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Never again to Martial Law!

BAGUIO CITY (Sept. 21) — “It was a strange morning. Wala masyadong tao, walang dyaryo, walang programa sa radio (There not a lot of people, no newspapers, no radio broadcast). But there were military trucks all around. Little did I know that Ferdinand Marcos declared Martial Law that day.”

These were the recollections of Martial Law victim and survivor Atty. Neri Colmenares of his youth in his hometown of Negros on Sept. 21, 1972 in a forum this week on state terrorism under the Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo administration. He is now a human rights lawyer with the Committee for the Defense of Liberties (Codal).

“It was a bleak day for the Filipino people, as no one was spared from the crackdown and curtailment of human rights,” he said. Some 70,000 people were killed during Martial Law, while tortures were a standard operating procedure of the military; dispersals in rallies were carried out not only to arrest, but to kill, he recounts.

“Ferdinand Marcos’ regime lived on torture, on violation of people’s rights—as in the GMA administration now,” he said. Colmenares discussed several parallelisms to the Marcos regime and GMA’s before an audience of church representatives, people’s organizations, students, and journalists.

“Undeclared” martial law

Colmenares said the GMA administration and the military carry the same mentality and components “in the sense that people’s rights are expendable once it counters the state’s definition of national interest”.

“The regime believes that any attack on the person of the president, the administration, or electoral fraud is an attempt to overthrow the president. In our case where human rights workers are foremost killed alongside progressive leaders and members, there is definitely a problem to that,” he said.

Citing Karapatan data, Colmenares said that human rights violations have escalated under GMA’s rule. From January 2001, since GMA assumed the presidency, to January 30, 2005, 4,027 cases of human rights violations were documented, involving 223,796 victims, 411 of these are extrajudicial killings, over 100 people killed in one year, or one person killed every three days.

“Involuntary disappearances are one of the most cruel forms of human rights violations, because the victims’ families will never have a closure”, he said, adding that this undeclared policy of human rights violations is another similarity between the two regimes. He stressed that at present, human rights violations are not sporadic, but national in scope, as in the dark years of Martial Law.

“The modus operandi of the killings is similar—political attack sa papatayin, the kill, and the absence of condemnation and investigation,” he said, stressing that the impunity clouding the current regime is another parallelism.

“Nobody is punished for the death of thousands, as in the case of Gen. Jovito Palparan,” he said. GMA promoted twice the Butcher of Mindoro for his campaign to cleanse Mindoro province of human rights activists. Some of the more prominent cases include the abduction and killing of Karaparan-Southern Tagalog Sec. Gen. Eden Marcellana and Kasama-Southern Tagalog Chairperson Eddie Gumanoy both on April 24, 2004.

Lomibao guilty

In a testimony, Martial Law victim and survivor Joanna Cariño, Cordillera Afong-Selda spokesperson, recounted that Philippine National Police Chief Arturo Lomibao was one of her arresting officers and was one of those responsible for her torture in the 1970s.

“To date, Lomibao has not yet been held accountable,” Cariño said.

“I was already a student activist here in UP Baguio when Martial Law was declared. When arrests took place, my sisters and I slipped out of Baguio towards Pangasinan, then we were later arrested and detained for two years,” she recalled.

Still a human rights advocate to date, Cariño also stressed the need to challenge the GMA regime for its atrocities against the Filipino people.

“I was a victim of Martial Law, I survived Martial Law, and I say never again to Martial Law!” she stressed.

The first political assassination took place in Baguio City during GMA’s term on March 9, when an unidentified gunman gunned down Bayan Muna regional coordinator for the Ilocos region Romeo Sanchez in the City Public Market. The killer remains at large. # Abigail T. Bengwayan for NORDIS

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