Composer and singer Bethany Younge, in collaboration with composer Samuel Vriezen, performed a one-person choir at the first session of the Open Source Tribunal today, responding to the accusations brought forward by the National Democratic Movement of the Philippines against those responsible for the unnatural disaster of the typhoon Haiyan. On the background a shadow play is performed by Matthijs de Bruijne, Jun Saturay, Yung-Han Juan, Constanza Puente, Marikit Saturay, Mitchy Saturay and Anna Ioannidi.
By Prof. Jose Maria Sison
Closing Statement in Prose Poem (Proem)
at the First Session of the Open Source Tribunal on the Philippines
at the Nicolai Church in Utrecht on 23 November 2013
We are grateful to the tribunal for giving due course
To the people’s charges and demands,
For heeding the people’s cry for justice
Against the crimes that comprise the social disaster
Aggravating the devastation by super typhoon Haiyan.
Grave are the crimes of corruption and incompetence
Preventing pre-disaster preparations to secure the people,
Obscuring the sea surges with the monstrous winds
Promising planeloads and shiploads of rescue and relief
But making the people suffer hunger, thirst, illness and death.
We must help raise a stronger super typhoon of the people
To smite the imperialist criminals culpable for global warming
And the lack of emergency shelter, food, water and medicine,
The delay and paucity of relief and rehabilitation
And the looting of funds and supplies by the corrupt puppets.
We must arouse, organize and mobilize the people
To hold assemblies to condemn the crimes and the criminals,
To carry out the people’s judgement against the imperialists
And their puppets who scheme and collaborate
In robbing the people of their natural and social wealth.
If we waver in our determination to go after the criminals,
They will surely continue to generate their super typhoons
Of propaganda to blame their own victims of greed and terror,
Their super typhoons of super-exploitation and social disasters,
Whether or not there are natural disasters.
The vultures are hell-bent on making bigger disasters.
The imperialists invoke Haiyan to escalate military intervention,
To bring in more investors for exploiting the people and the land,
And to load the country with a heavier debt burden
In the name of reconstruction but in fact to benefit themselves.
The criminals continue to hold sway and make people suffer
The long accumulated and ever growing injustices:
The violence of perpetuated aggression, oppression and plunder.
These will not cease until the people themselves end them
In a super typhoon that will topple the entire unjust system.
The people’s struggle for justice continues to move forward
As it confronts and overcomes one social disaster after another
Until it can overthrow the entire disastrous system of injustice
And build a new Philippines that will enjoy independence, democracy,
Development, social justice, peace and international solidarity.