Give Up Tomorrow
I
Two years later, on 16 July 1997, Marijoy and Jacqueline Chiong, Cebuana sisters in their early twenties, failed to return home after work. On 18 July the blindfolded, battered and handcuffed body of a young woman was found in a local ravine. She had been raped. The Cebu police and the Chiong family initially declared it wasn’t one of the missing. However, a few days later, and under pressure to resolve the case, the police identified the body as Marijoy’s by slicing skin from the corpse’s fingers and comparing it with the prints on Marijoy’s voter ID card – a determination independent forensic investigators would later question. The Chiong family endorsed this revised finding.
Using an affidavit secured from a market vendor who lived near the ravine, the police formulated a theory that a gang of drug addicts was responsible. Apparently, the affidavit, written in English – a language the vendor didn’t speak – stated that she’d heard a group of men that night shouting, ‘Run, run!’, which she’d assumed had caused the distraught woman to fall into the ravine – an assertion the vendor was later to deny.
T
Paco’s arrest was apparently based on his inclusion on the NBI list, which the police had used to trawl for suspects. At the time of the murder, Paco was attending the Center for Culinary Arts in Quezon City, Metro Manila. He provided ample evidence that he was there on the day and night of the crime. On 16 July 1997 he had attended class, gone out later that night with his classmates to a local restaurant and bar, and sat for an exam the next morning. Thirty-five witnesses (classmates and teachers) attested to this, and photographs were produced of the group and Paco at the bar.
But the press (and the court) ignored this evidence and focused instead on the lurid details of the crime. Teddy Boy Locsin, a well-known journalist and lawyer who later became a three-term congressman for the wealthy district of Makati, was televised standing beside the grave of the victim and cupping his hands. ‘This,’ he says, ‘was the amount of semen found in the victim.’ He then describes the accused as, ‘These animals [who] were not born drugged; they made themselves into drug addicts.’ Referring to Paco’s statement that he did not know the Uy brothers prior to their arrest, Locsin notes with contempt: ‘As a Spanish-blooded mestizo, he would never mix with Chinks like the Uys.’ He gratuitously describes the Uys as ‘bananas – yellow on the outside, white on the inside’.
Also weighing in was President Joseph Estrada, whom the victims’ mother, Thelma, and her husband, Dionisio, met in July 1998 – a meeting arranged by Thelma’s sister, Cheryl Jimenea, Estrada’s social secretary. Erap, as he is popularly known, was a film star in the 1950s, when he made a name for himself as a fictional crime fighter. It was a role he reprised when, as vice president under President Fidel Ramos, he was named the government’s anti-crime czar. President Estrada instructed four law enforcement agencies to help solve the Chiong case, and intensified the pressure to convict the accused. (The anti-crime Erap was later forced from office – in January 2001 – charged with plundering the public purse. He was convicted in 2007 and sentenced to forty years in prison. He served barely a month before receiving a pardon from his successor, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, now charged with corruption herself.)
The murder trial ended on 11 February 1999 and on 5 May Judge Ocampo found the seven defendants guilty. The sentence of two consecutive terms of life imprisonment failed to appease the Chiongs, who clamoured for the death penalty. President Estrada endorsed their opinion and said the men deserved to die. The judge refused to apply the death penalty (still on the books then), saying there was insufficient evidence that the corpse was in fact that of Marijoy – an incredible statement that in effect undermined the entire case. Ocampo pointed out belatedly that no facial photos had been taken of the dead woman. This raised more questions: Who was the victim, if not Marijoy? Who might be lying in her grave? Might she and her sister still be alive? The body of Jacqueline has never been found.
Five months later, Judge Ocampo shot and killed himself in a hotel room. According to the film’s director, Ocampo ‘had a reputation as a judge who couldn’t be bought. But evidence of political pressure was everywhere’.
The defence appealed to the Supreme Court and, after deliberating for four years, the justices in 2004 not only let the guilty convictions stand but also imposed the death penalty through lethal injection. (In another sordid twist to the tale, the chief justice, Hilario Davide, Jr, was related by marriage to Thelma Chiong, yet failed to recuse himself.)
P
It is Paco who, on death row at Bilibid, coined the phrase ‘Give Up Tomorrow’. By this he meant that, were he to give up hope of a reprieve, it would not be today. He’d put off giving in to despair till the morrow. He’d repeat this process the next day; it became a question then of when to give up, focusing only on the timing. He also made three resolutions: ‘I won’t kill myself, I won’t kill anyone else, and I won’t look for trouble.’ Sound strategy for a life of captivity at Bilibid.
B
Leo Lastimosa, one of the few journalists in Cebu who took a neutral tone in his reporting, did point out the tantalizing link to Lim but, as he notes in the film, ‘nobody was interested’. After seeing the film in Cebu City earlier this year, Lastimosa wrote that ‘most importantly the movie has to be seen by those who have hidden knowledge about the case, so they can help answer the questions as to what really happened to the Chiongs’. Lastimosa said he was convinced of Paco’s innocence when Paco refused to admit guilt to secure his release in Spain.
Perhaps the Lim connection was something no one dared touch. The fact that two of the police investigating team had moonlighted as Lim’s bodyguards raises further questions.
An exclusive audio interview with Michael Collins, the director of Give Up Tomorrow, is available on our website.
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