Victims of Marcos’ dictatorship cannot forget past

HUMAN RIGHTS GROUP Karapatan has strongly criticized Ilocos Norte Governor Imee Marcos – daughter of former dictator President Ferdinand Marcos – for her telling Filipinos to move on and forget the atrocities of her father’s regime.

Marcos - a political ally of President Rodrigo Duterte, whose father Vicente, served under the former strongman - said “the millennial (new generation) have moved on” and thus, so should people of her generation.

Karapatan branded as “grim” the 21 years of martial law under Marcos.

“Imee has the audacity to speak on behalf of the millennial, and the discourtesy to address the generation that experienced the horrors and corruption of Martial Law first-hand. The Marcos family are thick-skinned, riding on the popularity of a vile and murderous President to creep back into power,” said Cristina Palabay, Karapatan Secretary General.

She reminded Marcos and her family that on September 21 last year, it was the millennial who filled the streets with calls for accountability and justice, and protested the burial of the late dictator or order of Duterte - at the Heroes’ Cemetery on November 18, 2016.

Palabay said contrary to the Marcoses’ claims that people have not moved on regarding their narratives on the Marcos dictatorship, martial law victims and their relatives have moved forward in their quest for justice. She said victims of Marcos’ dictatorship had filed and won a landmark case reaffirming the accountability of the Marcoses for the human rights violations during martial law.

“They looked at all the possible places where the Marcoses stashed their loot from the nation’s coffers. They worked for a passage of a law recognizing the atrocities of the Marcos’s martial law and enabled compensation for the victims. And more importantly, they are imparting their stories and narratives to the next generations of Filipinos through their continuing struggles, asserting that the Marcoses should be meted out retribution and that system change is needed amid repressive and exploitative regimes.”

“Their narratives contribute to the current struggles, even as we see the Duterte regime’s shameless rehabilitation of the Marcos name and the whitewashing of their crimes,” Palabay said.

Palabay said during the 21-years under the dictator Marcos, estimates point to $10 billion of alleged plundered wealth from the country’s coffers. “Moreover, people were deprived of their fundamental rights. At least 70,000 were imprisoned and 34,000 were tortured, while more than 3,000 were killed. The accounts of torture and killings are harrowing, indicative of a regime with no regard for human rights,” she said.