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BY RHICK LARS VLADIMER ALBAY
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Here lies the truth
“The story does not end with the painful thud of your fall / Our vulnerability broke, our hearts cried, knowing the morning will be different without you / But in the blackest night, even at death we cannot forget nor speak of abandonment and loss / There will only be a brief pause in the raging night.” – Edward Oliver Dela Fuente (1953-1984)
AT THE height of Ferdinand Marcos’regime in 1983, John Herbert Dela Fuente, a young Ilonggo activist, was shot dead at close range while asleep in their house. The local constabulary reported that the killing was the product of an “armed encounter,” but people know he was really “salvaged,” executed for his activism and support to the fight against the tyranny of a dictator.
His brother, Edward Dela Fuente, a former editor-in-chief of the student publication I am a member now in Central Philippine University, wrote the poem above to commemorate John’s sacrifice, swearing to live on and continue his fallen brother’s plight for the freedom of the country.
Unbeknownst to Edward, a year later, he would suffer the same fate as his brother. He was abducted by the military, tortured and killed while serving at a remote and poor community in Aklan.
But as his poem goes, “there will only be a brief pause in the raging night.” The multitudes of oppressed Filipinos gradually found their footing, gathering strength, increasing in numbers – outraged by the abuses and corruption of Marcos and his cronies – readying themselves for the storm looming over the horizon.
Marcos was forced to leave the Philippines in 1986, a result of the very first unified and unparalleled People Power Movement, two years after the death of the Dela Fuente brothers, proving that those who fought for what they believed in and those who paid with their life did not die in vain.
If the martyrs and heroes only knew that, exactly three decades later, the Supreme Court would rule in favor of a Marcos burial at the Libingan ng mga Bayani.
It is a great affront to the victims of martial law and to the Filipino people, to attach the honorific of “bayani” to a reprehensible character responsible for one of the darkest times in our country’s history.
Marcos’ burial at the Libingan is a grave insult to those who fought for justice and genuine freedom to topple his oppressive reign.
This is a clear effort to bury the atrocities of Marcos and revise a history written in blood. It undoes the years the Philippines has had to endure to recover and come to terms with the violent and bleak regime of Marcos.
The late dictator looted billions from the country, imprisoned and sanctioned the torture of thousands of his critics, silenced and censored the media, and is liable for the gruesome killings and forced disappearances made common under his regime.
Marcos does not deserve a resting place at the Libingan. The Libingan ng mga Bayani is not where we go to bury the truth and the horrendous crimes of Marcos.
And to his legions of newly blinded followers, I say this: Produce the body!
Not of a decaying dictator but of the thousands of his victims never given proper graves.
To you who cry over a paraffin-and-wax idol, bury your tyrant in an unmarked crypt with not an honor to his name.
Leave the Libingan to the people who truly mourn not for the fall of a regime but for the sons and daughters silenced too soon, tortured and made to disappear into the night, by a dictatorship built on lies. #MarcosIsNoHero #NeverForget./PN
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