Martial Law

Research I

MANILA, Philippines (UPDATED) – In 1972, the Philippines entered what would be a long,
terrible decade of military rule under the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos.

That dark chapter of history saw the country's coffers plundered, the economy in
shambles, and citizens subjected to horrific human rights abuses. Tens of thousands of
people faced various forms of torture, political dissidents were imprisoned, and at least
3,240 were killed from 1972 to 1981. (READ: #NeverAgain: Martial Law stories young
people need to hear)

Some of those who suffered under the Marcos regime were young, brave leaders who
were at the forefront of the anti-dictatorship movement. Many of these idealistic student
activists never made it past their 40s.

On the 45th anniversary of the declaration of martial law, Rappler looks back at 7
promising youth leaders whose lives were cut short under the Marcos regime.

LILIOSA HILAO. Her photos can be found at the Bantayog'€™s Hall of Remembrance. She was tortured
and abused after she wrote articles critical of the Marcos regime. Photo by Rhea Claire
Madarang/Rappler

Liliosa Hilao – Lilli to her friends – entered college at the time when student activism was
at its height. But because she had asthma and allergies, Hilao couldn't join rallies on the
streets. Instead, the communication arts student of the Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng
Maynila (PLM) used her gift of writing to express her strong sentiments against the
Marcos dictatorship.

Hilao wrote for the student newspaper, penning critical essays with titles like "The
Vietnamization of the Philippines" and "Democracy is Dead in the Philippines under
Martial Law." She was also a member of different student organizations and an active
student leader.

With her talents, she was due to graduate cum laude in 1973. But she did not live to see
that day.

In April 1973, drunken soldiers from the Constabulary Anti-Narcotics Unit barged into
the Hilao family home, looking for Lilli's brother. But when she demanded to see an arrest
warrant, the soldiers beat her up and took her away to Camp Crame. A brother-in-law was
able to see her at the detention center, where Hilao told him she had been tortured. The
next day, she was dead.

According to the official report, Hilao died by suicide after drinking muriatic acid. But her
body showed unmistakable signs that she had been tortured: there were cigarette burns
on her lips, bruises on her body, injection marks on her arms. Her sister said Lilli's internal
organs were removed to cover signs of torture and possible sexual abuse.

At 23, Hilao was the first female and student activist to die in detention during Martial
Law.

DANGEROUS QUESTION. Archimedes Trajano was killed for asking presidential daughter Imee Marcos
why she was the national chairperson of the Kabataang Barangay.

At a time when freedom of speech was curtailed and dissent stamped out, a simple
question was dangerous. For 21-year-old Archimedes Trajano, that one question which
annoyed the presidential daughter cost him his life.
In August 1977, Trajano, then a student of the Mapua Institute of Technology, stood up
during an open forum where Imee Marcos was speaking, and asked why she was the
National Chairperson of the Kabataang Barangay.

Witnesses said Trajano was seen forcibly taken from the venue by Imee's bodyguards,
and was tortured for 12 to 36 hours and thrown out of a second floor window. His
bloodied body was found on the streets of Manila on September 2, 1977.

STUDENT LEADER. Edgar Jopson was well known for his active role in the student movement. Photo
from Wikipedia

Edgardo Gil "Edjop" Jopson took a different path when he graduated from Ateneo de
Manila University with a degree in Management Engineering. Coming from a middle-class
background, Jopson went from being a moderate student activist to going underground
as a member of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP).

Even before the Martial Law days, Jopson was active in the student movement, becoming
president of the National Union of Students of the Philippines. One of the most memorable
anecdotes of the time involved Jopson and other student leaders going to Malacañang for
a dialogue with Marcos in 1970, and insisting the president sign a written pledge not to
run for a third term of office. Marcos retorted that he would not agree to a demand from
a mere "grocer's son."

After graduation, Jopson took up law at the University of the Philippines but abandoned
it, choosing to work with the labor movement. Despite his moderate leanings, he was
accepted into the CPP, later becoming a ranking leader of the revolutionary movement.
In 1979, Jopson was arrested and tortured while under interrogation, but he was able to
escape after 10 days. In September 1982, the military captured Jopson in a raid in Davao
City. After he refused to cooperate during the interrogations, Jopson was executed the
following day. He was 34 years old.

DOCTOR. Juan Escandor was a medical doctor who went underground to join the armed struggle.

Juan Escandor was a medical doctor who left a promising career as a cancer specialist and
radiologist to join the armed struggle.

A graduate of the University of the Philippines College of Medicine, he became chief

resident of the radiology department at the UP-Philippine General Hospital and later a
consultant. He also headed the research department of the Cancer Institute of the
Philippines in 1972.

While practicing medicine, Escandor was also involved in nationalist causes, becoming a
founding member of leftist student organization Kabataang Makabayan. When martial
law was declared, Escandor went underground and became known as the "NPA doctor,"
serving in the rural areas in Cagayan Valley.

In 1983, Escandor was killed in an encounter with constabulary troopers in Quezon City.
But the circumstances of his death were unclear. While authorities said Escandor died in
a gun fight, an autopsy later revealed signs of severe torture on Escandor's body: his brain
had been removed and stuffed inside his stomach cavity. Trash, rags, and plastic bags
were shoved inside his skull. His body also bore contusions. He was 41 when he died.
POET, WRITER. Emmanuel 'Eman' Lacaba was an award-winning poet, essayist, and dramatist who
joined the New People's Army.

Emmanuel "Eman" Lacaba was an award-winning poet, essayist, and dramatist. A

consistent honor student from grade school to high school, he went on to the Ateneo de
Manila University on a full scholarship, taking up AB Humanities.

He later taught at the University of the Philippines, wrote plays and studied martial arts,
helped out in film productions, and wrote the lyrics of the theme song of the Lino Brocka
film Tinimbang Ka Ngunit Kulang.

Lacaba began taking part in political actions during the First Quarter Storm of 1970, and
later became active in the labor movement. In 1974, he went to Mindanao to join the New
People's Army.

In March 1976, while at a peasant hut in Davao del Norte, soldiers opened fire, killing all
but Lacaba and a pregnant comrade. He was later summarily executed at the age of
27. After Lacaba's death, collections of his writing were published posthumously in 1986
and 1992.

Ishmael "Jun" Quimpo Jr was only 13 when the First Quarter Storm exposed him to the
student demonstrations at the time, prompting him to participate. He was a talented
college dropout who chose to get involved in community organizing and to work for the
poor.

When Martial Law was declared, Quimpo – then a freshman at the University of the
Philippines Diliman – joined the youth committee of the Consultative Committee on
Student Affairs, an alternative to the student councils banned at the time. But his interest
continued to be in community work. His first experience of an urban poor community was
at Constitution Hills in Quezon City, now the site of the House of Representatives.

It was also through music that Quimpo expressed his sentiments, playing protest songs
on his guitar and inspiring people.

After Quimpo was arrested for 10 days in 1976, he decided to go underground, organizing
farmers as a cadre of the New People's Army for 5 years.

In December 1981, Quimpo died at the young age of 24, shot from the back by a former
comrade who was working with the military.

POET, ACTIVIST. Lorie Barros was a gifted writer who later went underground to evade arrest.

A gifted writer who made a name for herself with her poetry and essays, Maria Lorena
"Lorie" Barros was a talented student taking up anthropology at the University of the
Philippines.

By the end of the 1960s, Barros joined the activist movement, later becoming a co-founder
of the Malayang Kilusan ng Bagong Kababaihan (Makibaka), which aimed to improve the
masses' economic conditions and promote women's rights.

With the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, Barros was charged with subversion.
She went underground, got married, and had a son.

In November 1973, Barros was arrested in Bicol and brought to Camp Vicente Lim in
Laguna. She was then transferred to Fort Bonifacio's Ipil Rehabilitation Center, but she
managed to escape a year later along with 3 other political prisoners.

In March 1976, Barros was killed in an armed encounter with constabulary soldiers in
Quezon. She was 28 years old.

Research II

The Haunting of Martial Law: Records from the Marcos Regime

September 7, 2017Brian Huffman

By Ellen-Rae Cachola, Evening Library Supervisor and Archives Manager

Philippine human rights advocates have emphasized,“Never Again to Martial Law!” But,
current Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s declaration of Martial Law on the island
of Mindanao defies those who experienced the horrors of the Marcos era.
The international public opinion of Duterte has been mixed–some applaud his
“strongman” tactics to clean up corruption in the country. Meanwhile others accuse him
of being authoritarian–especially on the absent fair trial and executions of urban poor
accused of being drug peddlers. The re-militarization of Mindanao does not bode well in
the long history of conflict between the Philippine North, the U.S., and Mindanao. Why
has Martial Law come to repeat itself in the Philippines? But most importantly, is it
possible to resist this pattern of violence?

General Order No. 1

The William S. Richardson School of Law Library acquired the papers of the late Professor
Jon Van Dyke, an internationally renowned scholar who was known for using his legal
expertise to advocate for the marginalized. Jon and his spouse, Sherry Broder, served as
legal counsel on the Estate of Ferdinand Marcos Human Rights Litigation Case.

The Marcos Human Rights Litigation took decades as individuals who were victims of
human rights abuses under the Marcos regime, or relatives of victims, came forward
seeking compensatory damages. Cases unfolded to track Marcos Estate funds being kept
in international accounts. There were counter appeals to rebuke or re-direct those claims.
Finally, Marcos investments in Texas properties were tapped. Some victims were
compensated with those funds, although other victims were already
deceased. Nevertheless, this case aimed to serve as a precedent for reparations for
victims of human rights abuses under dictatorial regimes around the world.

Through the support of the Hawaiʻi Council of Humanities, the Ferdinand Marcos Human
Rights Litigation collection will be made accessible as a series within the Jon Van Dyke
papers. These papers are important today because the issue of Martial Law has not been
rectified in the Philippines. Perhaps by understanding how Jon Van Dyke studied the
issues of human rights, the will and acuity in others will awaken to address similar issues
today.

Here are some items that provide a glimpse of the workings of the Marcos regime since
the declaration of Martial Law on September 21, 1972.

This General Order No. 1 (image above) explains that Martial Law was declared because
of “wanton destruction of lives and property, widespread lawlessness and anarchy, chaos
and disorder now prevailing throughout the country.”

But why was there chaos and disorder? The book Development Debacle explained that the
Marcos administration worked with the World Bank to implement national development
projects that prioritized technocratic implementation, leaving many of the poor and
working populations out of the process, and thus, from the economic benefits.1 The
displacement, poverty, and hunger from this development debacle led to mass civil
protests, which Marcos responded to in the form of state repression.

Many Filipino citizens continued to resist the abuses even after his regime was
over. Although Marcos may not have been present with the police or military personnel
who executed the abductions, tortures, and killings of dissidents, his position as
Commander of the Security forces, as documented in this General Order No. 1,
incriminated him as playing a central role in these human rights abuses.

The following picture (fig. 2) is of the Main Detention Centers operating during Ferdinand
Marcos Administration.
fig. 2
Camp Crane, Quezon City was where the Command for Detainees (COMCAD) was
located. RECAD stands for the various Regional Command for Detainees (RECAD) that
coordinate groups of detention centers throughout different parts of the archipelago.

The next picture (fig. 3) is of the Statistical Summary of Human Rights Abuses and Public
Order Violation Arrests in the Philippines from September 1972 to February 1986.

fig. 3

This quantifies the numbers of people tortured, executed, disappeared, or arrested

between 1972-1986. These high numbers represent the amount of people who
experienced pain, torture and trauma in the detention centers. Trying to imagine the
human experiences within this table can explain why those Philippine human rights
advocates said, “Never Again to Martial Law!”
Research III

It has been 44 years since former Philippine president Ferdinand Marcos declared
martial law, so we asked people from Facebook, Twitter, and revisited the
hashtag #RPNonFictionand collected stories from that era. Here's what we got.

Twitter: @k8av

My dad used to be a young journalist who went into hiding in the mountains during the
onslaught of this era. He used to say they even got to interview Noynoy himself but later burned
any evidence of it. My mom, on the other hand, walked the streets in protest.

—Rochy Galvan via Facebo

Twitter: @fjparlan
Twitter: @marcoferrer9

Marcos shut down Manila Times; Daily Mirror; Manila Chronicle; Manila Daily Bulletin a day after
ML proclamation.
#RPNonFiction My father said if you want to be a writer you have to be ready to either get bribed
or get killed. We studied science instead.
My grandfather hid in a hollowed out tree trunk for a day as they were dragging out people from
his village in the province. #RPNonFiction
UP history professor told me about this nun who protested during martial law. she was abducted &
forced to BJ five soldiers #RPNonFiction
RPNonFiction Isa sa paraan ng pagtorture ay pagpapasok ng tingting sa butas ng ari ng lalaki.
Sarap no?

My teacher can never have children. She was repeatedly raped during Martial Law, once with a
broomstick, once with loaded gun. #RPNonFiction
My lola, with her hands held tight by a couple of militarymen, was forced to write down "Marcos"
during '86 Nat'l Elections #RPNonFiction
#RPNonFiction mom had a friend back in college who was abducted and two days later her body
was returned in a sack with tape on her mouth.
My young aunt was dangerously ill, and they couldn't bring her to the hospital because of the curfew.
She died in her home. #RPNonFiction
Nung gumuho yung Manila Film Center hindi sila nagrescue ng mga tao. They just poured cement
over it, burying workers alive #RPNonFiction
Ingat (careful out there) became the word of good-bye, replacing the old "sige," during the martial
law years. It was the last word uttered between and among those meeting to discuss what had to
be done, in ways big and small, to end the Marcos Dictatorship. It was said with all the love and
respect one was capable of. Because chances were one would meet again only in a prison cell, or
a torture house (called a safe house by the military) or at a
wake.#neverforget #cultureaswitness#languageofstruggle