Hero’s burial for Marcos a nightmare

FREEDOM lovers gather at the Bantayog ng mga Bayani—a memorial center built to honor the victims of martial law—to share their experiences under the Marcos dictatorship and make their opposition known to President-elect Rodrigo Duterte’s plan to bury him at the Libingan ng mga Bayani. ALEXIS CORPUZ

JIAN Torres Jao, 15, may not have lived through the horrors of the martial law era, but for him, seeing dictator Ferdinand Marcos buried at the Libingan ng mga Bayani and hailed as a hero would be among his “worst nightmares.”

“The world has never heard of a hero who killed the very people he swore to protect. I refuse a world that glorifies such a hero,” Jao told the Inquirer on Sunday at the Bantayog ng mga Bayani in Quezon City, where at least 100 individuals gathered to celebrate Independence Day and voice out their opposition to the late strongman’s interment at the burial site.

Organized by a loose group of private individuals, the event was primarily spearheaded by the Facebook group “Never Again to Marcos Family and their Cronies.” It was the group and their allied organizations’ response to President-elect

Rodrigo Duterte’s plan to bury Marcos’ remains at the Libingan, presumably in September.

Zena Bernardo, one of the event’s organizers, said that their gathering on Sunday, which saw individuals sharing their experiences during martial law and views on why Marcos should not be buried at the Libingan, was just the first of several events they would hold until Duterte reconsiders his decision.

Bernardo said that while Marcos was a soldier and former president, there was a regulation that those dishonorably separated and convicted of crimes of moral turpitude be banned from interment at the burial site.

“Isn’t it clear that he was ousted, he stole and he ordered the killings [during the martial law era]? Up to this day, his family refuses to return what they have stolen and continuously denies that they have it,” Bernardo said. “Aren’t the Van Gogh paintings [and] recovered pieces of jewelry [from the family] scandalous enough?”

Fellow organizer Jozy Acosta-Nisperos expressed concern that the dictator’s burial at the Libingan would mark his family’s success in revising the country’s history.

She noted that because education about the martial law period was wanting, there may come a time that once those who know of the Marcoses’ atrocities pass on, future generations may conclude that the former strongman was a hero because he was buried there.

Theater actress Dolly de Leon, a martial law baby and one of the event’s organizers, acknowledged that their generation was partly to blame for the proliferation of revisionist accounts of the Marcos dictatorship and the seeming disinterest of some Filipinos to oppose his burial at the Libingan.

“I think that my generation became too lenient and just relied on everybody else, like the government, to take care of the awareness. That’s why I’m taking an active stand now. We can’t just stay silent,” she said.

PJ Foronda-Tanglao, 17, shared the same sentiment, saying that a number of millennials have grown apathetic because they have never known a life of suffering unlike their forebears who went through two world wars and the martial law era.

Tanglao said it was important that this early on, the government must actively teach the youth about Marcos’ abuses as a few decades from now, half of his generation may end up hailing him as a great leader.

Jao added that what the government should do was to work on either the “flawed” or “toned down” teaching of the martial law era. “History may be written by the victor but that’s not a reason to let the atrocities go unheard of,” he said.

Should Duterte go ahead with his plan, Bernardo said they were willing to go to the lengths of barricading the gates of the burial site.

“It is disrespectful to those who offered their lives [for our freedom], and disrespectful to those buried at the Libingan,” Tanglao added.