Never Forget
It's hard to turn back to those memories of needles in your nail beds, electric wires attached to your genitals, and the barrel of a gun thrust inside your mouth. Anyone who wasn't in denial during that time knew there was a different story unfolding at night. Sadness from the flowery songs and proclamations of this " new society," people were being maltreated, tortured, raped, and killed, violently.
That memorable evening on September 21, 1972, former president Ferdinand Marcos appeared on national television to formally announced that the Philippines was under Martial Law.The declaration issued under Proclamation 1081 suspended the civil rights and imposed military authority in the country. Marcos defended the declaration stressing the need for extra powers to the rising wave of violence caused by communists.
Marcos explained that martial law was not a military takeover but was then the only option to resolve the country’s dilemma on rebellion that stages national chaos threatening the peace and order of the country. The emergency rule, according to Marcos’s plan, was to lead the country into what he calls a “New Society”.
Amnesty International has estimated that during Martial Law, 70,000 people were imprisoned, 34,000 were tortured, and 3,240 were killed. We are still feeling the effects of large-scale corruption and human rights violations to this day.
Forty-four years have passed. Time, as well as the circus that is Philippine governance makes it easy to forget Martial Law as the darkest and most terrible regime in Philippine history.
The ones who were brave enough to speak up were incarcerated and killed. If you didn't know anybody who spoke against the Marcoses in those days, it's because silence was the only defense against that cruel dictatorship.
Aside from electrocution of body parts and genitals, it was routine to water board political prisoners, burned them using cigarettes and flat irons, strangle them using wires and steel bars, and rub pepper on their genitals. Women were stripped naked, made to sit on ice blocks or stand in cold rooms, and were sexually assaulted using objects such as eggplants smeared with chili peppers.
Yet these horrific stories need to be told over and over until we realized that the pretty cover of the book of the Marcos years is actually full of enormous stories. We need to bring the graphic accounts of torture and murder to light so that those who rest comfortably in their illusions that the Marcos years were pleasant will at least be stirred.
To the new followers of Marcos who think the they are admirable and forgivable just asked around and thought of the victims. Ask your parents. If you don't get an answer, ask your friends' parents. Unless they benefited from the Marcos regime or were hiding under a rock, they know something horrible was happening after dark. Once you hear the stories, it will be something you will hope will never happen to our country again.
We are on the country of Amnesia where history repeats itself. The Marcos saga became dark and evil. As they say, those who didn't heed the lessons of history would be bound to repeat it. Well, we don't need to debate on that. Instead we simply need to tell, retell and listen to the stories of those who survived. As the young people of the society, we need to take the blinders off our eyes and learn what exactly life had on the old times, when the Philippines was still headed by a wrong president.
