THE TYRANNY ERA

It was the first time since World War II when the people of the Philippines suffered harsh
jackboot oppression and wanton plunder. President Ferdinand Marcos at the end of his term in
1972 and fearing a loss of power and influence declared nationwide martial law and abolished
the congress and vowed to continue in office. The sovereign rights of the people under the
constitution protecting their lives, liberty and property were swept away and Marcos declared
himself an absolute ruler with legislative powers to rule by decree.

Tyranny had arrived. Thousands of opposition leaders, party members, journalists and
outspoken critics of the corruption of Marcos’s previous years in office were rounded up and
executed or jailed. Others fled abroad and many young idealists and freedom-loving youth fled
to the mountains and forests. There they formed a resistance movement called the New
People’s Army based on communist ideology. It continues as a force to this day. Many innocent
young people were summarily executed. The brutal Marcos regime, responsible for as many as
an estimated 20,000 murders, backed up by the Philippine National Police and Army and Police
Constabulary led by General Fidel Ramos plundered the nation. Marcos and his family are
allegedly responsible for billions of dollars and tons of gold plundered from the national treasury
and private businesses and stashed abroad only a fraction of which has been recovered to this
day. Private businesses of the opposition and critics were confiscated and the owners killed or
driven into exile and their properties taken over by Marcos cronies from which he received a
percentage. Death squads spread over the nation, bodies were found on the roadside, tortured
and killed. Militias went wild and vented a reign of terror on church people, priests and pastors
and church workers were killed and the slogan of the campaign to persecute the church was
“Be a patriot and kill a priest.” It was a time of state terror and treason. Priests were framed up
with the murders of a mayor in Negros, the famous Negros Nine, three priests and six church
workers put on trial for a crime they did not commit. Marcos also had a war-on-drugs. He
cracked down on pushers and distributers and jailed thousands of young drug users and
dependents. He executed in public on live television an accused Chinese drug dealer, no
evidence or proof was needed to establish his guilt. That caused worldwide sensation. The
oppression and jailing, torture and killing of critics without trial was a brutal legacy that brought
much suffering to the Filipino people. It is being imitated today. Sex tourism was allowed to
proliferate under the regime and foreign pedophiles were everywhere a source of foreign
revenue that Marcos was desperate for to prop up a faltering economy. There was the case of
Rosario Baluyot, a young girl sexually abused by a foreigner, a suspected US serviceman and
she died a horrific painful death in the inadequate and discrepant Olongapo General Hospital. A
broken part of a sex toy was found in her body causing severe infection from which there was
no cure. A pansy tourist was found, arrested, charged and found guilty just to cover for the US
Naval Base at Subic Bay beside Olongapo City. His conviction defected from the US Navy
accusations of the rampant sex abuse of poor Filipino women and children in the only industry
in the city, “sex for sale.” When a child sex ring, composed of US Navy men abusing children as
young as nine years old was uncovered by Preda social workers the regime tried to close down
the child care center and deport the founder.

This was the legacy too of martial law, a spreading sex industry turning the Filipino
women and children into prostitutes for foreign customers. There was a total dependency on US
military might to supply the martial law police and army with weapons used to suppress the
Filipino people. It was soon after the People Power Revolution drove Marcos from power that
the Preda campaign to remove the bases and convert the infrastructure into an economic zone
became a coalition of the willing and was a resounding success. It has been 48 years since the
Martial Law occurred yet the horrors of the horrific event still haunt man Filipinos up to this day.
People of the Philippines lived for 14 years under the martial law with the conditions stated
above. As a student and a Filipino youth, what I think and feel about the Martial Law under
Marcos is that for me it was a fearsome event. Base from what I learn in school and from what I
heard from the eldest is that way back from the days where Martial Law was existed, Filipino
citizens actions are limited and wherever they go there are soldiers roaming around. A lot of
Filipinos are imprisoned and killed; they can't have the freedom that they wanted. Because of
the strict rule that was implemented. Taken as a whole, it results as a period of social unrest of
an array of human rights violations and corruption disguised as a move to combat rebellion at
the same time, it is a lesson for the present and future generation.