NUSP musters youth rage vs burial in Friday rally

Thousands of students are expected to join protests on Friday to condemn the sneaky burial of dictator Ferdinand Marcos at Libingan ng mga Bayani, according to the National Union of Students of the Philippines (NUSP).

Their participation will be the youth’s way of showing rage against the continuing evil of martial law as manifested by the alliance of President Duterte with the Marcoses, NUSP said.

“We said it before: We will be mounting bigger and greater protests to condemn the Duterte administration’s decision to give full honors to a fascist dictator,” NUSP spokesperson Kevin Castro said in a statement.

“The students are determined to continue the fight against historical revisionism and honoring the late dictator’s name as a hero of this nation,” he added.

Castro said the manner by which the burial was conducted on Nov. 18 merely showed that both Mr. Duterte and the Marcoses were aware of the late strongman’s atrocities to the country.

“We are resolute that Marcos is not a hero with all the ‘legacies’ his administration left for the country: neoliberal attacks on the people’s right to social services, foreign debt servicing and human rights violations among others,” he said.

Castro denounced the President’s dealings with the Marcoses as an abandonment of his promise of genuine change.

“You cannot be for the people while intervening positively with the affairs of the Marcoses … [T]he action is a slap on the faces of the victims of martial law, an outright attack on the people’s triumph from the fascist dictatorship decades ago,” he said. —JOCELYN R. UY