We were on a boat somewhere on Manila Bay, on the way to interview a fishing community that would soon have to relocate to another village to make way for an infrastructure project on their fishing grounds.
Like with many public-partnership projects, people paid to think more and know more than us had already done the math: The livelihoods and ways of live of a few hundred cannot compete with millions in potential investments and tourism money.
READ: Taliptip folk hang on to their homes as work on Bulacan airport said to continue
Although Congress is still deliberating on allowing the project, it is pretty much a done deal and we had only tagged along with an environmentalist non-government organization to document the last remaining houses that would have to be demolished to literally pave the way for the project.
We had not been on the water for more than ten minutes when another boat raced towards us, signaling for us to stop so a man in a camouflage sports jersey printed with the name of a military unit could come aboard and ask questions.
Where were we going he asked? Did we have clearance from the seriously massive conglomerate in charge of the project to be there? Had we cleared our trip with barangay officials? He could not allow us to proceed he said, because we would be entering private property that was also the site of a government project.
We told him that we weren't there for the project and that we just wanted to talk to the residents and get an update on them.
Are you from the media, he asked, and — because there was no other plausible reason for us to be there and because it was the truth — I said yes and showed him my press pass.
At this point, he got a little cagey. Disclosing only a rank and a family name. He was not authorized to even tell us what unit of the military he was with, he said, and could answer none of our questions, chiefly why we needed clearance to talk to families who had been living in the area since 1970s and who had already agreed to meet with us.
After a few minutes of frantic phone calls — to "higher ups" and to the conglomerate's lawyer — we knew we would not be allowed to reach the site. The compromise was to meet representatives of the fishing community at an abandoned church that was on public property instead.
Which is what we did for around an hour and a half before another boat, loaded with police officers in full fatigues and bearing rifles put-putted up to the church. We were pretty much done with the interviews and had taken a break for lunch when they arrived.
Because it was a slow boat — it belongs to the provincial Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources, which should probably have a faster boat — I had enough time to discreetly put away my notes as well as the recorder that we had been using for the interviews.
It was unlikely, but I didn't want to risk the police listening to the recordings and potentially having us erase them.
The group's leader introduced himself as the town's chief of police and said that he and his team had been informed that people from outside were in the area and that they were there to verify the information.
He said the visit was also part of their regular patrol of the area of fish cages and fishing villages.
He said he and his men would provide us security while we conducted the interviews— which, to me and our photographer EC, meant the interviews were over.
There was no way that the residents would talk freely in front of the police and to even be seen talking to us might put them under even more scrutiny.
As we said our hasty goodbyes, the chief told us to pose for a picture with them as a souvenir. Which may be shorthand for "for our files" but how could we refuse?
Sometimes, there is no choice but to smile under your face mask, hope the cap you're wearing obscures your face further and that the peace sign you're throwing is enough for you to register as not a threat to public order and national security.
As we were packing up, the police began questioning the villagers about what we had interviewed them about — luckily, we really only talked about life in their village and how they think they'll do in their new homes.
We left them there at the abandoned church, with the police still talking to them and I have been thinking about that since.
Did we, by giving them the chance to talk and get their story out, also endanger them in the process?
Would the story be worth the tension and worry that we brought them? Given that they will already be relocating, had we potentially made their remaining time in the community more difficult?
To be fair, the police chief was courteous. Friendly, even, despite his men toting rifles behind him. And the Army man was almost apologetic, repeatedly saying that he was not preventing us from going to the site, only that he did not have the authority to allow us to.
It was unclear who did have that authority. Was it his commander, or was it the conglomerate? Was there a difference?
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But they didn't have to be anything more than there to get the message across that they know what goes in in their areas and that they can reach out and check on residents at any time.
That encounter was downright pleasant compared to what journalists working in the provinces or in the alternative press have to face and I feel more than a little guilty at the relative privilege I have working at a news website that holds office in one of the most business districts in Metro Manila.
I feel even guiltier that for all that, the most we can really give the fishing community is a few words and a couple of photos that will briefly be seen on our work social media accounts and will eventually be buried as we churn out more stories for the website.
It is a bad bargain for people who are losing their homes and may face subtle intimidation in coming months.
*In related news, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources has suspended two dolomite mining firms in Alcoy, Cebu over reports that the mining has damaged coral reefs in the area. That same dolomite, mined from Alcoy and brought to Manila, has been celebrated for turning a portion of the Manila Baywalk , at least temporarily, into a white sand beach.
One that, because of people flocking to the area last Sunday, has been closed to the public. Life’s like that sometimes.
** Earlier this week, Facebook announced it had removed pages and networks over “coordinated inauthentic behavior”, basically spreading content through allied accounts to make it seem that a post is more popular than it probably actually is.
The content of the posts, although the takedowns were not based on content, were essentially accusations that lawmakers in the Makabayan bloc are communist terrorists, the same message that the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict has been spreading on its official accounts.
The pages have also been traced to the police and military, Facebook said.
The Presidential Task Force on Media Security, which is under the Presidential Communications Operations Office and that has an undersecretary who is spokesperson for the NTF-ELCAC, called it an attack on them and hinted at foreign interests meddling in Philippine affairs.
"Besides such clear contempt of our laws, particularly a possible infringement of the Constitutional guarantee on freedom of speech and expression, I think we should also ask why they are meddling on our domestic affairs...Such targeted, biased attack should not be taken lightly," PTFoMs Executive Director Joel Sy Egco said, ironically, on his Facebook account.
Although the 1987 Constitution protects freedom of speech, the constitution is not the Terms and Conditions of Facebook, which is its own platform.
In any case, the constitution has apparently protected Egco’s right to accuse Lumad schools of training rebels: "In our time, we had Physical Education classes on Fridays, but in these schools, it's different, they really let the children handle—they are taught how to dismantle guns," he said in 2019.