Letter from Rebecca Lawson in the Philippines
July 2, 2007
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Face swollen and with a large gash inside his mouth, Pastor Berlin Guerrero was surfaced inside a police camp after being abducted and tortured. Police told church officials that he'd been brought in by the “intelligence.”
On the evening of Sunday, May 27, 2007, I picked up the phone to find five simultaneous text messages telling me that Pastor Berlin V. Guerrero had been abducted as he left his church 30 minutes earlier. I feverishly contacted colleagues and was told we would have a press conference in the morning at the national offices of the United Church of Christ in the Philippines (UCCP). Pastors and human rights activists were holding a vigil at the military camp nearest to the abduction. I sent text messages and emails, then dug in to lament, pray, and prepare throughout the night.
Being a PC(USA) mission co-worker is a delicate position to be in. My role as a visible sign of the PC(USA) partnership with the UCCP means I’m often invited to get involved when there’s a crisis. Usually, my work blends into the background, but at such a moment an international presence can have an impact.
During that first night, I tried to rest my body while petitioning God to intervene. The candle flickered and the lyrics of a favorite hymn cycled, “And if loves encounters lead us on a way uncertain and unknown, all the saints with prayer surround us, we are not alone.”
Berlin was a colleague of mine at the UCCP national offices before he entered the seminary; my prayer longed to seek him out cosmically in what I knew was a terrifying night of torture.
Since Gloria Macapagal Arroyo became president of the Philippines in 2001, there have been 196 documented cases of people who have been forcibly disappeared and remain missing. Thankfully, the story of Pastor Berlin took a more promising turn.
Showing the marks on his wrist after the Commission on Human Rights doctor documents his torture, Pastor Berlin Guerrero is determined to seek justice.
After the UCCP press conference and protest (including tying white ribbons to the front fence of the office), we set out to the military camp. A UCCP bishop arranged a meeting with the officer-in-charge. While we were en route, our attorney, Emilio Capulong, received a call—Pastor Berlin has been surfaced! He is at the police camp in Imus, Cavite. Ten minutes later the phone of Berlin’s son rang. It was his father. The family was overjoyed to hear Berlin’s voice!
We met Attorney Capulong and went in caravan to the police camp. The attorney ascertained that a warrant from a 1992 murder case was being used as cover for the abduction and the police gave this as the reason they could not release Pastor Berlin to us. The family embraced Berlin, and we photographed his swollen face, cuts, and contusions.
Pastor Berlin didn’t speak much. His eyes were hollow, like other torture victims when first found. The police said that Pastor Berlin was brought to the camp by “intelligence.” We later got reports that it was the Naval Intelligence Security Forces who brought Pastor Berlin to the camp.
Last Wednesday, June 27, 2007, two other pastors and I joined Pastor Berlin in remembering the first month anniversary of his abduction. He is now in a prison in Cavite. Berlin’s attorneys filed to quash the trumped-up charge of murder and requested his immediate release. Given Berlin’s illegal arrest and torture, immediate release is his right; but it is not his reality.
Pastor Berlin Guerrero raises his arms in strength and courage as a sign to UCCP supporters as he leaves the courtroom.
Still held unjustly in detention, Berlin recounted how he was seized when he was with his family about 100 meters from his church. His family screamed to be shown a warrant. Plain-clothed men threw him on the van floor, handcuffed him and blindfolded him, and immediately began to beat him. At a “safe house,” they kept asking questions and forced him to shake his head continuously under penalty of being walloped on his cheek for stopping.
Berlin remarked on the expertise of his abductors, how they beat him with water bottles and cloth-wrapped fists to avoid leaving marks. His grimaced as he recalled having his nipples squeezed until they swelled with blood blisters, while his torturers threatened to do this to his wife and teenage daughter. He described the torment he lived in throughout the night as his torturers tried to force him to confess that he was the head of a provincial committee for the New People’s Army, an armed insurgency group to which he has no relation.
Pastor Berlin remembered taking the breaths he thought were his last. While he was still blindfolded, his abductors placed plastic bags over his head. He tried desperately to bite holes in the plastic, but as layer after layer was added, he could do nothing more until he breathed and there was no air.
“Let it be” was the phrase that Pastor Berlin used to describe his thoughts at that moment. As I listened to him tell the story in his distinct, quiet way, I felt both peace and pain to think that God’s mystery would have been waiting for him if the torturers hadn’t ripped the plastic from his face after he lost consciousness. Let it be.
Let it be so that at our last breath we are still able to have faith that God is with us, whether we are saved from our torturers or not.
My colleagues, PC(USA) mission co-workers Mary Nebelsick and Paul Matheny, and Pastor Berlin’s wife arrived at the jail, and we all shared a meal together. This one-month anniversary of Berlin’s abduction and detention was a bittersweet celebration—a remembrance much like Christ’s Last Supper. We sang “Let Us Break Bread Together” and shared our mid-morning meal.
We celebrate that Pastor Berlin Guerrero is alive. We celebrate that the Rev. Carlos dela Cruz is alive—another UCCP pastor who was taken, tortured, and released last March.
And we remember that UCCP member Abner Hizarsa remains missing since his abduction on March 22, 2007. He is among the many disappeared. We join their families as they search for their loved ones. God is with the disappeared. So be it—God is with us!
Yours in Christ,
Rebecca Lawson
The 2007 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 251
