March/April response: Deaconesses Demand Justice

United Methodist deaconesses in the Philippines are prime movers behind variety of ministries inside and outside the church.

by Paul Jeffrey

Mely Fernandez and her family had just gathered to watch their favorite evening soap opera, Encantadia, when two armed men walked into their simple home in Caloocan, a sprawling city at the edge of Manila, the capital of the Philippines. Both were armed with pistols. One wore a hood over his head.

The men ordered Fernandez’s son Wesley to lie down in the middle of the room. He got on his knees, but asked the men, “Why me? I have done nothing wrong. I live a clean life. I’ve never been in the police station. Please don’t do this.”

Fernandez went into her bedroom and woke her husband, Andres, who was napping before taking his nighttime shift in a neighborhood watch program. When Andres came into the main room, he asked the armed men, “Why are you doing this?”

The hooded man pushed Andres to the floor and fired a shot into his head. He then pushed Wesley to the floor and shot him in the head. The two intruders walked out the front door and disappeared into the night.

Masks prevent identification

The October 2016 killings would be repeated over and over in the Philippines during the 2016-2022 administration of President Rodrigo Duterte, and to a lesser degree in the years since. In the name of combating illegal drugs, principally crystal meth, known locally as shabu, thousands of alleged drug users and dealers have been assassinated by unidentified killers. At times the victims were indeed users or even small-scale dealers, yet often they’ve been completely innocent.

According to Ephraim Cortez, a United Methodist who is president of the National Union of People’s Lawyers, the country’s police claim 7,000 were killed. He says independent sources put the death toll at 30,000 people.

Police officials have shown little interest in solving the murders, and attempts to push the legal system have been stymied by the lack of positive identification of the killers, who usually wore masks to prevent witnesses from identifying them. Charges filed by many families have produced only four convictions. And those were convictions of the person who pulled the trigger. Identifying and prosecuting higher-ranking officials who ordered the hits has proved impossible within the country’s legal system. And on top of the legal challenges, social pressure has forced many families to remain quiet. Fernandez says some of her neighbors actually believed her son was using drugs, a claim she denies. Yet the stigma took away her sleep and left her constantly depressed.

Given the inability of survivors to get justice at home, the families of several victims asked the International Criminal Court to investigate. The request was initiated by the lawyers’ union and supported by groups like Rise Up for Life and for Rights, an organization of victims’ families coordinated by United Methodist Deaconesses Norma Dollaga and Rubylin Litao. (See “War Against the Poor in the Philippines,” November-December 2019 issue of response.)

In response, President Duterte withdrew the Philippines from the ICC in 2019. Yet the complaint was filed before withdrawal, so the tribunal launched an investigation that has quietly continued. Although not much is publicly known about the ICC investigation, those behind the killings have not shied away from red-tagging Cortez and others. Red-tagging is a practice in the Philippines of branding someone as a communist sympathizer, effectively marginalizing them. It often precedes actual death threats and at times assassination.

Some expect the ICC to issue indictments in 2025, but while the investigation has quietly simmered in the background, an internecine battle within the country’s political elite finally put the killings on the front page. As tensions grew between the Duterte family and that of Ferdinand Marcos, Jr., the son of a former dictator who succeeded Duterte as president in 2022, revelations of a massive illegal online gaming operation hit the news. Based in the Philippines, the business targeted gamblers on the Chinese mainland.

Congressional hearings revealed that some of the profits of the operation had funded a reward system that paid police officers to kill those marked for death in the “war on drugs.” Successful hits earned a killer from 20,000 to 1 million pesos, the equivalent of US$340-$17,000 for each murder.

The hearings, which were widely followed throughout the country, also revealed that the killings were used by drug cartels to decimate the competition. And some of the masked assassins were identified in police operation reports, the everyday paperwork needed to make sure the right people got paid.

As Mely Fernandez and other survivors looked on after years of being ignored or stigmatized, they celebrated that someone in authority was finally willing to listen. In June 2024, Fernandez and others testified before a Congressional committee.

“It was an opportunity for me to let go of the most painful thing in my life. The world could finally hear what happened to my husband and son,” she said.

Fernandez credits Rise Up for giving her the courage to testify openly before the congressional committee.

“After the killings, I didn’t know what to do. I was traumatized, so I hid from others. I didn’t want to talk about it. I was so afraid. Then I met Norma and Rubylin and the other women in Rise Up, who support one another and help one another overcome that fear. I’m still afraid, but not like before,” she said.

Old fears die hard. Late in 2024, Fernandez was scheduled to testify before a larger joint committee of Congress, but when she saw a number of police officers enter the room to also testify, her nerves got the better of her and she left without speaking.

“We didn’t know what we were doing”

Cortez says Rise Up played a critical role in helping the country deal with the mass murder in its midst.

“When the killings began in 2016, there was chaos. Everyone was confused about what was going on and who was behind it. But Norma and Rubylin didn’t wait for things to be clear; they just started accompanying the families of the victims, listening to their pain, helping the families organize to get the services they needed. While we lawyers provided legal assistance, they provided services that helped the families survive and which ultimately empowered them to speak out and demand accountability,” Cortez said.

“He told us his parishioners were being attacked. So we started to visit the families. Many were surprised or suspicious that someone from the church was interested in them. But we would introduce ourselves and ask if we could pray with them. To be honest, we didn’t know what we were doing. There was no manual. We just went to be present, to embrace them as they grieved. As we listened to them, it became clear that this was really a war against the poor,” Dollaga said.

Dollaga says their involvement began when a Catholic priest invited them to his parish.

The two women brought wide experience as both deaconesses and political activists. Soon they were organizing health care, finding safe refuge in churches for threatened witnesses, and planning summer camps for the children of shooting victims.

“We brought what we had learned from years of working with the Lumads [Indigenous peoples in Mindanao], with political prisoners, as well as what we learned in the church about counseling and organizing activities for children and youth. All that helped us build relationships on the ground,” Dollaga said.

As the killings accelerated, so did the organizational work of Rise Up. Some women became leaders in their neighborhoods, turning their grief into solidarity, responding quickly to support the families of new victims.

“I was amazed at their resiliency. No, it’s more than that. It’s about the deeper strength of the poor when nothing is left for them, nothing but to fight. I learned from them the ability to cry and to say out loud their longing for justice. Their solidarity with one another came from their being neighbors to one another, from being sisters to one another,” Dollaga said.

“Dignity in telling our stories”

Jane Lee’s husband Michael was killed in 2017 while standing beside a road in Caloocan waiting to begin his shift as a jeepney driver. Two men on a motorcycle slowed down and the one on the back shot him in the back and head. In the Philippines, it’s known as a killing by “riding in tandem.” He died instantly.

For Jane Lee and their two children, the world turned upside down. She went from a stay-at-home mom going to college part-time to being a full-time breadwinner.

“I had to find a way to pay my kids’ school expenses along with the rent and all the bills. My children were still young, so they couldn’t help,” she said.

Lee found a job working for a school cafeteria, beginning at 4 a.m. with shopping in the market. She goes home at 5 p.m.

As if life without her partner wasn’t tough enough, she faced the prejudice of neighbors who believed that her husband’s murder somehow proved he had been a drug user. Other children bullied her kids with accusations that their father was an addict.

Despite acquiring a statement from the government’s Human Rights Commission and her local neighborhood officials that there was no evidence her husband was involved with illegal drugs, the stigma remained. Lee moved to a new neighborhood. Her children changed schools. She told her new neighbors that her husband was working abroad.

Lee tried pushing the police to investigate her husband’s killing, but got nowhere.

“He was killed as part of the war on drugs, but that’s all I know. There were witnesses, but nobody wants to help me. Nobody wants to go to court and say what happened. They are afraid. They are afraid of Duterte and they are afraid of the police,” she said.

Stonewalled by official inaction, Lee found solace and strength in Rise Up.

“We are poor, but we want justice, both for ourselves and for all the victims. We found strength in each other, and dignity in telling our stories. As we share our stories with others, I believe we are making it harder for this to happen again,” she said.

Soon Lee was dedicating her nonworking hours and entire weekends to Rise Up, supporting other survivors and publicly calling for accountability.

She testified before a committee in the Philippines Congress, but was interrupted by the committee chair every time she mentioned the ICC.

“I said I believed we could only get justice from the ICC investigation, that any government effort wouldn’t lead anywhere,” she said. “They didn’t want to hear that.” Lee says she collapsed in tears in a restroom following her testimony.

Invited by the lawyers who filed the ICC case, Lee also traveled to Europe to testify and lobby before the United Nations Human Rights Council.

“It’s a body made up of states, so it’s difficult for an individual’s voice to be heard. But we felt they needed to hear from victims of state policies as well. And I told them that the war on drugs has continued under the Marcos administration, that the killings have not stopped,” she said.

Lee says that she and other survivors will not give up.

“We are hopeful that the ICC investigation will move us toward justice. The congressional hearings have been helpful, but we won’t have real justice until Duterte and the generals involved in the war on drugs are in prison. That may not happen soon, but we’ll wait,” she said.

“They are our hope”

Over the years, the women in Rise Up have become the principal protagonists in the quest for justice, organizing in their own neighborhoods, showing up in the Congress to support those who testify, reaching out to victims of new killings. Dollaga and Litao usually remain behind the scenes, but the women know they are there, steadily accompanying them.

“Norma and Rubylin are our inspiration. They love us. They love all the victims. They support us in everything we do. They are our hope because they teach us to fight,” Lee said.

United Methodist deaconesses in the Philippines are prime movers behind a wide variety of ministries both inside and outside the church, but their contribution is often unrecognized by male church leaders. Frustrated with low pay and outright discrimination, it’s not surprising that many have abandoned their official deaconess status for better pay or more effective work elsewhere. Deaconesses have left the church to become pastors, social workers, and even guerrilla fighters. Filomena Asuncion, for example, a young United Methodist deaconess in Isabela in the early 1980s, was put in prison by the martial law government for preaching in her local church that farmers and peasants had rights. The experience convinced her to join the New People’s Army, and two years later she was captured, tortured, and killed by government forces.

Litao says she respects Asuncion’s choices.

“There are diverse forms of doing mission. I respect the deaconesses who are teaching children in churches because that is their calling. During the pandemic, some deaconesses discovered that they are very good at doing online Sunday school and vacation Bible school. They’re very creative and their ministry is important. There have also been deaconesses who chose armed struggle. And there are some like us who work in the ecumenical movement. When we gather in the Philippines Annual Conference deaconess association, we celebrate the diversity of our callings,” Litao said.

While the contributions of deaconesses are often unrecognized at home, the World Methodist Council awarded its 2024 Peace Award to Dollaga, recognizing her as “a true disciple of Jesus Christ, proclaiming abundant life to all, especially those victims of injustice in her homeland, [embodying] both compassion and resilience as she has witnessed for true peace in the Philippines.”

During a ceremony in Stockholm last August, Dollaga accepted the award “on behalf of our people’s unbending hope and persistent struggle for a life with dignity and just peace.” She especially thanked United Women in Faith for “believing in the work and ministries that we do in our country,” and paid homage to the union organizers, peace activists, environmental defenders, and human rights workers who she characterized as “servants of the people who amidst poverty and hunger refused to bow down to injustice and abuse of power.”

Dollaga specifically recalled the women of Rise Up. “The blessed ones whom Jesus lifted up in the Beatitudes, those who suffer the most, those who rise up and choose the ways of struggle to fight for justice and peace, those who serve the least and learn the contours, colors, and shapes of marching and standing up, asserting and resisting the evils of oppression and exploitation, join me in receiving this award,” she said.

The Rev. Paul Jeffrey is a photojournalist who lives in Oregon.

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