Martial law: never again
Upon invitation of Sen. Risa Hontiveros, and the Cebu chapter of Akbayan, I attended a launching of the student edition of the book “Marcos Martial Law: Never Again,” by Raissa Robles at Handuraw, Gorordo Ave., Cebu City last September 10.
A great majority of those who attended the affair were millennials or those born after martial law – many of them student leaders and officers of various student councils of different universities in Cebu. Also in attendance were educators coming from public schools and colleges. Sen. Hontiveros and I had the privilege to distribute for free, copies of the book to the representatives of different universities and colleges.
Described by former senator Rene Saguisag in his foreword as a magnum opus, the book answers the foolish question of Bongbong Marcos: What human rights violations during my parents' watch?
To those of us who are avid students of history, there is nothing new in the book that chronicles the rise to power of Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos; how the then Defense Secretary Juan Ponce Enrile faked his own ambush in Wack-wack, Mandaluyong to justify Marcos's imposition of martial rule on Sept. 21, 1972; the systematic crackdown and detention of thousands of political opponents, social activists, labor leaders, leftists, religious leaders and Marcos critics; how Congress was padlocked and media closed down; of the thousands who were murdered and tortured; how the U.S. acquiesced to Marcos'sdictatorial rule to protect its bases and its economic interests; how Marcos committed widespread violation of human rights; and how Marcos and Imelda built the “conjugal kleptocracy” to plunder the nation's wealth through cronyism, and thus impoverished millions of Filipinos that fueled the growth of communist insurgency and worsened the Moro rebellion in Mindanao.
Yet, the book gives us a fresh insight into the Marcos apparatus of terror that unleashed the unspeakable crimes committed by the dictator against his own people. Torture was an instrument officially used by the regime. According to the book, “torture during Marcos's martial law regime was more than just undirected, mindless brutality, although it was bestial, sadistic and vicious enough.
“The Marcos military interrogators used an array of brutal techniques and tools, most of them handed down from all the colonial powers that ever oppressed the Philippines – the water cure, mauling, electrocution – along with new torments devised by the military and the constabulary enforcers.
Aside from the use of torture, female detainees were subjected to the most brutal crimes such as rape, murder, mutilation, sexual abuse and degradation (like insertion of elongated object into the detainee's genitals). Young men of tender age were not spared from military brutality.
Who is that mother (Judge Priscilla Mijares) whose heart could not be torn apart upon seeing the mangled body of her 16-year-old son Boyet (son of Primitivo Mijares, erstwhile Marcos propagandist who defected to the U.S. and wrote a book “The Conjugal Dictatorship”), who, after having been tortured, was dropped from a military helicopter to the rocky mountains of Antipolo, Rizal on May 31, 1977?
Thousands more of other martial law victims have suffered and live to tell their harrowing tales in the cold pages of this book. Together with those who are now in their lonely graves, they are still crying for justice.
The book “Marcos Martial Law: Never Again” is not only a chronicle of Marcos's crimes; it is also a timely warning and a reminder to all of us that amnesia and apathy will likely produce strongmen who idolize Marcos and intend to follow his footsteps.-from Democrito C. Barcenas