The Philippines: Culturing censorship, waging political repression
The Philippines makes for an interesting study in censorial practice: from the auspices of American colonial rule to the impositions of the Marcos dictatorship, and finally to the current regime of crisis and dissent. This survey briefly cites selected aspects of censorial practices directed against Philippine cultural workers in 2006 and early 2007, including in its scope cases of state-condoned political repression against progressive artists, 'legalised' censorship involving duly-constituted government agencies and legislation, and self-censorship arising from the artist and community's adjustments to material and economic exigencies.
Sins of suppression: State-condoned political repression as a form of censorship
Censorship refers to 'the institution or practice of censoring' which, in turn, may be defined as suppression or excision of any matter 'thought to be immoral, seditious, or otherwise undesirable.'1 While often this has been exercised against cultural works and practices, there are also cases when the artists and authors themselves—physically and materially—become the very subjects and targets of suppression.
Assaults against the body politic are, in themselves, forms of censorship. The erasure of images, words and acts pale in comparison to the erasures and even eliminations of actual living and breathing bodies: the very physical planes through which ideological interventions are enacted. Viewed from such a perspective, threats of violence, death or disappearance among the ranks of cultural workers become the most virulent and potent form of censorship there is. In the Philippine setting, such assaults take on the form of state-condoned repression against a targeted segment of the population identified with progressive politics, including cultural workers.
The documented instances of censorship and repression among cultural workers seem to be part of a more systematic state campaign against its perceived enemies and would be better viewed in the context of the current political situation, which is briefly outlined here. President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, who assumed the position after former President Joseph Estrada was ousted by a popular mass uprising in January 2000, has herself been called upon to resign from office by various societal sectors since 2001. These calls for Arroyo's resignation are based on continuous political scandals and allegations of graft and corruption against the President, as well as human rights violations and still-unresolved counts of massive electoral fraud in her 2004 Presidential bid (documented in voice recordings of several wiretapped conversations allegedly between Arroyo and an election commissioner; these were publicly disseminated through CDs in 2005). By the end of 2005, political rallies calling for President Arroyo's resignation had escalated, both in frequency and in scale.
The Arroyo administration, however, has responded to the calls for her resignation through intensified political repression by military, legal and administrative means. On 24 February 2006, President Arroyo issued Presidential Proclamation 1017, declaring the entire Philippines to be under a 'state of emergency' and quickly acting to quash any opposition to her administration under the pretext of cracking down on 'destabilisers' and 'terrorists'. At the same time, the number of what Philippine human rights activists have termed as 'extrajudicial killings'—assassinations of legal activists by suspected state-sponsored assassins or elements of the military—has risen to more than 832 since 2001.2 Many 
of the human rights violations against cultural workers have occurred in what Philippine human rights activists refer to as 'militarised' areas: regions or provinces where a large concentration of military forces are deployed for counter-insurgency operations against the New Peoples Army (NPA) and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). The degree of political repression in the Philippines has solicited the attention of the international community, including the Geneva-based Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU),3 the largest international organisation of parliaments of sovereign states, and Philip Alston, United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions.
Cultural workers associated with progressive organisations have also been victimised by this wave of overt political repression. On 28 April 2006, in Tagaytay City, Cavite in the southern Tagalog region, the Philippine police and elements from the Philippine Navy arrested without warrant and detained poet and peasant rights advocate Axel Pinpin, a 1999 Fellow for Poetry in Filipino at the University of the Philippines (UP) Institute of Creative Writing and the author of a self-published poetry folio entitled Tugmaang Walang Tugma (Rhyming Without Rhymes). He was reportedly compiling materials for a second poetry book at the time of his arrest. Also arrested and detained were four other members of the Kalipunan ng Magsasaka ng Cavite (KAMAGSASAKA-KA, or Farmers Federation in Cavite). Pinpin and his companions, collectively tagged as the 'Tagaytay Five', were physically and mentally tortured while under police custody and were charged with rebellion for 'plotting to destabilise the national government'. They are detained at Camp Vicente Lim in Laguna and have recently concluded a hunger strike as of the time of this writing.
Two days after Pinpin's arrest, on 30 April 2006, another cultural worker and peasant rights activist, Alexis Uy, was seized by military troops along with 14 farmers from the Kongreso ng Magbubukid para sa Repormang Agraryo (Peasant Congress for Agrarian Reform) in Quezon province while they were preparing for a Labour Day rally. A member of a local cultural organisation Artistang Pangkultura ng Mamalakaya sa Timog Katagalugan (APLAYA or Cultural Artists of Fisherfolks in Southern Tagalog), Uy was kept in isolated detention at the Philippine Army's Southern Luzon Command headquarters in Camp Nakar, Lucena City and later presented with the other detainees to the media as alleged NPA guerillas involved in a 'destabilisation plot'.
Uy was eventually released, but Pinpin and other cultural workers—such as sculptor, painter and community teacher Angie Bisuna Ipong—remain detained on charges of rebellion and murder. Ipong, a 62-year old peace advocate, was arrested on International Women's Day, 8 March 2005, in Misamis Occidental. She has been held incommunicado and subjected to torture, interrogation and sexual assault.4
The arrest of Pinpin and others shows that 'artists can not escape from the political contradictions of their time.'5 In a petition, the Amado Hernandez Resource Center (AVHRC), a cultural institution named after the late Filipino National Artist and trade unionist, called on the government to release Pinpin and Ipong: 'Our two cultural workers have fallen prey to political repression that victimises all those fighting for good governance, social reforms and the people's welfare'.6
On 22 August 2006, musician, film-maker and animator Theta Tulay, along with film-maker Bong de Leon and six other individuals of the award-winning progressive multimedia group Southern Tagalog Exposure were abducted while on a human rights fact-finding mission in Mulanay, Quezon province. The group was accosted by members of the Philippine Army's 74th Infantry Brigade while taking documentary photographs of the area. They were transferred to Camp Nakar and later released, although not without being threatened with similar charges of rebellion. Tulay's case exemplifies the experiences of activist film-makers who have experienced being directly harassed, assaulted and prevented from documenting human rights work by state or private security forces, thus being 'censored' even before finishing the production stage of their films.
On 13 September 2006, members of a community-based theatre group were arrested without a warrant and were detained by the military in Negros Occidental, an island in the western Visayas region. Members of Teatro Obrero (Workers' Theater), the cultural arm of the National Federation of Sugar Workers, were rehearsing for a performance commemorating the 20 September 1985 Escalante massacre of sugar workers7 when they were arrested. That same month, another organiser of Teatro Obrero was abducted along with six other individuals by the Philippine Army in Kabangkalan City, Negros Occidental, after their vehicle was accosted while passing through a military checkpoint along the road.
In Teatro Obrero's case, performances (usually an integration of dance, music, and drama) are utilised not only for 'aesthetic purposes, but also as a form of dialogue and statement [addressed] to fellow sugar workers and the hacienderos (sugar barons)'.8 Such harassment constitutes a deliberate attack against the intentions of the performance itself.
Progressive audio-visual groups have also been subjected to state-condoned harassment. Kodao Productions, a Manila-based film and community radio production group, was accused by a state witness of being a 'Communist propaganda unit' and had an award-winning mainstream radio program axed on the on the day that the President declared a state of national emergency in March 2006.9
Such forms of political harassment are tantamount to censorship as they intend to produce a 'chilling effect' or an atmosphere of intimidation on other cultural workers and citizens, who would otherwise be outraged at the impunity with which human rights violations are being committed by suspected state forces. Among media practitioners, the deaths of at least 46 Philippine journalists under the Arroyo administration have been deemed as the 'most brutal form of censorship'.10
Sins of omission: Systematic and legislated censorship
Many of the cases involving direct censorship involve the Movie, Television Review and Classification Board (MTRCB), whose history as a censorial agency can be traced to the country's colonial and dictatorial past. Created by President Marcos by Presidential Decree in 1985, MTRCB is the Philippines' modern-day adaptation of the Board of Censors instituted by the post-war American colonial government. Its charter, as UP law professor Atty Victor Avecilla writes, is a 'verbatim reproduction' of the now-defunct Board of Review for Motion Pictures and Television (BRMPT) instituted under the Marcos regime.
MTRCB is essentially a censors' board whose majority is composed of Presidential appointees, who may rate and classify films and TV programmes into categories according to the age—and presumed maturity—of audiences. However, it retains the power to impose an 'X' rating on a work, thereby preventing it from public exhibition in the country.
MTRCB has been under fire from citizens for arbitrarily imposing 'X' ratings on works for mainstream audiences and even alternative films—such as Toxic Mango, a five-minute work by independent film-maker Khavn dela Cruz—for containing supposed salacious and immoral scenes.11 The work was part of a project, Guimaras: Short films from the Oil Spill, by the Philippine Independent Filmmakers Cooperative, aiming to generate more public awareness of the massive October 2006 oil spill off the coast of Guimaras island in Western Visayas.
In October 2006, MTRCB came under fire from both the Philippine Senate and the House of Representatives for imposing an alleged arbitrary 'X' rating on a DVD film biography of deposed President Joseph Estrada. The rating was imposed after MTRCB reviewers declared that the work tended to 'threaten the political stability of the state' and 'undermine the faith and confidence of the people in the government', prompting Estrada to bring the case to court12 and distribute the film via the Internet. Senators denounced MTRCB for acting as President Arroyo's 'censorship body' while Congress threatened to allot only an annual budget of 1 peso to the agency.
In August 2006, the MTRCB pressured producers of a local public affairs show on TV network ABC 5 to delete selected portions of the film Shadow, a documentary feature on the NPA and its "shadow" government existing in guerilla zones throughout the country.13
In light of the two aforementioned cases, it seems that MTRCB has wielded its censorial privilege against the perceived political opponents of the current administration. 'There is indeed a trend right now for the MTRCB to be used in preventing the spread of what the powers-that-be deem as counter-propaganda [to the Arroyo administration],' writes journalist and UP journalism professor Danilo Arao.14
While independent film-makers and cultural workers have initiated and supported the formation of spaces and events where their works may be accessed, such instances of censorship against works deemed to be 'immoral' or 'seditious' have usually occurred in the context of the work's dissemination to a much wider audience through the mass media—through television and radio, in particular. Such pressure on national and local media is more evident and pervasive, to the point that international media watchdog Reporters Without Borders gave the Arroyo administration a failing mark in upholding press freedom in its annual report, citing the high incidence of murders, assaults, arrests lawsuits and censorship against the Philippine press in 2006.15
In February 2007, the Philippine government approved legislation that may have even more adverse implications on censorial practices: the Anti-Terror Law or the Human Security Act (HSA), which will take effect on 14 July 2007. This bill has drawn flak and opposition from various sectors and human rights organisations, who view it as a tool to effect more political repression and surveillance against perceived opponents of the current administration. Its critics contend that the bill's ambiguous definitions of what constitutes terrorism may be used against artists, film-makers and musicians.
The Concerned Artists of the Philippines (CAP), an organisation of professional and semi-professional artists from different disciplines which is currently based in Metro Manila, has denounced the bill as 'anti-artist' and 'anti-arts and culture'.16 CAP said in a statement, 'The HSA defines "terrorists" and "terrorism" so vaguely that even an art or literary piece critical of the politically and economically powerful elite could be classified as "terrorism," and its creators, "terrorists"'.
The cultural implications of the HSA are even more adverse, CAP contends. 'For the above and its other equally ambiguous provisions, it is accurate to brand [it] as the ultimate censorship instrument. Already indirectly censored by patrons' or commercial interests and the clout of the conservative church hierarchy, this bill will all the more discourage artists to explore alternative ideas and liberating themes. For the people, this bill simply means subjugation, the most dreadful state of humanity,' it continued.
CAP views the HSA as an extension of the repression brought about by the global war against terror. 'People across the world have long disdained the [HSA's] mother template, the USA PATRIOT Act. It is this legislation—and the severe human rights violations it has spawned, like the abuses in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib—that has unmasked the true face of the Bush regime's so-called "War on Terrorism" following 9/11. The USA PATRIOT Act of which the HSA is a mere copycat is in fact a key reason why there is a ever-widening call worldwide to repudiate the Bush's bogus "War on Terrorism",' CAP Secretary General Soc Jose writes. 17
Culturing Self-censorship
Another aspect which has yet to be explored in depth is the degree of self-censorship arising from the material and socio-economic conditions faced by Philippine cultural workers.
Despite the rosy economic indicators that state technocrats point to as a proof of national growth, there remain compelling signs that the majority of the Filipino people remain in dire economic straits. A national survey institute, the Social Weather Stations, has reported that one out of five Filipinos goes hungry, while the government has drastically revised the definition of 'unemployment' to keep the unemployment statistics from soaring. Faced with such prospects, many cultural workers and communities have to contend primarily with commercialising their works or sticking to tried-and-tested formulas in order to survive. For young artists in the music industry, for instance, works must not be too politically or socially critical as they risk losing producers and sponsors, says Julie Po of CAP.
In an interview, Po asserts that state policies are also steering cultural workers toward a situation where artistic freedom, license and experimentation is intentionally or unintentionally suppressed due to economic considerations. This is evident in dwindling state budgets for service sectors (e.g. health, education and culture) and institutions such as the National Museum and Cultural Center of the Philippines, Po highlights, where a situation of economic exigency and dwindling state support for the cultural sector eventually transfers to private interest the control of public expression.
The influence of private corporate interests in media and in other service- and culture-related industries also has implications on censorship in the arts. In October 2006, independent film-maker Jan Philippe Carpio charged television network ABC 5 with censorship when it edited out portions of Carpio's short film Bunker O: Sumirib, which tackled the effects of a 2006 oil spill off the coast of Guimaras island by a MT Solar I tanker chartered by global oil giant Petron Corporation. The accident, which discharged around two million litres of bunker fuel into the Visayan sea, is reckoned to be one of the largest oil spills in Philippine history.
A six-minute version of the film was to be aired on ABC 5, along with other works on the Guimaras oil spill by 12 other film-makers. However, the station aired a four-minute version, where sequences containing the words 'Petron' and 'MT Solar' were edited out. The film-maker notes that these excluded sequences consisted mostly of interviews and quotes from local fishermen affected by the environmental tragedy, whose voices were literally cut short by the censor's cutter.
'Specific and key portions of the film involving the residents of Guimaras expressing their honest feelings about the oil company and the shipping company, who as we all know are involved in this tragedy, were clearly edited out, omitted [and] censored,' the film-maker asserted.18 The network later apologised to Carpio for the incident.19
Hence, the current economic and political situation—marked by the imposition and enforcement of policies which contradict many basic constitutional rights, the climate of impunity surrounding rights violations, the facade of democratic governance which the current administration has to maintain, and the economic exigencies involved in the production, distribution, and reception of cultural goods—produces a situation which can be internally immobilising in many aspects for artists. Cultural workers are faced with a situation where 'freedom' is bestowed for as long as one does not rock the boat too hard. The views of the status quo determine the exhibition of works, imposing a form of censorship that 'forcefully thwarts dissenting views'.20 As Philippine National Artist for Literature Bienvenido Lumbrera said in an interview, 'Under the present quasi-martial law condition, the parameters are not clear. In such a situation, the artist has theoretically the freedom to express himself but the parameters are not certain and therefore, it makes an artist apprehensive on how far he can go.'21
Interrogating the censors
The local struggle against such systematic erasures, however, continues through the formation of tactical alliances among cultural workers. More artists are uniting among their ranks to deliver their protests against censorship and political repression. Veteran artists who survived martial law (imposed in 1972) are relearning tactics of combat, while a new generation of cultural workers—many of whom were barely conceived when martial law was first imposed—are discovering how it is to interrogate the censors of a new regime.
A case in point is the initiation of project-based interventions, such as TutoK Karapatan art project (tutok, roughly translated, means 'to focus' or 'to aim', while karapatan means 'rights'), which has been generally supported by the artistic community. TutoK convenor and Filipina visual artist Karen Flores describes the project as a 'comprehensive artists' response to the growing unrest of the times', noting that the project has made possible several exhibitions at various sites in 2006, including a community museum and park, public spaces such as churches and markets, a gallery, an academic art space and a national cultural institution.
Formed in late 2005, as a response to what the participants described as the 'deteriorating' human rights situation in the country, TutoK eventually mustered the support of around 300 Filipino artists, Its opening salvo was a multimedia public arts festival organised by the Neo-Angono Artists Collective entitled Publikhaan: Making Human Rights Issues Public, held in Angono, Rizal in November 2006. This was followed by a travelling exhibition entitled Perspektiba (Perspective) through three universities: the University of Santo Tomas, University of the Philippines and St Scholastica's College. The works in Perspektiba reflect on the overtures of state violence: literal and metaphorical dislocations, disappearances and demises associated with the rising wave of political repression in the Philippines and more importantly, which attest to the growing discontent and clamour among the visual arts community against the assaults on human rights under the Arroyo administration.22 The intentional staging of the exhibitions in university art spaces is 'timely, considering the growing number of student activists who are either abducted or killed' and it 'further underscores the initiative's aim to bring these issues to a wider audience.'23 Such exhibitions aim to infuse the urgency of rejecting the 'passive acceptance of repression'24 and demonstrate the 'resistance [to repression] must be no less ubiquitous.'25
A second TutoK-initiated exhibition at the Boston Gallery in Cubao, Quezon City, entitled Dos por Dos ('Two by Two'), featured over 200 mixed media works representing each artist's reflection on human rights issues and unified by a common format: a standard size of two feet by two feet. The images, which one critic described as 'mind-boggling in variety and impact', ranged from the 'winking (a mugshot portrait of President Joseph Estrada) to the jaw-dropping (President Macapagal-Arroyo fully gowned, surrounded by piles of skulls in what is apparently a killing field of political victims, and smiling to two skulls she holds up, like Hamlet soliloquising to poor Yorick)'.26
Visual artist and writer Karen Ocampo Flores, also TutoK Karapatan's project director, writes of how 'numbers [in Dos Por Dos] play a vital function in both [the exhibit's] text and subtext', recalling how it literally denotes a 'piece of wood of such thickness and breadth, wieldy enough as a weapon or a deterrent in pinch'. 'The numerous artists who make up [the exhibit] wrest the violence implicit in that numeric phrase and turn numbers into a declaration of solidarity,' she declares.27 TutoK's last major site-specific exhibition Re-View: Pasang Masid was held in February 2007, at the Cultural Center of the Philippines.
More artists, musicians, film-makers and writers are also forming issue-based alliances among themselves, as seen in the examples of Artists for the Removal of Gloria Arroyo (ARREST Gloria), a broad alliance of artists calling for the ouster of Arroyo and the institutionalisation of reforms beyond a constitutional succession. The campaigns
for the release of political prisoners such as the 'Tagaytay Five' continue, while Axel Pinpin manages to produce and publish poetry even under detention. Progressive artists organisations are also strengthening their ties with people at the grassroots level. CAP, for instance, organises fora, skills training workshops, and outreach programmes among disenfranchised and dispossessed urban and rural poor communities as a way of 'empowering the people to speak and create for themselves'.
In the Philippines, the struggle against censorship is a struggle against forgetting and collective amnesia. The coming years will prove to be the litmus test for a new generation of cultural workers besieged by such systematic erasures. LCI.
