{"id":4292,"date":"2016-04-03T23:03:15","date_gmt":"2016-04-03T23:03:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/?p=4292"},"modified":"2016-04-03T23:03:15","modified_gmt":"2016-04-03T23:03:15","slug":"marcos-imposed-martial-law-to-grab-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/?p=4292","title":{"rendered":"Marcos imposed Martial Law to grab power"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>MANILA, APRIL 04, 2016<\/strong><\/span> &#8211; Ferdinand Marcos claimed he declared Martial Law to save the country from the threat of a Communist takeover and impose peace and order on a troubled land. There was no public backlash because Marcos convinced Filipinos the nation was in peril, democracy wasn\u2019t working, the country was falling apart and a strongman was needed.<\/p>\n<p>It was a lie. There was no credible threat. Marcos imposed military rule in order to grab power. The result of Martial Law\u2019s declaration was a 14-year dictatorship marked by atrocity and plunder.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>In her book Marcos Martial Law Never Again, investigative journalist and award-winning political blogger Raissa Robles guides the reader through a brief history of the torture and atrocities committed by Marcos\u2019 New Society. Current estimates place the count of victims at 3,700 murdered, 40,000 tortured and up to 100,000 illegally detained. The victims did not receive the benefit of any legal procedure, they were simply rounded up without any warrants and locked up for as long as it suited the regime. They were simply labelled \u201csubversives\u201d and \u201cpublic order violators\u201d. Often, no charges were ever filed against them. They were the victims of the military and police &#8211; the very institutions that were supposed to protect the people.<\/p>\n<p>The dictatorship was the most violent and murderous administration in the history of post-World War II Philippines, establishing a tradition of military and police violence and impunity that hasn\u2019t totally disappeared to this day. Filipinos lost basic freedoms, democratic institutions and saw their economy plundered by the Marcoses and their cronies. The military and police were given a free hand to torture.<\/p>\n<p>Robles\u2019 book, which will be launched 3 PM this Monday, April 4 at the UP Diliman Balay Kalinaw,\u00a0uses official records, reports, books, eyewitness accounts and interviews with survivors and military officers to situate the regime\u2019s crimes within a brief historical narrative that relates how and why Marcos declared Martial Law and what happened afterward<\/p>\n<p>?, including how Marcos died in Hawaii.?<\/p>\n<p>Among the things Robles\u2019 book reveals:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Marcos, a fake war hero, inflated the Communist threat to suit his purposes, and himself helped foster the impression of instability. Ironically it wasn\u2019t the communists who infiltrated government or destabilized the country, it was Marcos himself. He packed the military and judiciary with favorites who were beholden to him and set out to weaken democracy. He inflated the size and organization of the Communist People\u2019s Party (CPP) and the New People\u2019s Army (NPA), which was then a tiny organization.<\/li>\n<li>Marcos\u2019 loyal minion and security chief, Fabian Ver, was linked to some of the bombings in Manila that preceded Martial Law\u2019s declaration. In addition, Marcos ordered the faked ambush of his defense secretary, Juan Ponce Enrile, and used that as a direct pretext for proclaiming military rule.<\/li>\n<li>In 1982 Jaime Cardinal Sin summed up the basic principles of the Marcos dictatorship when he said that Marcos\u00a0\u201cidentifies national security with his own security.\u201d The Cardinal also said the dictator\u2019s definition of \u201csubversion\u201d was\u00a0\u201cwhen we say something against (Marcos) we are already subversive.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>The dictatorship saw the military resort to torture so frequently, the methods acquired nicknames such as\u00a0\u201cMeralco\u201d, \u201cNawasa\u201d, \u201cwet submarine\u201d, \u201cdry submarine\u201d, \u201cSan Juanico Bridge\u201d, \u201cashtray\u201d and \u201cpompyang.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>Martial Law was characterized by tortures, extrajudicial murders and a string of massacres, among them the Escalante Massacre on September 20, 1985 in Negros Occidental which killed 20 and the Las Navas massacre on September 15, 1981 in Northern Samar when 45 inhabitants of a village &#8211; men, women and\u00a0children &#8211; were gunned down by paramilitary soldiers.\u00a0An eight-year- old eyewitness told the BBC how armed men forced the mothers and children out of their homes and into a forest clearing then shot them. The 1983 BBC documentary showed Marela Yanay narrating that after the shooting stopped:\u00a0\u201cMy little brother\u2019s body was cut in half. I felt my head. it was all bloody&#8230;my mother\u2019s brains were all over my hair.\u201d\u00a0The book tells how Juan Ponce Enrile, then the Defense Secretary, ordered an investigation\u00a0of the Las Navas massacre. It was a particularly sensitive case since some surviving villagers claimed they had earlier seen some of the perpetrators protecting San Jose Timber Corporation, a logging company that Enrile later said he owned.<\/li>\n<li>Former Philippine President Fidel V. Ramos told Robles\u00a0that suspects of human rights violations,\u00a0whether retired or still in active service,\u00a0must\u00a0be brought to court.<\/li>\n<li>Communist Party of the Philippines founding chairman Jose Maria Sison told Robles about\u00a0historture and\u00a0the\u00a0bloody purges inside the communist movement blaming these\u00a0on the \u201crascals\u201d within the movement.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The book, which was edited by award-winning journalist Alan Robles, and designed by highly acclaimed book designer Felix Mago Miguel, is published by the Filipinos for a Better Philippines.<\/p>\n<p>Twenty three various personalities were interviewed for this book. Retired Colonel Eduardo Matillano, who was once tried\u00a0by a military court\u00a0for torture and acquitted,\u00a0explained in a lengthy interview why torture happened, especially electrocution. He stressed he was acquitted\u00a0over\u00a0the torture of Tondo community leader Trinidad Herrera, whom he said belonged to the\u00a0\u201chardened Left\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Robles\u2019 book will be sold in two editions: The collector\u2019s edition is a full-color coffee table book, hardbound and with a dust jacket, that will retail for PHP2,500. The student edition is a black and white volume, with a colored soft cover, exactly the same dimensions as the collector\u2019s edition. It will retail for PHP300.<\/p>\n<p>Raissa Robles runs the popular blog\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/raissarobles.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">raissarobles.com<\/a>, a political journalism website that exposed details of former Chief Justice Roberto Corona\u2019s bank and property holdings; Vice President Binay\u2019s vast property in Batangas; and Senator Grace Poe\u2019s American citizenship status.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>MANILA, APRIL 04, 2016 &#8211; Ferdinand Marcos claimed he declared Martial Law to save the country from the threat of a Communist takeover and impose peace and order on a troubled land. There was no public backlash because Marcos convinced Filipinos the nation was in peril, democracy wasn\u2019t working, the country was falling apart and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,55],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4292"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4292"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4292\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}