[Cwgrad-announcements] Thank You (from Melissa Roxas)

[Alba Hacker]

Ching-In,

 

Thank you so much for sharing Melissa's words with us.

I am here in front of my computer, overwhelmed.

May Melissa's words rise as the most precious perfume

that chases the stench of oppression away, may they rise

as righteous, cleansing flames throughout the world.

 

Alba
 
> Date: Mon, 22 Jun 2009 16:43:07 -0700
> From: chinginchen at gmail.com
> To: cwgrad-announcements at lists.ucr.edu
> Subject: [Cwgrad-announcements] Thank You (from Melissa Roxas)
> 
> Dear friends,
> 
> Several members of this community were very supportive and signed
> petitions, spread the word and held Melissa in their thoughts.
> 
> I wanted to share words that she wrote to the Kundiman community we
> are part of -- and thank you for caring. Melissa wanted this to reach
> those who supported her so please feel free to forward to others who
> might have done work on her behalf. If you want to know more about
> her time during her abduction, here's a link to an affidavit that she
> gave: http://philcsc.wordpress.com/
> 
> Ching-In
> 
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Melissa Roxas
> 
> Dearest Kundiman Family,
> 
> I want to thank all of you for your love and support. Please know
> that I have received your concerns and your words that are very moving
> to me and is helping me heal. I am very much grateful to have a
> concerned community of fellow artists and friends. Your support was
> important in helping put pressure on the Philippine military for my
> release. Thank you for believing in truth and justice.
> 
> Below is a letter for you and others that supported me through all of
> this. I also wanted to share with you how much I do believe in
> communities like these. Kundiman means an art song, traditional
> filipino love songs... I think it is so appropriate for what it means
> to create a safe and truthful way of creating a community of fellow
> poets and artists, and for me it has always also meant truth, as all
> love songs are...
> 
> When I was abducted and tortured it was also the music of poetry that
> kept me sane, along with the knowledge that I am aware there are
> people out there that will fight for me and fight for my release.
> Here are some words that kept rising out of me during that time they
> held me... poor poets words, but words nonetheless of my truth during
> those hours.
> 
> Come before the Night Hour
> Come and Sing
> before Night
> Comes. I am Flame
> to the Body.
> The Incipient Wing
> that can’t Fly.
> The Open
> Skin on a Foot
> that Bleeds
> Black. Tonight
> I will learn to Die
> a Thousand Times
> and Be Resurrected.
> 
> Much love,
> Melissa Roxas
> 
> ********
> 
> The recent birth of my niece reminds me that life is something more
> than just presence, it is the earth rising inside of you, the earth
> that has been there since the beginning, but taking a different form.
> 
> I started to think about all the other babies I had seen as a
> community health worker in the Philippines before my niece was born.
> The marking of before and after, beginnings and endings. I remember
> their mothers taking them in for health screenings and basic check
> ups. Infants who went untreated for days with a fever, the softness
> in their eyes gives way to a hardness, their skin was tight from
> dehydration, they were so tiny, their hand in mine was as little as my
> thumbnail. I remember how much I wanted them to get better and be
> alive. With so many babies, children and families that I’ve met, I
> realized that the disease they had was more than an epidemic of
> typhoid fever, cholera, or malaria, it was the disease of poverty and
> oppression.
> 
> When I started to work more with particular issues of human rights
> violations I also met different babies, babies and children who had
> lost their mothers and fathers to a different death. A horrible and
> preventable death that takes the life not only of its victim, but robs
> the whole family and the world of their presence, all because they
> advocated and fought for a better world where their children have
> genuine freedom, a just peace, and true democracy.
> 
> Each day I was with the community, I learned how precious a birth can
> be, how to appreciate life, and I slowly began to understand what they
> meant when they whispered me their names and told their stories.
> There are no deaths that are forgotten, no fathers, no mothers, no
> sisters and brothers, aunts, uncles, or cousins that are forgotten.
> They live in the births of new babies each day.
> 
> When my own experience of abduction and torture ended and I was
> reunited with my family it was not a second birth for me, I realized
> that it is a continuing journey for the search for truth and justice.
> Repressive governments and military use torture as a form of control,
> to instill fear in people in debilitating ways, so they stay quiet and
> lose their light inside. But I realized no amount of pain or
> suffering or fear can stop that earth in me to keep rising. Instead
> it gave birth to new births. My experience has convinced me even more
> of the value of freedom and justice and the importance of fighting for
> and upholding the principles of human rights and human dignity.
> 
> Me being able to write this right now is testimony of how your
> collective love, support, prayers, and action is helping me and others
> like me through this experience. I know that your support is also part
> of a larger movement to create change towards a world free of poverty
> and oppression. Thank you to friends and family, family and friends
> of other desaparecidos, progressive people’s organizations, human
> rights groups, lawyers, civil rights advocates, church people’s
> organizations, concerned individuals, fellow poets and artists, and
> all believers in human rights and justice.
> 
> There are many more desaparecidos, more abductions, torture and
> extra-judicial killings going on in the Philippines and around the
> world. Let the new birth come where there is an end to all of the
> killings, abductions, and torture. Let the noise come from all
> directions—they are no longer whispers but shouts for justice.
> 
> Love,
> Melissa Roxas
> -- 
> ~~~~~
> Ching-In Chen
> THE HEART'S TRAFFIC (Arktoi Books/Red Hen Press 2009)
> http://www.arktoi.com/books/heart.shtml
> http://www.redhen.org/RedHenPress.html#/catalog/catalog
> www.chinginchen.com
> 
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