Dutch entertainment

As I've mentioned here before, I was a prisoner once—under martial law, for more than seven months, when I was 18.

- JOSE DALISAY

I had been arrested without a warrant for unspecified offenses against the State, on the strength of an Arrest, Search, and Seizure Order (ASSO) issued by Defense secretary Juan Ponce Enrile. ASSOs were literally a catch-all piece of paper, meant to capture anyone whose face the regime didn't like. I was sleeping at home when military agents barged in, and scooped me up in front of my terrified parents.

Our prison stood on a patch of land where the upscale BGC stands now; when we looked out at night we could see the neon lights of Guadalupe flashing. We had a small library in the back, TV in the mess hall, chess, calisthenics and rumor-mongering for entertainment. It wasn't too bad when there were just 40 of us occupying two Army barracks in the early months of martial law, but when we grew to over 200, the harsh realities of prison life set in, and people began escaping through the barbed wire.

These recollections came back to me last week as I thought about the surprise arrest and deportation of former president Rodrigo Roa Duterte to a holding cell in the Netherlands while awaiting trial by the International Criminal Court.

By any legal reckoning, he's going to be there for a while—he won't be arraigned until September—so like it or not, he's going to have to adjust to his new abode over the next few months, like we had to in Bicutan.

His subalterns and supporters can make all the noise they want outside his prison, in the Philippines and wherever in the world a DDS chapter exists, but RRD's time ahead in Scheveningen will be largely spent in quiet and solitude.