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[av_heading heading=’ NO FILTER | Our ‘secondhand’ martial law’ tag=’h3′ style=’blockquote modern-quote’ size=” subheading_active=’subheading_below’ subheading_size=’15’ padding=’10’ color=” custom_font=”]
BY RHICK LARS VLADIMER
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Tuesday, May 30, 2017
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THE Metrocom police patrol the streets, scouring every dark alley and street corner for violators of the national curfew. Loud knocks on your gate at two-in-the-morning could mean you’ve been targeted for arrest, persecution, or worse… “disappearance.”
Behind closed doors, radicals gather in dimly-lit rooms, muted voices discussing the struggle against tyranny. Television networks and newspaper offices are barricaded, the airwaves and print media censored. Journalists fear for their lives, the outspoken receive death threats, activists disappear into the night.
Our Version of Events
The very little this generation knows about the EDSA Revolution and Martial Law, they got from the footnote in Philippine History class they slept through in high school, or the gossip they’ve overheard from adults who lived through that time, or the white lies they’ve seen shared on social media.
Our generation has had to rely on secondhand accounts to imagine our own images of Martial Law. That’s why our version of events may not always be the most reliable.
It’s astonishing just how unaware most Millennials are of the ills of the Marcos regime. I’ve seen and talked to peers of mine who think that the time of Martial Law (and I’m directly quoting here) “was not that bad.” Bordering on blasphemy, these individuals rattle about the “peace and order” of the ‘70s, about the stable value of the peso, how the dictatorship was instrumental to the creeping progress we now enjoy.
They air similar views on Facebook, sharing the long list of supposed infrastructure projects completed under Marcos, fawning over the glamour of Imelda and how she influenced dignitaries the world over, christening a time of oppression as a “Golden Age of the Philippines.”
And with the countless Pro-Marcos and whitewashed Martial Law lies circulating around the internet, the misled crowd grows, wandering further away from reality.
Millennials know about the 12 o’clock curfews, Imelda’s lavish collection of shoes, and Marcos’ iron gauntlet. Swept under the rug are the Filipinos tortured and martyred, the trampling of freedom, the large-scale corruption, the thousands of desaparecidos who have yet to surface to this day.
Inheritors of the Past
The first line of Carlos P. Romulo’s most memorized piece, probably still ringing in the ears of most of the Filipino youth obligated to recite it, goes – “I am a Filipino – inheritor of a glorious past, hostage to the uncertain future.”
What the line falls short of capturing is that we’ve also had to heirs to the darker facets of our history. But “hostage to the uncertain future” sums up our situation spot on. The secondhand stories of Martial law atrocities, the worn promises of a brighter tomorrow, the hand-me-down records of a fraught democracy.
It’s been more than 30 years since the end of the Marcos regime, yet we still suffer its repercussions today. Extrajudicial killings have become a staple of all administrations since 1986, the fight of minorities to be heard continues, and the burden of the debt left by the dictatorship still hangs over our heads.
Some may say oppression never actually left the Philippines, it just took on a different form. Most of today’s youth choose to ignore this.
There’s a need better the education about Martial Law, the Marcos reign and the EDSA revolution. The succeeding generations of young Filipinos need to see that no good can come of a repressive state, that there is no such thing as a “malevolent dictator,” that excessive power can only lead to greed and corruption.
There’s also a need to honor and remember those who fell in the night, those who fought for a freedom that they themselves did not get to feel.
The Marcos regime and Martial Law was an ordeal suffered through collectively by the Filipino people for 21 long years, young Filipinos need to be exposed to its raw facts – the casualties, the fraud and malversation, the stifling of free expression, the inhumane treatment – to better cement into their minds Never Again.
It’s the year 2017, 30 long years after the end of Martial Law. Yet, journalists still fear for their lives, the outspoken receive death threats, activists disappear into the night. (maverhick.blogspot.com/PN)
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