“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort, but where he stands in times of challenge and controversy,†according to Martin Luther King Jr.
“Environment martyrs who dedicate their lives to saving the world are seldom remembered and honored.†This one was from Dan Pasia, an environment advocate.
They were from different places, but they devoted their work — even their lives — to the protection of God’s best gift to mankind: the environment.
In the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), there has been an increasing number of this kind of heroes over the years. Ricardo Serrano, 61, DENR Region 3 executive director, died from three bullet wounds in the chest in an ambush in Quezon City in 1998.
In 2004, 57-year-old DENR forester Isidro dela Peña also took three bullets in another ambush in Davao City. Orlando Flores, a Bantay Dagat volunteer in Masinloc, Zambaless, took 20 bullets as he sat for dinner with his family in 1994.
Others were luckier. DENR forest guard Raul Zapatos of Bayugan, Agusan del Sur found himself spending four and a half years in jail after fighting illegal loggers, but was declared innocent by the Supreme Court and set free in 2005.
Jose Fabrique, a former police officer in Sibuyan, Romblon; Julio Versoza, a forest ranger assigned at the Mt. Isarog Natural Park in Camarines Sur; and Rolando Rey Recto, a councilor in Buenavista, Quezon — all three suffered harassment and coercion by environmental despoilers.
On April 22 this year, the name of National Anti-Environment Crime Task (NAECTAF) agent Audy Angchangco, 42, was added to the list of these environmental martyrs. Audy was shot dead by two motorcycle-riding hitmen when he stepped out of his house in Lucena City to get a clearer signal while talking on his cellphone to his sister.
The assassins made extra sure that Audy was dead: they pumped 11 bullets into his body — six in the head, three in the chest, one each in his right arm and right leg.
The killing of Audy Angchangco is the first major crime committed this year against environmental crusaders. That it happened right on Earth Day was both an irony and a paradox.
While the incident may be seen as an attempt to undermine the government’s political will to combat illegal logging, it, at the same time, strains what British philosopher Thomas Hobbes referred to as a “social contract†among sectors of a society to push its agenda, in this case environmental protection. Definitely, Audy’s killing shows that the enemies of the environment will be ready to break the social contract at any cost in their favor.
The outcry following Audy Angchangco’s murder was defeaning. Local and international environmental organizations banded together and condemned the killing, prompting Malacañang to decide a hero’s burial for Audy at the Libingan ng mga Bayani in Fort Bonifacio.
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Topic: Remembering our Filipino Environmental Martyrs (Read 1774 times)