by MLC | Nov 26, 2016 | Martial Law Stories
Source: Rappler.com
The Bantayog ng mga Bayani Foundation is set to recognize 19 men and women who fought against the Marcos regime
HEROES. The Bantayog ng mga Bayani Foundation recognizes the men and women who have fought against the martial law regime. Photo from the Facebook page of Bantayog ng mga Bayani
MANILA, Philippines – Nineteen men and women who fought against the martial law regime are set to be honored and recognized as heroes for their work defending human rights during the Marcos dictatorship.
Among the 19 new honorees of the Bantayog ng mga Bayani foundation is the late Jovito Salonga, founding chair of the organization established in 1986, which has named more than 270 martyrs and heroes who have dedicated their lives to the cause.
The other honorees are:
- Marciano Anastacio Jr
- Eduardo Q. Aquino
- Fortunato Camus
- Benjamin “Behn” Cervantes
- Hernando Cortez
- Edgardo M. Dojillo
- Manuel Dorotan
- Lourdes “Chit” Estella-Simbulan
- Ricardo Filio
- Margarita “Maita” Gomez
- Leticia Jimenez-Magsanoc
- Joel Jose
- Bishop Julio X. Labayen
- Romulo Peralta
- Jose Aquilino Tangente
- Simplicio Villados
- Danilo P. Vizmanos
- Antonio “Tony” Zumel
Education Secretary Leonor Briones will be the guest of honor and speaker at the ceremonies, to be held on Wednesday, November 30, at the Bantayog ng mga Bayani grounds in Quezon City.
For the Wednesday occasion, the Bantayog Museum will also be displaying a portion of the door of Kalinga tribal chieftain Macli-ing Dulag’s house. In 1980, Dulag was gunned down by government troops for opposing a Chico Dam project under the government of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos. The door to his house still bears marks of the bullets from the murder.
Around the time of the awarding ceremony, groups opposed to the hero’s burial for Marcos will begin holding a protest rally at the People Power Monument
by MLC | Nov 26, 2016 | Martial Law Stories
Source : Rappler.com
‘Hindi bayani, isang hangal,’ (Not a hero, but a fool) goes a protest song at the Luneta on Friday, November 25
LIGHT IN THE DARK. Protesters at the Luneta Park on Friday night, November 25. Photo by LeAnne Jazul/Rappler
MANILA, Philippines – In a sea of black and amid chants by angry millennials, the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos got a fierce beating again Friday night at the Luneta Park in Manila. It was no different from those years before he was driven out of power.
Thousands of mostly young Filipinos born years after Marcos’ ouster in 1986 marched to the Luneta Friday afternoon, November 25, and stayed till the evening in a collective release of pent-up frustrations.
“Why are we here in the first place?” a speaker from the 1970s protest movement asked the crowd in Filipino. “Because they allowed the Marcoses to come home, that’s why!”
The crowd went wild: “Marcos, diktador, tuta!”
“Why are the Marcoses back in power?” asked another protester. “Because the system sucks, that’s why!” The students roared.
The Marcos family, their cronies, and security aides were forced out of exile after the 4-day EDSA People Power Revolution in February 1986. In Honolulu, the Marcos couple lived in a multi-million dollar home in posh Makiki Heights, where they continued to entertain friends weekly in lavish parties.
Marcos died there on September 28, 1989, while Imelda Marcos, a year later, would be cleared by a New York jury of racketeering charges filed by the federal government on allegations she aided in looting the Philippines’ coffers.
She was thus allowed to come home 1991, wasting no time in resurrecting their lost power. Imelda ran for president in 1992 but finished a poor 5th in an election won by one of the generals who helped oust her husband, Fidel V. Ramos, a Marcos cousin.
The Ramos government allowed the return of the Marcos remains in 1991, on condition – among others – that the body stayed in Batac, Ilocos Norte.
NEW WAVE. A new generation of anti-Marcos protesters at the Luneta on Friday, November 25. Photo by Melvyn Calderon
“Alam naman natin lahat kung ano ang endgame ng mga Marcoses, hindi ba?” Renato Reyes, secretary-general of Bayan said onstage. “Ang endgame nila ay makabalik sa Malacañang!” (We all know their endgame, right? Their endgame is to return to Malacañang!)
“Boooo!” the protesters screamed.
That they’re back in power now, Reyes said, is proof of a corrupt system run by corrupt politicians.
Militant activists and student leaders took turns in giving fiery speeches as light rain continued in the evening. Activist Filipino bands and singers performed.
“Hindi bayani, isang hangal. Hindi bayani, isang kriminal,” went the protest song of the Mindanao-based Tubao band. (Not a hero, but a fool. Not a hero, but a criminal.)
Young once take backseat
BACKSEAT. Former senator Serge Osmeña, ex-Marcos detainee who escaped from jail, is seen at the backstage. Photo by Rappler
Many veterans of the anti-dictatorship movement in the 1970s and 1980s took the backseat and retreated to the backstage as they watched the young chant and raise clenched fists.
“My 17-year-old grandchild is here, and he doesn’t want to go home yet,” said Editha Burgos, widow of the late press freedom fighter Joe Burgos and mother of the missing activist Jonas Burgos, who was abducted by alleged military agents 9 years ago in Bulacan.
Former senator and ex-Marcos detainee Serge Osmeña stood quietly near the backstage, chatting with reporters and ex-activists every now and then.
Retired journalist and former National Democratic Front spokesman Satur Ocampo came with one of his sons, too.
In his speech, Ocampo proudly introduced himself as a founding member of the Kabataang Makabayan, the underground movement under the dictatorship that formed the backbone of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP).
Allied now with the president who buried Marcos at the Libingan ng mga Bayani, the CPP is drawing the line on this issue. Among the Duterte allies who joined the protest were Agrarian Reform Secretary Rafael Mariano and National Anti-Poverty Commission head Liza Masa.
In his speech, Ocampo dared Duterte to end his alliance with the Marcoses. It was a call shared by the rest of the Friday protesters.
HISTORY LESSONS. Students and their version of history – in protest placards. Photo by Melvyn Calderon
A female student leader of the Batasan Hills National High School went onstage to speak for her school. She warned that Friday’s rally was just the start of the “people’s struggle against fascism.”
The crowd responded: “Pakyu Duterte, pakyu Marcos!”
The program hosts then asked: “Natatakot ba kayo kay Duterte?” (Are you scared of Duterte?)
“Hindi!” (No!)
“Natatakot ba kayo kay Marcos?” (Are you scared of Marcos?)
“Hindi!” (No!)
To the veterans of the first anti-Marcos movement, it seemed almost unreal that Friday night’s chants and exchanges sounded as familiar as those they heard many decades ago.
by MLC | Nov 25, 2016 | Martial Law Stories
By Jessica Bartolome
Source: GMA News
Thousands of Filipinos demonstrated on Friday against last week’s burial of former dictator Ferdinand Marcos in a heroes’ cemetery, showing disdain for the veneration afforded to a strongman accused of widespread plunder and brutality.
More than 10,000 joined the protest, many under umbrellas following an afternoon of rain. They held banners and placards saying “Marcos no hero” and “You can’t bury the truth”.
Those persecuted during martial law under Marcos joined students and activists in marches in Manila, in what was a subdued show of anger at a burial with military honours that was kept under wraps until just a few hours beforehand.
Marcos ruled the Philippines for 20 years, imposing martial law in 1972 and governing by decree in what was one of the darkest chapters of the country’s history.
President Rodrigo Duterte had called for the burial, 27 years after Marcos’s death, arguing that as a former military man and head of state, he met the criteria for a place in the heroes’ cemetery.
The family remains a highly influential political force and has relentlessly pushed for the burial of Marcos in what critics say is an attempt to clear his name.
Judges on the Supreme Court on Nov. 8 ruled 9-5 in favour of throwing out petitions against the burial.
Wearing black, rallyists began arriving before 4 p.m. separately from Taft Avenue and Liwasang Bonifacio, chanting: “Nandito na ang sambayanan!”
Chants of “Marcos, Hitler, diktador, tuta!” also echoed in the crowd along with other anti-Marcos slogans.
Some protesters were still in their uniforms as they came directly from their schools.
https://twitter.com/jacbartolome/status/802069677643923456/photo/1
Proudly waving their “Marcos hindi bayani” signs were students from St. Scholastica’s College, University of Sto. Tomas, University of the Philippines Diliman, UP Manila, Adamson University, and Polytechnic University of the Philippines .
https://twitter.com/jacbartolome/status/802068187395158016/photo/1
Members of the Health Alliance for Democracy (HEAD), Kilusang Mangbubukid ng Pilipinas, ACT Teachers Partylist, and GABRIELA also participated in the protest.
https://twitter.com/jacbartolome/status/802062652583219200/photo/1
Meanwhile, a handful of people introducing themselves as the “Duterte Youth Group” showed up at Luneta in support of the Marcos burial.
A couple of debates sparked when anti-Marcos protesters faced off against supporters of the late dictator.
https://twitter.com/jacbartolome/status/802090092487553024/photo/1
While the two protests were deliberately separated by the police, some anti-Marcos protesters were compelled to cross the street to engage Marcos supporters in discourse.
The Duterte supporters left the park at past 8 p.m.
‘Exhilirated’
The program was generally peaceful, with human rights advocates and victims of the Martial Law regime taking to the stage, including former Senator Rene Saguisag and former Representatives Satur Ocampo and Neri Colmenares.
Saguisag said he was “exhilirated” by the participation of youth at the event.
“I thought kami lang na may tungkod ng mga darating,” he told GMA News Online.
He added that one good thing about Marcos’ “surreptitious burial” was the spreading awareness about the truth of Martial Law.
Daryll Baybado, who studies at University of Sto. Tomas and is the Secretary General of the College Editor’s Guild of the Philippines, said that they will proudly take up the fight of the EDSA Revolution.
“Importante yung parang nangyari na passing the torch. Yung nga pinaglalaban nila parang walang nangyari eh,” he said.
“Itutuloy namin ang laban,” he added.
https://twitter.com/jacbartolome/status/802111169133625344/photo/1
Student activists from the Marcos era also went onstage to meet the current generation of youth leaders.
Calling themselves “senior citizen protesters,” they expressed their delight at the youth’s participation at the protest.
“Hindi na namin maaabutan ang tunay na pagbabago. This is the only consolation,” said Medi de Jesus, who was an activist during Marcos’ presidency.
“Napakasaya na maraming kabataan ngayon,” she added.
https://twitter.com/jacbartolome/status/802113942042488833/photo/1
The program proper ended at past 8 p.m., but rallyists continued to trickle in to Luneta. A concert featuring singers and spoken word performers began before 9 p.m.
Duterte accountability
Before heading to Luneta, youth group Anakbayan demonstrated at Mendiola outside the Malacañang compound to take into task President Rodrigo Duterte for allowing the late dictator to be buried at the heroes’ shrine.
“Today youth and students and people from all walks of life unite to hold the Duterte regime accountable for giving a hero’s burial to a dictator, plunderer, and human rights violator. Today we link arms to denounce Duterte’s unholy alliance with the Marcoses,” said Anakbayan National Chairperson Vencer Crisostomo.
Duterte, meanwhile, defended his decision in a speech in Zamboanga City.
“Wala kaming choice. We cannot have a different interpretation because it simply says that a soldier and a former President are qualified to be buried in the Libingan ng mga Bayani,” Duterte said in an interview in Zamboanga City.
“I am trained to follow simply the law. It was a simple matter of amending the law and they had about — yung nanay, pati ang anak then — six, six [equals] 12, 12 golden years to do it tapos ikaw pa ngayon — bakit hindi mo na lang para klaro na allowed ka talaga?” he added.
Duterte was referring to his predecessor, former President Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III, and Noynoy’s mother, the late former President Corazon “Cory” Aquino. Cory was installed into power in 1986 following the EDSA People Power Revolution calling for Marcos’ ouster.
Duterte said though he did not share the sentiment of the protesters, but would not try to stop them.
“I may disagree, but I will defend their rights,” he said.
Tens of thousands of suspected communist rebels and political foes were killed before Marcos’s 1986 ouster in a “people’s power” revolt. He died in exile in Hawaii three years later.
In 1986, a commission was created to recover the Marcos family’s wealth, which was estimated at $10 billion worth of property, cash, stocks, jewellery and pieces of art. It has, so far, recovered about half.
The body of Marcos was until last week kept in a mausoleum in his home province. Successive governments blocked the burial because they were either led by opponents of Marcos or had bowed to public pressure.
by MLC | Nov 25, 2016 | Martial Law Stories
By Jazmin Bonifacio
Source: Rappler.com
UP Tacloban students and protesters from other sectors say Ferdinand Marcos does not deserve a place in the Heroes’ Cemetery due to the human rights violations committed during his dictatorial reign
Photo by Jazmin Bonifacio/Rappler
TACLOBAN CITY, Philippines – Protesters here, the home town of former first lady Imelda Marcos, joined the nationwide indignation activities on Friday, November 25, against the burial of her husband Ferdinand Marcos at the Libingan ng mga Bayani.
They called for the exhumation of Marcos’ remains from the Heroes’ Cemetery, saying he does not deserve a place there due to the human rights violations committed during his dictatorial reign.
“We want to express our strong opposition to the recent burial of former President Marcos, and we want to show that Eastern Visayas, especially Tacloban, is not a Marcos country nor a Romualdez country,” said Rey Miranda, secretary general of Bagong Alyansang Makabayan Eastern Visayas, which led the rally.
“Gusto namon igpakita an amon pag abuyon ha pagpa bukad hiton patay nga lawas ni Marcos ha Libingan nang mga Bayani,” he added. (We want Marcos’ body taken out the Libingan ng mga Bayani.)
It was a call made in anti-Marcos rallies in some other cities on Friday. (READ: Luneta protesters to Duterte: End alliance with Marcos family)
Petitioners with the Supreme Court, who lost their case when the tribunal upheld President Rodrigo Duterte’s order for the burial, had filed at least two followup petitions after the Marcoses and the military rushed the former president’s interment while the ruling was not yet final and executory.
The one filed by former Bayan Muna congressional representatives Satur Ocampo and Neri Colmenares asks the High Court to hold in contempt the Marcos family and the armed forces leadership, and for the Marcoses to return the public funds used for the burial. The other one, filed by Albay Representative Edcel Lagman, outrightly asks the Court to order the exhumation of Marcos’ remains.
About a hundred protesters – including students from University of the Philippines Visayas-Tacloban City and representatives of different sectors – marched from UP to the downtown area at around 4 pm.
Groups that participated included Kabataan, People Surge, Kalayaan LM, Pulso Han Mag-aaram, and Gabriela Eastern Visayas, their contingents chanting, “Ang tao, ang bayan, ngayon ay lumalaban!”
Joshua Sagdullas, a student leader from UPVTC, said the protests happening in various parts of the country are not about supporters of only two families: the Marcoses who abused their power, and the Aquinos who helped lead the fight against them. The youth, among others, should be involved, he said.
“We should organize, make a move, own the street,” he said.
Participants from Northern Samar recounted their experiences during Martial Law. Forty-five men, women, and children were killed in the province during the Marcos regime, they said.
by MLC | Nov 25, 2016 | Martial Law Stories
By Erwin Colcol
Source: GMA News
The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) has expressed support for Friday’s protest actions against the burial of the late President Ferdinand Marcos at the Libingan ng mga Bayani.
“By protesting the hero’s burial of Marcos, the Filipino people, especially the younger generation, are demonstrating how they have not forgotten the brutalities and crimes of the Marcoses,” the CPP said in a statement.
“Beyond recalling Marcos’ crimes of the past, they must also unite to fight all the brutal legacies of martial law which persist and continue to cause grave suffering against the people,” it added.
At the same time, the CPP urged the public to demand from the Duterte administration the reversal of the “historical wrong” of having Marcos at the heroes’ cemetery.
“The Filipino people must demand the Duterte regime to reverse the historical wrong which it committed by exalting Marcos with a hero’s burial,” the CPP said.
Aside from these, the CPP highlighted the importance of calling for the release of political detainees during the protest actions, saying that most of them are victims of the Marcos dictatorship.
“The people must demand Duterte to prove himself not a Marcos by fulfilling his promise to release all political prisoners en masse through an amnesty proclamation,” the CPP said.
“The CPP urges the protestors in Metro Manila and other cities demonstrating against the hero’s burial of Marcos to unite with the people in the countryside who continue to suffer under martial law conditions with the presence of armed soldiers of the AFP who maraud and ravage their communities with the aim of suppressing the struggle of the peasant masses for genuine land reform and the minority people for self-determination,” it added.
Rejecting Duterte’s legal justification
The CPP rejected President Rodrigo Duterte’s justification that Marcos’ burial at the heroes’ cemetery is in accordance with the law.
“Duterte can propound a thousand legal questions and he would not get to the meat of the matter because the issue of exalting Marcos as a hero is way beyond the realm of what is legal or not,” the CPP said.
“It is a question of whether one sides by the dictator who protected the interests of foreign big capitalists, the big bourgeois compradors, the big landlords and bureaucrat capitalists through the brutal suppression and exploitation of the people,” it added.
Duterte has repeatedly said earlier that his reason for supporting the burial at the Libingan ng mga Bayani is because “it is the law.”
“Kaya itong kay President Marcos simply what is the law. The law is the law. That has no emotions at all,” Duterte said in a speech during the launching of the Pilipinong May Puso Foundation in Davao City on November 11.
But for the CPP, Duterte’s statement only showed insensitivity and disrespect to the victims of the Marcos dictatorship.
“Indeed, by exalting Marcos with a hero’s burial, Duterte showed utter insensitivity and disrespect to the tens of thousands of victims of cruel suppression by the US-backed Marcos dictatorship and the collective suffering of the Filipino people under its rule of unmitigated plunder,” the CPP said.
by MLC | Nov 24, 2016 | Martial Law Stories
By Agence France-Presse
Source : Rappler.com
Frank Malabed, who embalmed ex-dictator Marcos’s body, insists the body buried at the Libingan ng mga Bayani is real
CELEBRITIES’ MORTICIAN. Frank Malabed, the embalmer of the late Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos, answers question during an interview in his office in Manila on November 22, 2016. Noel Celis/AFP
MANILA, Philippines – A wax mask covered the face of Ferdinand Marcos for the 23 years his corpse was on show, but the body on display was no fake, the Philippine dictator’s mortician told Agence France-Presse in an interview.
Frank Malabed, the embalmer of choice for high profile politicians and celebrities, revealed the secrets of his trade following the controversial burial at the Libingan ng mga Bayani (Heroes’ Cemetery) in Manila last week.
The interment stoked fresh speculation about the dictator’s final resting place, with many believing the real Marcos was secretly laid to rest years ago and the body on display had been a wax replica.
But Malabed, who embalmed the body, insisted it was real.
“The face the people saw was wax. But for the rest of the body there was no need for that because it was clothed,” the 66-year-old told Agence France-Presse.
“The hair, that’s only a wig.”
Marcos died in exile in Hawaii in 1989, 3 years after the “People Power” revolution forced him from office.
Critics say during 20 years in power he looted state coffers and ordered the torture and killing of thousands of foes.
Marcos’s body was embalmed by Malabed in Hawaii. In 1993 it was flown to the ancestral home in the northern Philippines, where it was put in a glass case for public viewing.
‘Shrivelled skin’
Malabed said Marcos, who died from lung, kidney and liver complications aged 72, was disfigured by edema – the build-up of fluid that causes tissues to become swollen.
Embalming drains blood and other body fluid, which is replaced with preservative solution. But the resulting “shriveled skin did not look good”, the mortician said.
“Ma’am did not care for that,” he added, referring to the widow Imelda.
“She wanted Filipinos to see President Marcos (the way) he looked before, when he was still young.”
Malabed said he received the already embalmed body a week after Marcos’s death, but had to repeat the procedure because the face looked “bloated” and he feared it would decompose within a week.
“I’m a perfectionist when speaking about embalming,” he said, later telling the Marcos family the reworked body would be intact for 30 years.
“I’m proud, because he was a 20-year president and not an ordinary person.”
In 1991, Malabed said the widow paid another mortician to work on the face with materials “similar to” the restorative wax used to rebuild the faces of people disfigured in fatal accidents.
Malabed said he last checked the corpse “by hand” on August 8, pronouncing it in good condition as burial preparations began in secret. He said another mortuary handled the actual ceremony.
The dictator’s eldest daughter Imee, the family’s official spokeswoman for the body, did not respond to Agence France-Presse’s requests for comment.
But days before the burial, Imee told ABS-CBN television that “of course” the body was real, though “all kinds of procedures, all kinds of chemicals had been used” on it.
War dead
As a child, Malabed dreamed of becoming an engineer, but he soon followed in the footsteps of his mortician father.
By the time he was an 18-year-old apprentice, Malabed was working on the mangled bodies of US soldiers killed in the Vietnam War, which had been flown to the then-US air base at Clark.
Malabed got his first big break embalming a brother and a sister of Imelda, a job which opened doors to the Marcos family.
But it has not been all Marcos: he also embalmed Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino, the Marcos family’s arch-political foe whose assassination at Manila airport by government forces in 1983 altered the course of Philippine history.
Under strict instructions from the family matriarch, Malabed preserved the body, but made no effort to fix the bullet-shattered face.
Aquino’s corpse – wearing the same bloodstained jacket in which he had died – became the rallying point for the revolution that ultimately brought his widow to power, and sent Marcos into exile.
For Malabed, a devout Catholic, the identity of a person when they were alive is not important; he treats all his clients equally.
His skills do not come cheap, he admits, but says the final result is well worth it.
“I make people beautiful even in death.”
