Some victims of human rights abuses under Martial Law will be awarded P50,000 each following a US court settlement for a painting that used to be owned by former first lady Imelda Marcos.
At a ceremonial distribution held in Fort Bonifacio, Taguig City, Robert Swift, lead legal counsel of the victims said 6,556 claimants will receive compensation, which he said he will personally hand to them in the form of a check.
The money, totalling $15 million or P675 million, came from the settlement by the Hawaii District Court of a claim on an 1899 painting by French artist Claude Monet that the court said was illegally sold to a European millionaire, a report on “24 Oras” aired Thursday evening said.
Swift said claimants expect a total of about $2.3 billion in funds for distribution to human rights victims when other ill-gotten wealth cases pending in several courts are resolved.
“Those judgements, together, total, without interest, about $2.3 billion, so we have a long way to go. Realistically, I’m hoping that in the next couple of years we can finish the cases and recover as much money as we can,” Swift said.
Zenaida Mique, executive director of Claimants 1081, an organization for victims of abuses during Martial law, meanwhile expressed gratitude for the compensation.
“Nung naipanalo namin yung kaso noon, it’s already a political victory for us. Itong P50,000 na ito ay napakalaking bagay lalo na dun sa mga biktima na mga magsasaka, mga maliliit na mangagawa, mangingisda,” she said.
The first distribution of compensation happened in 2011, when victims shared $10 million from the sale of two Marcos properties in Texas.
The wife of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos, seen in a wheel chair but in good spirits, will join the Romualdez clan at the papal mass on Saturday, January 17
ALL SMILES. Former first lady Imelda Marcos is seen at the Patio Victoria Restaurant in Tacloban City a day before Pope Francis’ visit. Photo by Rappler
TACLOBAN CITY, Phililppines – Former First Lady Imelda Marcos was spotted in Tacloban City on Friday evening, January 16, a day before Pope Francis was set to visit the city.
The wife of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos was seen at the Patio Victoria Restaurant in a wheel chair. She was photographed smiling and in apparent good spirits.
Patio Victoria is owned by city councilor Cristina Gonzales-Romualdez, wife of Mrs Marcos’ nephew, Tacloban City Mayor Alfred Romualdez.
Mrs Marcos is a member of the influential Romualdez clan that has dominated local politics in Tacloban for decades. She used to be congresswoman of Leyte province before she was elected representive of her husband’s home province of Ilocos Norte.
According to members of the Romualdez family who did not want to be named, Mrs Marcos will join the clan at the papal mass on Saturday.
Pope Francis will spend most of Saturday, January 17, in Tacloban City and Palo town, both in Leyte. He will celebrate mass in Tacloban City and spend time with survivors of Super Typhoon Yolanda (Haiyan) in Tacloban and Palo.
On Friday, the pontiff called on Philippine government officials to reject corruption and build circles of “integrity and goodness.”
“I hope that this prophetic summons will challenge everyone, at all levels of society, to reject every form of corruption which diverts resources from the poor, and to make concerted efforts to ensure the inclusion of every man and woman and child in the life of the community,” he said.
The Pope’s words are timely as the Philippine government, led by President Benigno Aquino III, tries to crack down on rampant corruption and institute governance reforms. Aquino is the son of two democracy icons, the late former President Corazon Aquino and Senator Benigno Aquino Jr, who fought the Marcos dictatorship 3 decades ago.
Pope Francis, the leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics, is in the Philippines for a 5-day pastoral and state visit.
‘She is not well,” the former First Lady says of the former President
HOSPITAL ARREST. Pampanga Rep. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo is facing plunder charges, but has to be confined due to a spine problem. Photo from AFP
MANILA, Philippines – Ilocos Norte Representative Imelda Marcos lamented the “cruel” treatment that the administration is giving ex-President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo after she paid the former Chief Executive a visit at the hospital.
“She was in a good mood, but she’s not well,” Marcos told House reporters on Wednesday, January 22, at the sidelines of a session.
Since November 2011, Arroyo has been under arrest for alleged electoral sabotage for ordering cheating in the senatorial elections in Maguindanao. In October 2012, she was charged with plunder over the alleged misuse of funds by executives of the state gaming corporation during her term.
She has not been granted house arrest and has been staying first at the St Luke’s hospital and now at the government’s Veterans Memorial Medical Center due to her spine problem. The court has not allowed her to seek treatment abroad either.
The former First Lady scoffed at the policy limiting Arroyo’s visiting hours.
“What is worse is that she is only visited by her husband, her children, from the afternoon to 9 o’clock. It’s so cruel. It is so unjust. It is not human,” Marcos said.
“I am so sorry, so sad to be there,” she added.
Before this, prominent politicians have been visiting Arroyo as well, including her predecessor, former President Joseph Estrada, whom Arroyo had jailed for plunder as well but immediately granted house arrest and, later, pardon.
Singapore’s Court of Appeal ruled in favor of its Supreme Court’s decision to grant over $23 million seized from the estate of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos to the Philippine National Bank, ending a four-way dispute over Marcos’ ill-gotten wealth.
The funds, comprised of $16.8 million and GBP4.2 million, form part of Marcos’ illicit fortune stashed in Swiss bank accounts.
The top court, led by Judge of Appeal Chao Hick Tin and Justices Belinda Ang and Woo Bih Li, effectively junked the claims of the Philippine government, at least five of Marcos’ foundations set up to hold the money in Swiss banks, as well as 9,539 human rights victims under the Marcos regime, a Straits Times article reported Friday.
The court, in the report, said it affirmed the High Court ruling that the PNB held the legal title to the funds as depositor of the money as well as original account holder with WestLB, the Germany-based bank that held the money.
Meanwhile, the appeals court rejected the victims’ claims as the documents it considered did not have the legal effect of transferring any “proprietary interest” in the funds to them.
But the court said this does “not in any way deny the moral claims of the human rights victims and acknowledge that the human rights victims deserve redress for the grievous wrongs that they have suffered,” the report said.
The court also ruled that the Swiss foundations’ entitlment was lost after the Swiss court ordered the money transferred to PNB. The PNB holds the funds in escrow and placed the money in various banks in Singapore and Britain, the report said.
In 2004, WestLB in Singapore sought the court’s decision after four parties claimed to be rightful owners of the Swiss funds.
The Swiss Federal Supreme Court in 1997 issued a decision returning $680 million from Marcos’ Swiss bank deposits to the Philippines pending compliance with two conditions — a final and executory decision of a credible Philippine court declaring the said funds as ill-gotten, and that a rightful share of the funds will given to Martial Law victims who won a class suit in Honolulu court against the Marcos estate.
President Benigno Aquino III on Monday signed into law a landmark measure offering compensation to victims of human rights violations under Martial Law.
Aquino signed the Human Rights Victims Reparation and Recognition Act of 2013 during the 27th anniversary of the EDSA-1 revolt at the People Power Monument in Quezon City.
“Nilagdaan natin ang Human Rights Victims Reparation and Recognition Act of 2013 bilang pagkilala sa pagdurusang dinaanan ng napakarami sa batas militar,” he said during his speech at the rites.
Earlier, Aquino himself had said he and his family underwent suffering during Martial Law, when his late father, former Sen. Benigno Aquino Jr., was incarcerated.
He recalled his late mother Corazon and sisters were searched when they would visit his late father.
Aquino thanked Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile and House Speaker Feliciano Belmonte Jr., as well as the bill’s authors, for their support in passing the measure.
Under the measure, P10 billion in funds from the alleged ill-gotten wealth of the Marcoses will be used to pay the victims.
The law also mandates the creation of the Human Rights Violations Victims’ Memorial Commission.
The commission will work with the Department of Education and the Commission on Higher Education “to educate young people about the abuses committed by the Marcos regime and the heroism by those who opposed it,” a Palace statement said.
“As we mark the 27th anniversary of the bloodless revolution that toppled a tyrant and restored our freedom, it remains our responsibility to remind the present and future generation that the freedoms they enjoy came from the selfless sacrifice of nameless Filipinos who struggled against tyranny and oppression. These are the nameless heroes who faced the armed might of the State and suffered torture, indignity and even death,” he said.
Binay added the signing into law of the Human Rights Victims Reparation and Recognition Act of 2013 “is not only our way of recognizing their sacrifices, but of reminding ourselves of the tyranny that made their struggle justified, a tyranny that must not be repeated.”
“I am confident that the future generation of Filipinos will always value, cherish and protect the freedoms that we reclaimed 27 years ago,” he said.
Binay also voiced hopes that Filipinos heed the real message of the 1986 EDSA-1 revolt, that the fight against a stronger foe “can be won if we overcome fear and transcend our differences.”
He said that while the dictatorship was the enemy in 1986, today it is “hunger, poverty and unemployment.”
“We can and we must transcend our differences in order to make the Revolution’s promise of shared prosperity a reality for the Filipino people,” he said.
For the last two weeks, I’ve had sleepless nights. It was two weeks ago that I saw a front-page newspaper photo of the book launch of Senator Juan Ponce Enrile’s memoir. The picture showed President Aquino shaking hands with Senator Enrile, while Imelda Marcos looked on.
A chill went down my spine. Just a couple of days before, I sat at the Bantayog ng mga Bayani memorial listening to President Aquino addressing the families of the Martial Law dead.
To us he said:
“May kasabihang ‘ang mga nakakalimot sa mga kamalian ng nakaraan ay laging nasa bingit na ulitin ito.’ Huwag na nating pahintulutan na maulit pang mailagay sa alanganin ang ating karapatan at kalayaan. Hindi ako makakapayag na maipasang muli sa susunod na henerasyon ang mga pagkakamali ng kasaysayan.
Pahalagahan natin ang pamana’t aral ng Batas Militar. Tungkulin ng bawat isa sa ating alagaan ito, gamit ang tiwala sa isa’t isa, pagmamahal sa katotohanan, at higit sa lahat, sa pagkilala’t pagbibigay-halaga sa sakripisyo ng ating mga bayani. Huwag nating sayangin ang kanilang ipinaglaban.”
Behind President Aquino was the Bantayog memorial, a granite wall with some two hundred names, a small fraction of the tens of thousands who died fighting the dictator Ferdinand Marcos and then-Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile, who was dubbed Marcos’ “Martial Law administrator.” And on that wall are the names of my brothers – Ishmael F. Quimpo, Jr., and Ronald Jan F. Qumpo. Some say that it was a magnanimous gesture that PNoy graced Enrile’s book launch and shook his hand.
I am not as magnanimous.
The video “Batas Militar,” produced by the Foundation for Worldwide People Power (available for viewing on YouTube), shows footage of Enrile and then General Fidel V. Ramos during the first day of what-would-be the People Power insurrection.
On February 22, 1986, both radio and television media covered Enrile admitting that the 1972 ambush and assassination attempt on his life was staged. The masses outside the gates of Camps Aguinaldo and Crame all heard this on their transistor radios. Millions of other Manileños and millions more outside Metro Manila witnessed or heard Enrile’s confession on TV and radio. With multitudes as witnesses, how can the truth be denied?
Good people risked their lives to tell the truth. One of them was journalist Primitivo Mijares. The video “Batas Militar” describes Mijares as a “Malacañang confidante,” a favored member of the press corps. On page 49 of his book, Conjugal Dictatorship, Mijares writes that Marcos called Enrile before the staged ambush and ordered Enrile to implement the plan, saying:
“Secretary Enrile? Where are you? You have to do it now… ya, ya, the one we discussed this noon. We cannot postpone it any longer. Another day of delay may be too late…. Make it look good. Kailangan siguro ay may masaktan o kung mayroon mapatay ay mas mabuti. (May be it would be better if somebody got hurt or killed)… O hala, sige, Johnny and be sure the story catches the ‘Big News’ and ‘Newswatch’… and call me as soon as it is over.”
Little did Mijares know that the price of the truth would be very high indeed. After a rift with Imelda’s brother, Kokoy Romualdez, Mijares left for the US and published his book, a full-throated expose on the Marcos family.
Soon after the book’s publication in 1976, Mijares joined the ranks of the desaparacidos and was never seen again. A year later, his ten-year-old (other accounts say he was sixteen) son Boyet received a phone call; the caller said his father was alive and wanted to see him.
Boyet excitedly left home to meet him. Two weeks later, the boy’s body was found with a bashed head, his nails ripped out, his eyes protruding from their sockets, and his torso punctured with 32 ice-pick wounds.
It is surreal how Enrile fondly says that the typewriter he used to type out the implementing orders of martial law is still in his study. In his memoir, he writes: “I was faced with the problem of how or where to start. There was no model to begin with. I had to literally start from scratch. I had to improvise everything.”
Was he referring to the typewriter he used to craft the blueprint of Martial Law, dish out general orders and the letters of instruction? Did these include the order to arrest 70,000 political prisoners, and to hold them indefinitely in Marcos jails without charge or bail, to torture 34,000, and kill 3,240 as reported by Amnesty International? Whether or not Enrile foresaw these atrocities when he crafted the Martial Law decrees and administered Martial Law itself, cannot be proved, but it cannot be denied that such horrific acts were the practical result of his work. It would have been good to have heard even a few words of regret from him.
Enrile is not alone in wanting to recast history. In interviews, Senator Bongbong Marcos, son of the dictator, characterizes the reports of human rights abuses under Martial Law as “self-serving statements by politicians, self-aggrandizement narratives, pompous declarations, and political posturing and propaganda.”
Statements like these leave me sleepless at night. In the Martial Law prisons, my brother Ronald Jan was stripped naked, his feet doused with water while a live wire was tied to his penis. His skin became as taut as lechon from the heat of two par lamps positioned an inch or two from his face for days.
My brother Nathan was stripped naked, blindfolded and clubbed by his military interrogators until nearly unconscious. Did the letters of instruction typed on Enrile’s typewriter include orders to sexually molest women like my sister Lil and sister-in-law Tina?
Bongbong feigns innocence by saying he was fifteen when his father proclaimed Martial Law. At age twelve I was robbed of innocence when I made the rounds of the Marcos prisons cramped with political prisoners, to visit five siblings and bring them food, clothing and hear accounts of torture again and again.
I am not a politician so I have no need to make self-serving statements, self-aggrandizement narratives, pompous declarations, and engage in political posturing. And it pains me deeply to think that my life, that of my family, that of Primitivo Mijares and his son Boyet, and the lives and experiences of 70,000 political prisoners are dismissed as mere “propaganda.”
Truthfulness is a virtue taught to virtually every Filipino child. No one is exempt from the moral imperative to bear witness and speak the truth. It does not matter if one grew up poor and barefoot in Cagayan or in a palace by the Pasig.
Susan F. Quimpo is the co-editor/author of “Subversive Lives : A family memoir of the Marcos years.” The book is about the story of the Quimpos, a family of activists, and their experiences under Martial Law.
Note: The author used the following sources for this article:
Batas Militar (1999) A video documentary on Martial Law, produced and directed by Kara Magsanoc Alikpala from an original script by Lito Tiongson, and edited by
Jose “Pete” Lacaba.
Viewpoint Neutral – Essays, Law and Politics; Detroit, 06.07.08 (see jcc34.wordpress.com)
1986 – Chronology of a Revolution by Angela Stuart Santiago, Foundation for Worldwide People Power. Inc. 1995
The video “Batas Militar,” produced by the Foundation for Worldwide People Power (available for viewing on YouTube), shows footage of Enrile and then General Fidel V. Ramos during the first day of what-would-be the People Power insurrection.