Martial law accounts

Today we remember the declaration of martial law under the dictator Ferdinand Marcos on September 21, 1972. Although Marcos officially lifted martial law in 1981, he continued to rule by decree until 1986 when People Power showed him the door out of Malacañang.

Over three decades since the end of the dictatorship, we are now witnessing active fragments of that dark period. I liken these fragments to Horcruxes, those parts of the soul of Voldemort in the Harry Potter novels, any one of which could bring Voldemort back to life.

They are the paid trolls and mercenary media in YouTube and Facebook who relentlessly spread fake news and disinformation in order to revise history. They’ve been at it since 2015 coinciding with the activities of the so-called DDS army. Such has been well-documented in numerous peer-reviewed studies including the recent work of professors Cheryll Ruth Soriano and Fatima Gaw entitled “Platforms, alternative influence, and networked political brokerage on YouTube” (2021).

While the revisionist campaign may have gained traction through social media in recent years, I’m certain that it will sooner or later crumble in the weight of its own lies. Fueled mainly by money, the revisionist campaign could soon meet its match (if it has not already) from several sectors including university-based youths as well as the old guards of the anti-Marcos movement.

For the latter group, however, the challenge to counter the revisionist campaign remains enormous. The revisionists will continue to capture the attention of people by exploiting their discontent and political aspirations within the context of the attention logics of social media. “Constant political turbulence, a weak state, declining media trust, and a public that are simultaneously entertainment and politically savvy” create the atmosphere in which trolls gain traction.

We must therefore work double-time to mainstream the true stories of martial law. Incidentally in 2014, the Human Rights Victims’ Claims Board started collecting sworn statements from martial law victims, their survivors and witnesses. Through Republic Act No. 10368 or the Human Rights Reparation and Recognition Act of 2013, the Board documented 11,103 victims’ accounts of human rights violations from 1972 to 1986, including arbitrary detention, killings, enforced disappearances, rape, acts of lasciviousness, forcible abduction, and physical and mental torture.

These accounts were etched in public documents through individual sworn statements of victims or their relatives and witnesses. In 2014, I helped document the statements of some victims of the human rights abuses in Cebu during the Marcos regime. I listened to the story of a man whose mother was abducted one evening in March 1984 in Barangay Lanipga, Consolacion, Cebu by three soldiers of the Philippine Constabulary. The soldiers barged into their house without any warrant and abducted his mother on a mere suspicion that she was a rebel. Neighbors witnessed the woman being dragged outside her house while the children were left inside crying. “For fear of our lives, we chose not to interfere,” said two witnesses who gave sworn statements. Three days later, the woman was found dead somewhere in the hills of Consolacion.

In September 1984 at Sitio Lumbang, Barangay Bonbon, Cebu City, armed men of a paramilitary group named Civilian Home Defense Force burned the house of member of a labor rights organization. Several houses were also later set on fire on suspicion that its occupants were rebel sympathizers.

The are several more accounts of abduction, warrantless arrests, torture, and extrajudicial killings that happened in Cebu during the Marcos dictatorship. I hope a book will be written about the accounts of the martial law victims in Cebu.