SECRET BURIAL OF MARCOS ENRAGES CRITICS
MANILA Long-dead former Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos was buried Friday at the country’s Heroes’ Cemetery in a secrecyshrouded ceremony, a move approved by President Rodrigo Duterte that infuriated supporters of the “people power” revolt that ousted Marcos three decades ago.
Marcos’s daughter, Imee, expressed relief after her father’s interment at the heavily guarded cemetery in metropolitan Manila, which she said fulfilled his last wish. Enraged pro-democracy activists, however, stressed the decades-long debate over the ex-president’s final resting place was far from over and protested across the metropolis.
Bonifacio Ilagan, a leftwing activist who was detained and tortured during Marcos’s rule, said the dictator was buried “like a thief in the night” in a stealthy fashion similar to when he suddenly placed the country under martial rule.
“It’s very much like when he declared martial law in 1972,” Ilagan said. “I want to rush to the cemetery to protest this. I feel so enraged.”
Marie Hilao Enriquez, a former political detainee whose sister, a fellow activist, was raped and killed by policemen, wept upon learning the news.
“Marcos died in the arms of his family” but many Marcos-era activists remain missing after being allegedly abducted by state forces, Enriquez said.
President Duterte, who gave the go-ahead for the burial, called for calm.
“Hopefully, both sides will exercise maximum tolerance and come to terms with the burial,” Duterte’s spokesman, Ernesto Abella, quoted him as saying.