Former Sen. Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr. (Photo from the Ninoy and Cory Aquino Foundation)
Efforts to distort the late Sen. Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr.’s legacy in history textbooks and films are attempts to “kill him over again,” a group of Filipino-American Edsa veterans said on Monday, a day after the 90th birth anniversary of the late senator.
The US Filipinos for Good Governance said it “broke their heart” to see how, even in death, Aquino was being branded by loyalists as a murderer and a communist sympathizer in an attempt to diminish his place in Philippine history.
Eric Lachica of the American Coalition for Filipino Veterans said these pernicious attacks against Aquino is what allowed disinformation about martial law and allowed the Marcoses to thrive. The group lamented how martial law was being painted as a rosy era in Philippine textbooks, and how certain factions are seeking to have his name erased from the eponymous Ninoy Aquino International Airport where he was assassinated in 1983 upon his return from self-exile in the United States.
Recently, controversial filmmaker and known loyalist Darryl Yap also teased a possible new film, “Martyr or Murderer,” which would supposedly depict the truth about the Marcoses’ role in Aquino’s assassination. “Ninoy is dead and all the people are trying to kill him over again,” said Lupita Aquino Kashiwahara, Aquino’s sister and retired filmmaker. “There’s a climate of fear because dictatorship is again on the horizon.”
Even so, the group found solace in how Aquino waged a lonely but fierce battle against the dictatorship even while he was in self-exile in the United States at the tail end of the Marcos regime.
“The struggle for a cause, when launched from a distance, can be a long drawn-out effort,” said Jose Fuentecilla, former Movement for a Free Philippines leader. “We need to continue the fight just as he did.” INQ