Cults

A television scene that has repeatedly been shown all over the Philippines in recent days has set off a storm of criticisms against the military, police and the local militia force. It shows a phalanx of policemen, soldiers and militiamen aiming their rifles on cult leaders who were surging toward the troops, waving machetes like invincible warriors. Each cultist stumbles to the ground and jerks as the bullets find their mark, sending clouds of dust swirling about in a bloody end to their folly.

In another scene, about three uniformed men take turns firing at an already slumped cultist, casually pumping bullets into his body and then approaching to check if he was still breathing.

When the smoke cleared, 16 cultists lay dead in the remote colony of the Catholic God’s Spirit, a Christian cult in the southern Philippine province of Bukidnon. Each cultist wore an amulet they believed would shield them from bullets and harm.

Local officials and policemen had asked a news crew of ABS-CBN, the Philippines’ largest television network, to join them to serve an arrest warrant on one of the cult leaders for alleged attempted murder on Aug. 11.

Cult members, however, resisted, triggering an initial clash that killed three militiamen and one government volunteer. That enraged the lawmen, who withdrew into a band outside the colony and fired upon any cultist advancing toward them with drawn knives. The vivid details of the confrontation was captured and aired by the television crew, stunning a country which is supposedly already numb from too much violence and crimes.

The killings again refocused public attention on the reemergence of militia forces which is being encouraged in the Philippines by many to contain continuing Marxist and Muslim separatist rebellions. Left-wing and church groups, however, have opposed the use of the militias, citing widespread abuses attributed to the paramilitarymen during the dictatorial rule of Ferdinand Marcos. Along this line, critics also pounced on the brutality of the policemen and soldiers who shot the cultists, questioning the mindless and unnecessary use of excessive force. Police have begun an investigation and Congress prepared to look into the killings.

In the noise of the debate, not much attention has been paid on the cultists themselves, their lives, their reasons for being.

Religious cults are widespread in the Philippines. They frequently combine religious and local, pagan-like beliefs and folklore. Many quietly maintain their religious orientation, focusing cult life in the solitude of the countryside. A few, however, stray into politics and some take steps to remind society of their existence.
In the late 1960s, a group of cultists stormed into Manila to demand the resignation of Marcos. Policemen confronted the cultists with a hail of rifle fire, massacring the entire band in one of the blackest moments of Marcos’ reign.

Another cult in the mountains of northern Abra province used to worship Philippine national hero Jose Rizal as god. In recent years, it strayed into something more bizarre and started worshipping Marcos. In the cult’s serene mountain colony, members hung a portrait of the Sacred Heart of Jesus but replaced the head of Jesus Christ with that of the late Philippine dictator.

Sociologists say the emergence of these cults, religious or political, in many ways reflect the worsening social conditions in the Philippines. Largely marginalized and impoverished because of decades of elite-dominated politics, people in remote rural areas succumb to local spun cults, surrendering their hopes for better lives to gods they create in their own altars. Unable to live decently in the real world, they start, in time, to believe their beliefs and fortify their own world. They sometimes find the necessity to arm in order to deal with the dangers of the outside, real world and withdraw away from society into caves and far-flung colonies. They succumb to superstitions and thoughts of invincibility like the Bukidnon cultists who thought they were bulletproof until a hail of gunfire brought them stumbling back to the world they had struggled to abandon before.