UNTIL now, he still favors Ruy Lopez, the Spanish Opening in chess popularized by and named after a 16th century Spanish clergyman and chess enthusiast.

?I may be progressive and aggressive as a lawyer, but as a chess player, I?m conservative,? declares Bayan Muna Party List Representative Neri Javier Colmenares, secretary general of the National Union of People?s Lawyers (NUPL). The confessed chess addict recalls how his mother used to discourage him from playing the board game, despite his having been junior chess champion of Negros at 14 and placing third in the 1976 Palarong Pambansa as representative of Western Visayas.

At that point, Colmenares recounts, all he ever wanted to do was play chess.

But it was the mid-70s, martial law held sway and like most youngsters of the day, Colmenares chafed under its authoritarian grip. He became active in both the Student Catholic Action (SCA) and the Student Christian Movement, the only two student organizations allowed to exist under the military regime of then President Marcos. His shift from the chessboard to the streets, he later realized, was a gambit that was perilous as it was precious.

?Activism changed my life. My view of the world became totally different [after I joined SCA],? says Colmenares. Like most student activists, he started looking at the issues of the day from the perspective of the poor and marginalized. He was, after all, from Negros, where the majority of the population were sacadas (temporary plantation workers), a sector so exploited that a local movie depicting their plight was banned from public viewing by the Marcos censors.

Their views, admits Colmenares, were partly influenced by the iconic Negros Bishop Antonio Fortich, an erstwhile conservative prelate, who had gradually became a major critic of the martial law regime and its record of human rights violations, particularly in the islands of Negros and Panay.

Little did he know that he would soon find out first hand just how dismal this record was.

On May 13, 1979, Colmenares recounts, he met at a restaurant with a fellow church worker and community organizer at the Bishop?s diocesan office in Bacolod City, to inquire about the arrests of several church workers in a series of military raids that week. Unknown to him, the guy he was meeting was himself arrested a few days earlier and was released provisionally to trap him. The military had believed he was a member of the NPA, says Colmenares.

Their meeting was short; the guy told him to flee as military agents were closing in, but the warning came too late.

?When I stepped out of the restaurant and saw this burly man with sunglasses and a clutch bag looking at me while I was crossing the street, I knew my arrest was imminent,? he recounts. Suddenly, two men sprang from both ends of the street, grabbed him and forced him inside a cab. His struggles, his calls for help and protests were ignored.

He was relieved when he saw that his captors had brought him to the headquarters of the then 331st Company of the Philippine Constabulary. But his relief was short lived. The days that followed were the most horrifying and nightmarish times of his life, he says. For days, Colmenares and other detainees were subjected to different forms of torture, with two intelligence agents identifying themselves as ?Sgt. Sugar? and ?Sgt. Spice,? a send-up of the awful ?good-cop-bad-cop? routine they used to extract information from their captives.

There were beatings, sleep deprivation, slapping, strangulation, whipping, kicking, bullets squeezed between one?s fingers, psychological threats, public humiliation, and so on. Their captors were sadists, says Colmenares, who claims that one military officer who identified himself as ?Fried Chicken,? turned out to be Billy Bibit, who later became a leader of the Reform the Armed Forces Movement (RAM), the group of young officers who mutinied against Marcos.

?When they tortured me, I was not blindfolded ? my torturers had no qualms about being identified,? he recalls. ?I was beaten black and blue, but that?s not the worst of it. After two to three days of beating, you become numb and hardly feel it. What was worse was the mental and psychological torture. That gave me nightmares for some time,? he adds. His tormentors, says Colmenares, ?did not only inflict physical pain. they also used humiliation as a tool to shatter my resolve to survive.?

Once, he recounts, a drunken soldier with a revolver came to his ?torture chamber? and asked him, ?Are you feeling lucky tonight?? The soldier then forced him to play Russian roulette.

?Each click of the gun?s firing pin was like a bomb explosion, and it was repeated several times,? he remembers. ?I was so terrified that I could not control myself. My whole body was shivering. Everytime I heard the click of the gun hammer, I imagined my head exploding.?
The following night, he was again brought out for another torture session. But interrogation was no longer part of the routine. ?I felt that they were torturing me only for the fun of it,? he says. He was brought out of his cell to a vacant lot behind the camp. Then it occurred to him: if he was of no use to them any longer, would they now dispose of him?

As soldiers pointed their guns on his bowed head, one who identified himself as George asked: ?Do you see the moon? Do you hear the croaking of the frogs? Listen to them carefully, for these are the last sights you will see and the last sounds you will hear, ever.? Then after a while, they started to laugh uncontrollably and ordered him to stand. ?I think they wanted to see if I had peed in my pants,? says Colmenares, dread visibly etched on his face.

Surprisingly, the torture ended abruptly. ?Sgt Spice? was angrily asking Colmenares questions that he had previously answered, when the soldier suddenly started strangling him. He was on the brink of asphyxiation when a Constabulary major entered the room. The major asked if he knew a Rene Colmenares working for a government bank and who had favorably endorsed his loan application. When Colmenares told the major that Rene Colmenares was his father, the surprised officer immediately ordered his men to lay off him. ?I was lucky, but many others were not,? he says.

Although he has rationalized what happened and has resolved to see his tormentors as ?just bit players in the whole exploitative system,? he admits that he has yet to forgive ?George.? More so when, after a year of trial, the charges of rebellion and illegal possession of firearms filed against him and his companions were all dismissed by the court for lack of evidence.

After his release in 1980, Colmenares thought of forgetting activism altogether. The trauma of his false arrest and torture was too much for an 18-year old. But two months later, he found himself back to organizing students, spurred on by the sight of a six-year-old cigarette vendor almost sideswiped by a speeding truck on the streets of Bacolod.

?That?s when I realized that a society that condemns its children to work and to risk their life must not be allowed to exist,? he says. From then on, he adds, there was no more turning back from the ?struggle for reforms.? He could no longer just play chess while the country burned, he told himself. In 1983, in the thick of a student council election, Colmenares was again arrested and detained for his activism. Along with other political prisoners, he was released by the new government after the EDSA revolt in 1986.

Years later, after becoming a member of the Philippine Bar, Colmenares chose to be part of the National Union of People?s Lawyers and became deeply involved in human rights. ?My martial law experience showed me the importance of lawyers and legal aid. I remember that during my detention, a visit from our lawyer would give me a sense of hope. The continuing state of impunity in the country today only makes the need for lawyers an imperative.?

His choice had him acting as counsel or arguing before the Supreme Court against the constitutionality of the Calibrated Pre-emptive Response (CPR), the Charter Change case, Executive Order 464 (the Executive Privilege case), the Visiting Forces Agreement and Proclamation 1017 (or the Emergency Rule order) issued by former President Gloria Arroyo. As Bayan Muna counsel, he also urged the disqualification of all major political parties from the party-list elections. He later accepted Bayan Muna?s nomination as its party list representative and is now serving his second term.

As congressman, he says, he has a greater opportunity to affect the creation of laws. Indeed, Colmenares was instrumental in the drafting and passage of the landmark Anti-Torture Law and the Public Attorney?s Office Law.

Together with his NUPL colleagues, he is also involved in the preparations for the Fifth Conference of Lawyers in Asia-Pacific (COLAP V) this weekend. COLAP is organized by the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, and brings together progressive lawyers and other human rights advocates to discuss a wide range of issues involving human rights, development, and peace in the Asia-Pacific region.

Although he is ready to reconcile with his past as a Marcos victim almost 40 years ago, Colmenares is firm about not letting the memories go. ?The crimes during martial law must not be forgotten. The recent electoral victories of the Marcoses only show that we have failed to remind the new generations of one of the bloodiest chapters in Philippine history. The same failure to some extent made possible the state of impunity under the Arroyo administration, which until now is very much felt,? he says.

He expresses concern as well at the absence of a human rights agenda in the inaugural and State of the Nation Address of President Benigno Aquino III.

But for now, says Colmenares, making sure that the ?lessons of the past remain the tenets of the present? is the one crucial role that he and other people?s lawyers are focusing on. ?