Death by Democracy

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She would have celebrated her 21st birthday on March 20 but teacher Rebelyn Maasin Pitao now lies inside a white casket at the Palermo chapel, Cosmopolitan Funeral Homes here, her long-sleeved white lace blouse and yellow skirt hiding the torture marks and stab wounds from an ice pick, but not enough to hide markings on her left wrist.

The “evil, vicious men from the military intelligence group,” her mother Evangeline says, “abducted, tortured, raped and stabbed to death” Ivy, Rebelyn’s nickname.

“Two stab wounds here, above the breast, one of which hit the lung; two under the breast, one of which hit the liver, another one here… five stab wounds from an ice pick.. markings from a three-centimeter rope around her neck… eyes blindfolded using a packing tape, apparently hit by a blunt object,” Evangeline says in Cebuano, describing how “grabe ka-brutal” (very brutal) the “evil, vicious men from the military intelligence group” were to her daughter.