Recently, Presidential candidate Miriam Defensor-Santiago was quoted as saying that the Marcoses don’t owe the Filipinos an apology for Martial Law. Facebook user Joel Pablo Salud reacts to this statement on a Facebook post. The text is reproduced below:
AN APOLOGY FROM THE MARCOSES, however sincere (though I highly doubt they will ever apologize, let alone show sincerity for it), proves insulting in the first place.
Martial Law, despite its supposedly “good intentions,” murdered the very democracy it allegedly sought to preserve. These were Sen. Ninoy Aquino’s words. With the declaration came a string of abuses overwhelmed only by the brutality of Uganda’s former President Idi Amin.
It’s alleged that 100,000 to 500,000 of the Ugandan people and other foreigners had been murdered during Amin’s presidency.
As for Marcos, based on Amnesty International estimates, a little over 3,000 were murdered, 70,000 imprisoned, close to 400 disappeared, 1,500 massacred and roughly 34,000 tortured under the regime of the New Society.
“Economic development” became a buzzword, or rather an excuse, if you will, to strengthen ties with international financial institutions in cahoots with the government.
The sole purpose is to leave the public with a national debt Filipinos—its children and grandchildren—would all be paying way past the 35 years after Marcos’ ouster from Malacañang.
As for the Marcoses, it would leave them with a treasure chest enough to feed them to their artery’s content and keep them in modish apparel well beyond their years, sourced from the broken backs of Filipinos.
miriam-marcos
The New Society’s draconian policies under the guise of Presidential Decrees opened the doors for the Philippine military to breach the lines of service and obligation to the public good by adopting abduction, torture and wholesale rape as its national policy.
According to the paper, TORTYUR: Human Rights Violations under the Marcos Regime, everything that can be employed to further pain and suffering—from ordinary everyday stuff like ballpens, water, pliers, thumbtacks and flat iron to electric shock, Russian roulette, pistol whipping, cigar burns, caged like animals and sexual torture—were employed.
Hilda Narciso, a church worker detained and tortured under martial law, suffered gang-rape under military detention. She was said to have been fed soup wriggling with worms and made more inedible by rotten fish. She was only one of hundreds tortured and molested under constabulary and military custody.
That the military was given a freehand to instill discipline outside the limits of the law tells us in hindsight that Marcos’ brand of democracy offered freedom only to those under his crony leadership. No Filipino—man, woman, child—felt safe.
Highly maintained peace and order in the streets, so touted as one of Marcos’ brilliant accomplishments, was a sham, instilled by the force of a gun on one’s back. The “need for discipline” scenario, which justified the declaration of martial law, was as old as tyranny itself.
What Marcos hardly raised was the issue of who will discipline those in power.
The most unpardonable examples of impunity happened years after the said regime had tumbled over after the ouster of the strongman. None of those who spearheaded Marcos’ torture campaign faced justice. Some, in fact, held higher office after martial law.
“Etta Rosales, a teacher at the José Rizal College, was brought to a safe house in Pasig where she was tortured. She was stripped naked when she suffered the Russian Roulette, electric shocks, strangulation, and candle burns. His torturers only stopped when she pretended to be dying. Years later, one of her torturers, Lt. Rodolfo Aguinaldo, even became her colleague at the House of Representatives (Magsaysay 1999).” (Tortyur: Human Rights Violations under the Marcos Regime).
Much of what followed after martial law changed little even under new administrations. Tortures and disappearances even under Cory Aquino’s administration and that of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo continued.
The book, Torture and Impunity: The U.S. Doctrine of Coercive Interrogation by Alfred W. McCoy, explains in detail how succeeding chief executives took the process of impunity right into their terms of office.
It says, “Of greater significance, [Fidel] Ramos provided the substance of law and the stuff of politics that perfected the process of impunity […] Moreover, he effected the reintegration of former torturers into societyand their elevation into positions of authority—a central element of impunity.”
Ramos worked as chief of Marcos’ Philippine Constabulary for 14 years of the dictatorship, remaining “legally responsible for the brutal, systematic tortures carried out by the special intelligence units under his command,” the book says.
P
resident Benignmarcos-saludo Conjuangco Aquino III’s administration is no stranger to impunity and extrajudicial killings. A TIME magazine report in 2011, penned by the publication’s senior editor and editor of TIME World Ishaan Tharoor quoted Human Rights Watch, saying, “ During his campaign for president, Benigno Aquino III pledged to end serious violations of human rights in the Philippines. Yet since taking of
fice on June 30, 2010, the Philippine military continues to be implicated in apparently politically-motivated extrajudicial killings—deliberate unlawful killings by state security forces—and enforced disappearances. These abuses persist in part because of the Philippine police’s failure to conduct thorough and impartial investigations, particularly when evidence points to military involvement.”
But it was Marcos who beat them all to the draw.
Today, a little over four decades since Proclamation No. 1081, Senators Miriam Defensor Santiago and Bongbong Marcos are counting on the ignorance of a generation of young Filipinos to give them a head start in the 2016 race to Malacanang.
Unknown to many, Santiago was a columnist for the Marcos crony newspaper, the Philippine Daily Express, from 1972 to 1975. That she survived this long only goes to show how much of a Marcos apologist (and later, an Estrada and
Arroyo apologist) Santiago has become.
No, the Marcoses do not owe the Philippines and Filipinos an apology. At the very least, given the abuses, thefts, murders and rapes committed under Marcos’ regime, they owe Filipinos their severed heads.
These senators should know better than to treat Filipinos like fools.
xxx
Do you agree?