The execution of Ninoy Aquino: August 21, 1983

Last Sunday, Aug. 21, was the sixth time since August 21, 1983, that the anniversary of the execution of Senator Benigno (Ninoy) Aquino at the Manila International Airport (MIA) fell on the same day, Sunday, that the murder actually occurred. That coincidence makes the struggle against forgetting much easier. The temptation to forget and just remain comfortable without being burdened by making difficult choices is always there. But that Sunday of August 21, 1983, 33 years ago, Ninoy Aquino made the hardest choice in his life and performed a heroic act that we should never forget.

Sunday is a day for family, rest, and prayer. My family and I were in prayer together with other members of the Ligaya ng Panginoon, a Catholic Charismatic community, at the Immaculate Conception Academy ( ICA) in San Juan that Sunday. I was aware that Ninoy Aquino was scheduled to land at the Manila airport. The midday sun shone brightly. It was hot and muggy.

I had opted to attend the prayer gathering as part of our family’s weekly commitment to the community. I had assumed Marcos would allow Ninoy Aquino to land in Manila, and then either promptly throw him in jail again or put him under house arrest in Times St., Quezon City. I thought that I need not join the huge welcoming crowd since, whether in jail or under house arrest, I could always visit him. My wife Margie and I had managed to visit him in his home in the few times he had been allowed to go on furlough by Ferdinand Marcos and his other jailors prior to his exile in the US.

I figured ( mistakenly) that Marcos and his fellow administrators could not be any more cruel to Ninoy Aquino and his family than they had already been in the seven years and seven months since Sept. 23, 1972, that Ninoy Aquino was locked up in Bonifacio and at Fort Magsaysay ( the Army camp, ironically named after a freedom fighter and man from the commons) in Laur, Nueva Ecija.

Around 3 p.m., word reached us at the ICA that Ninoy Aquino had been shot. With no cellphones and no two-way radios to reach friends who could confirm the rumor (rumor mongering, by the way, was a crime under one of Marcos’s many presidential decrees) and with media under Marcos’s full control, we had no reliable way to check on the story that early.

But as the day wore on and as the rains poured, local media got hold of the story from a number of