THE STATEMENT OF
ORLANDO TIZON
BEFORE
THE CONGRESSIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS CAUCUS
June 24, 1998

        I am a survivor of torture.  I was arrested with four others on 
September 20, 1982 in Davao City, in the Southern island of Mindanao, 
Philippines.  I was kept incommunicado for three weeks in Camp Catitipan of 
the Philippine Constabulary in the outskirts of the city.  I was kept 
blindfolded, and under constant interrogation, subjected to beatings and all 
kinds of threats.  One evening during these three weeks, while I was 
blindfolded and trussed up, I was taken by two soldiers and bodily loaded into 
a military jeep.  I was made to lie down on the floor like an animal being 
brought to the slaughter house, while the soldiers had their feet and gun butts 
on my head and back.  I could tell from the noise their guns made that they 
were fully armed.  They were singing and laughing.  One of them asked me 
where I wanted to be buried, whether six feet under the ground of ten feet 
under the sea.

        When we reached a beach outside the city I was told to get out of the 
vehicle.  There I found that there was another prisoner, a man who had been 
arrested together with me.  Two soldiers led me and then the soldiers shouted 
telling me to run.  I started walking on the beach expecting all the while to be 
shot dead.  Suddenly I heard men angrily shouting and shots rang.  I fell 
down on the beach.  Soldiers then dragged me and brought me to a house 
where I was told to sit by a small table.  I asked them why they had shot the 
man who was arrested with me.  They told me that he was still alive and 
brought him near me and told me to touch his hand.

        I was offered coffee.  A man sat in front of me and started asking me 
about social action programs of churches and the activities of certain church 
members and their leaders.  After I drank the cup of coffee, I felt light-headed 
and loose-tongued.  I passed out after an hour of the interrogation and found 
myself later that evening back in the camp.

        Only after three weeks were the five of us allowed to talk to each other.  
One of the women arrested with us told us that she had been raped by soldiers 
using instruments dipped in hot pepper.  We were finally allowed to receive 
visitors and talk to our lawyers.  After three months, the five of us were 
transferred to the detention center in the city.  While there, I saw prisoners 
interrogated at any rime of the day or night; several were taken from 
detention never to come back.


        On April of the following year, I was interrogated again.  They 
attempted to extract information from me for two weeks.  Once, two men in 
civilian clothes questioned me and one of them trying to use a friendly 
approach, told me that he had gone to military school in a camp in the 
southern United States.  He bragged that he could sing U.S. country folk 
music better than some Americans.

        I was released from prison after President Marcos was thrown out of 
power in 1986.

        What are my thoughts now?  First of all, I am grateful for the solidarity 
that many from the United States, Canada, Europe, and Japan showed me and 
others like me.  Upon coming here, I have met and have made friends with 
many Americans, women and men of good will.  I received treatment for 
more than a year from the Kovler Center for the Survivors of Torture, one of 
only two such facilities in the whole United States, I was told at that time.

        But I also tell my friends that I maintain a critical stance towards U.S. 
foreign policies that support unpopular and undemocratic governments.  It is 
this support that has allowed the Marcoses and Suhartos of this world to 
maim, torture, and kill their own citizens with impunity.  When Marcos was 
finally forced to go, I asked myself, like millions of other Filipinos, "Why did 
it take so long?"  It is that support that prolongs the lives of such 
governments.

        In the Philippines one of the foundations for U.S. support for the 
Marcos government was the presence of huge U.S. military bases there.  In 
1991 the Philippine senate voted against the renewal of the Military Bases 
Agreement with the United States because it violated the constitutional 
prohibition of nuclear weapons in Philippine territory.  In recent years 
officials in both countries have tried to revive the bases agreement in the 
guise of a Visiting Forced Agreement.  In essence this document violates the 
Philippine constitution and is even worse than the old one because it grants 
even more privileges and access to the U.S. military machine and personnel.

I am glad that human rights is beginning to be included in U.S. foreign policy 
calculations.  But we all need to do more to rid our planet of this "plague of 
the twentieth century" which is torture.  We must widely disseminate 
information about the practice and its effects on individuals and society.  I 
strongly ask that more resources be made available for centers treating the 
survivors of torture.