Uncivil Disobedience

The environmental desolation sparked a wave of protest across the land. Not merely at the loss of livelihood from the marine catastrophe, but from long-simmering discontentments that had been bottled up for the past six terms of the regime. The dissatisfaction over divisive social issues, the disparities between rich and poor, the continuing persecution of the war against the communistas and the Moros, the curbing of media rights and the disappearances of political opposition, all was coming to head. For decades, the regime had kept a firm lid over these problems, but eventually some of it had to leak out.

People began taking to the streets in protestation. In civil disobedience to the regime and all it stood for.

 

But the regime was careful to quash any hint of dissidence. The Pulisiya had arrived in full force, and in ominous foreboding the military had also sent soldiers to support them, bringing with them armored vehicles and heavily armed troops with Armalites. For now, they stayed back, letting the Pulisiya do their work, cordoning the thousands of protesters with an anemic wall of riot shields, attack dogs and sticks. The thin blue line faced the angry masses of civiians, both sides staring each other down eye-to-eye. Taunting. Provoking. Calling each other out. It was a powder keg ready to exploderize. All it needed was just that one single spark...

Some of the protesters recognized one of the Pulisiya as a thug who had beaten their friend half to death a night ago for having violated the curfew. The Pulis man saw them and chortled, asking them what they wanted when they approached them, if they were looking for that friend of theirs who was now floating in a ditch.

They answered by smashing his skull with a rock, breaking his other bones with sticks and stones. They were done with words. They wanted it to hurt.

The Pulisiya had the excuse they needed. They advanced forward instantly at the sight their member going down, moving like a phalanx of shield and baton, implacable and unstoppable - even to the point of uncaringly stomping on their fallen friend even as he tried to get back up on his broken legs. The Pulisiya slammed their riot shields against the bodies of protesters, sending them to the ground where they would be beaten mercilessly with batons or face-stomped to the pavement.

They came with the ferocity of blue steel. Initially confident troublemakers had themselves taken down a notch when the Pulisiya's well-drilled baton-swings fractured their femurs like twigs, sending them down reeling and clutching their legs, where they felt shards of bone protrude through flesh.

A woman tried to stand defiantly, taking cues from the tank man of Tiananmen Square. She stood alone, raising her hands as if to ward off the riot shields that came to trample on the disenfranchised Philippine citizenry. She was armed with no sticks, no stones, her only possession the knapsack of food and clothes and water she had brought with her on her trip to the city.

For a moment, the Pulisiya paused, not knowing what to do with her. Unarmed, unaggressive, did she deserve the indiscriminate justice they were doling out with such fury?

A brave man joined her stand, but at this interruption prompted the Pulisiya to act. They cracked his head open with batons, and soon he staggered back to the woman and she could see that his eyes were barely opened and rolled back, that blood and brains were leaking from his head and from his ears. The man, now knowing better, reached out to the woman and tried to pull her away from the Pulis.

But before he could stagger away and bring her to safety, the Pulisiya advanced on them and trampled them underfoot, boots stomping on their faces.

The protestations had stopped, the screams had started.

But the people would not go down quietly. Not this time. Not after so much. Not after everything that had happened, after what the regime had done to them. They were sick of the graft and the corruption, sick of the authoritarianism, the lies. They all knew someone who had been taken from them, disappeared to the secret jails, or salvaged and left to die in ditches by the goons. They saw what was happening all around them, everything that had transpired, everything that was going on in their country, and at this they said 'no'.

No.

Those of the protesters clad in blood red bandannas, signifying the color of spilled blood, took out their molotov cocktails - San Miguel beer bottles filled with flammables - lit them up and threw them at the Pulisiya. They burned. The black and blue turned into yellow and orange as they were set aflame. The Pulis tried to put the fires out with water cannons, but the water shortage saw to that and all they could get out of their high-pressure hoses were feeble impotent squirts. Officers screamed as they were slowly cremated on the spot, running all over the place until they finally crumpled over and shriveled like burned leaves.

The few survivors there were ran to the military lines, and there they told the army commander what had transpired.

Communista! Sputtered the Pulis. There were communists there. "Naay mga communista didto!"

"Pila?" How much, the commander asked.

"Sila tanan! Mga communista sila tanan!" All of them, they were all communists.

"Sige," the commander acknowledged. They would deploy the troops. "I-deploy ang mga sundalo!"

The armored vehicles came. The protesters were already waiting for them. Feets clad in slippers and sandals, stomping twenty thousand strong on the gravelly earth. They came in numbers, for so many they were that their footfalls in unison caused the very ground to shake. Now was the winter of their discontent, even if their country never had winters. In the sweltering humidity, they were drenched in their own sweat and reeked of body odours. The protestants came to face the soldiers, themselves armed with nothing but their bare hands while the troops shouldered Armalites and had armored vehicles.

Once more, both sides reckoned each other in the silence before the storm. Sticks and stones and face-smashing rocks, versus assault rifles, Armalites, and tanks. It was not a fair fight. Yet the protesters were not cowed by fear. The soldiers were the ones who seemed to hesitate.

Were they ready to take the lives of those they had sworn to defend?

Then a shot rang out. They echoed through the air like the crack of thunder that came after lightning.

Rat-a-tat-tat-tat! Rat-a-tat-tat-tat! Rat-a-tat-tat-tat! Rat-a-tat-tat-tat! Rat-a-tat-tat-tat!

"Shit!" screamed the military commander. They had guns! "Naa silay armas!"

"Unsa atong buhaton?!" What do we do, a subordinate asked.

"Pataya sila!" Kill them, the commander shouted.

"Pataya sila tanan!"

Kill them all.

"I-pang massacre sila!"

Massacre them.

  

They raised their rifles and fired. Armalites roared, but the echoes of gunfire could only be heard when the screaming stopped. The sound of a dozen barking guns were simply drowned by the sound of men, women and children dying by scores, they turned and tried to run but in their numerosity the stampede saw just as many of them die from being trampled underfoot, crushed by the sheer mass of humanity until crushed people started bursting like overripe zits. All while the dead piled on top of them, slain by hot lead.

Then it became quiet.

A faint weeping filled the air. A child held his dead mother in one hand, while holding a toy gun in the other.

"Pusil!" Gun, a soldier shouted.

An Armalite barked. The sound of a single shot echoed in the air, and then the rattling of a spent cartridge hitting the ground.

The weeping stopped.

The soldiers left in disgust. The midday sun began baking the strewn piles of bodies, hastening the process of decomposition - just as the entire country decomposed all around them.