suffering of the Filipino people that has been inflicted upon them through the excesses of the military and a corrupt and authoritarian political system, for it also includes the daily social and economic violence of poverty and the ongoing cultural subjugation of the country’s ethnic and religious minorities. In more concrete terms, space in the book is devoted to telling the stories of the children, women, elderly, workers, fisherfolk and indigenous peoples of the Philippines. In addition, one chapter critiques the educational system in the country, and another chapter is devoted to the inadequacies of the nation’s present judicial system - two forces in society that can promote or retard the development of human rights.

Two common weapons of repression - division and domination are evident in the stories of the participants. This includes the domination of Nature as well as of people. Upon reflection, it becomes clear that one of the issues today in the Philippines and elsewhere is the acceptance of divisions and domination within society - the division of majority and minority communities, the domination of women and Nature, etc. Thus, the acceptance by society of divisions and domination as a part of a country’s collective consciousness contributes as much to the abuse of life as does the actual encouragement of divisions and the use of domination by the powerful actors of a nation. Division and domination can become part of an invisible ideology that reinforces an irreverence for natural and human life, thus, paving the way for the exploitation of the environment and workers and the denial of people’s rights.

Another message of the book is that the inability to participate in the process that makes decisions affecting people’s lives is an infringement of their human rights. This in reality is a comment about the state of democracy in the Philippines today and the impact that the political process has on the social and economic dimensions of life of the people. This too has universal applications elsewhere in Asia and other parts of the world. As a member of the workshop’s secretariat, I felt that there was a connection among the participants that, for lack of a better term, I will call a "spirituality of suffering." It was deeper than empathy and transcended the living of similar experiences I felt. Previously, I had always associated spirituality with joy. From this workshop though, I came to see that spirituality can also have an intense presence in suffering that resonates with something very deep within us that binds us together.

Not to Hurt the Womb That Gave Birth: Dynamics of Neglect and Dynamics of Solidarity is the third book in the Human Rights and Spirituality series produced by the AHRC, March 1998, Hong Kong, 204 pages.