DAN MARIANO
Manila Times
WEDNESDAY last week marked an anniversary of sorts for me. On the evening of March 30, 1973, I was picked up by plainclothes operatives of the 2nd Constabulary Security Unit and brought to Camp Crame.
Along with other alleged subversives, I was tortured for two weeks at the CSU compound, thrown into a bartolina for one week and detained for six months at the stockades.
At the time of my arrest, I was a 20-year-old member of the UP Diliman student council and the Kabataang Makabayan, a radical youth movement. However, CSU officers like Maj. Miguel Aure and 1st Lt. Rodolfo Aguinaldo accused me and my companions—among them, Arno Sanidad, Bobi Tiglao, Tony Robles, Mon Veluz and Boyet Navarro—of being part of the ACP, or Armed City Partisans, which they insisted was the urban guerrilla detachment of the New People's Army.
Our arrest, torture and detention, as well as that of thousands of other Filipinos, were accomplished by the Philippine Constabulary—the military precursor of the Philippine National Police—on orders of Ferdinand Marcos. Other branches of the Armed Forces of the Philippines were similarly mobilized and dispatched to silence his critics.
Six months earlier, Marcos had placed the entire country under martial law on the strength of his own Presidential Proclamation No. 1081. For 14 years thereafter untold numbers of Filipinos and some foreigners, including Catholic missionary priests, suffered what under the law constituted arbitrary arrest, illegal imprisonment, cruel and unusual punishment, kidnapping and murder.
The Bar top-notcher Marcos, however, resorted to legalistic euphemism. We were not under arrest, but merely "invited for questioning." We were not prisoners, but "detainees." His ironfisted rule was not dictatorship, but "constitutional authoritarianism."
My martial law story is a familiar one, which has been retold so many times by so many victims of the dictatorship—at least, those who managed to survive it—so I will spare readers the gruesome details.
Besides, I still experience an emotional twitch whenever I am reminded of those moments, hours, days, weeks and months 38 years ago.
Suffice it to say that my unpleasant encounters with the dictatorship have made me—as well as most of my fellow martial law victims—vehemently opposed to the proposal to have Marcos's refrigerated corpse laid to rest at the Libingan ng mga Bayani.
To have the remains of the man who wrecked an entire nation's democratic institutions buried in what is officially called the Resting Place of Heroes would twist the meaning of "heroism" beyond recognition.
Apart from the historical fact of his tyranny, however, proponents of Marcos's "heroic" interment argue that he was a soldier who had distinguished himself in World War II. His wartime record alone qualifies his corpse's committal in the Libingan ng mga Bayani, right?
Wrong.
Throughout his political career, Marcos had capitalized on his purported exploits against the Japanese Imperial Army—grabbing every opportunity to brag about his 27 medals. However, those WWII veterans who actually saw action in Bataan, Bessang Pass and other battles have little or no recollection of Marcos as a comrade-in-arms.
The late newspaperman Dave Borje, for instance, was wounded during the so-called "Battle in the Clouds," which lasted for four months in the Cordillera highlands between Filipino forces—mostly Ilocanos and Igorot tribesmen—and the remaining units of Lt. Gen. Tomoyuki Yamashita. Borje never tired of telling his younger colleagues, including this writer, that he never saw Marcos at Bessang Pass.
Three years prior to Bessang Pass, Borje was one of the tens of thousands of Filipino and American troops that fought in Bataan. He survived the Death March and concentration camp in Capas, Tarlac.
His medals include a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star, awarded by the United States War Office.
Of Dave Borje's wartime exploits there was no doubt. In contrast, Marcos's WWII record was apparently the product of postwar historical revisionism, courtesy of newspaper hacks and filmmakers.
In 1985, a retired Philippine Army Col. Bonifacio Gillego published a book entitled The Fake Medals of Marcos, persuasively debunking the dictator's claims of wartime derring-do.
Gillego's research showed that if Marcos had really accomplished the deeds that merited him all those medals, he would have been able to be in more than one place at the same time. Gillego, whose military credentials were impeccable, arrived at the inescapable conclusion that Marcos's war medals were phony.
Soon after his book's publication, Gillego himself was "invited for questioning" and "detained" by the dictator's underlings.
Other reports showed that soon after World War II, Marcos resumed his law practice filing numerous reparation claims for war veterans and, of course, himself.
In one submission, he was said to have sought payment from the US government amounting to $595,000. He claimed that American troops had commandeered over 2,000 Brahmans from a ranch in Mindanao, which his family supposedly owned. Following an investigation, US officials concluded that the ranch was imaginary, and the cattle nonexistent.
Marcos also reportedly sought recognition for what he alleged was the country's biggest anti-Japanese resistance organization, Ang Maharlika—"The Nobility" in Tagalog—which he said he had organized.
US Army investigators found Marcos's guerrilla group to be fraudulent.
To be honest, I have no personal knowledge of his actual wartime feats of valor—or lack thereof. However, with so many quarters questioning his self-proclaimed heroism and with about half the populace rejecting a hero's interment for his corpse—as recent surveys show, pressing for his burial at the Libingan ng mga Bayani only underscores the fact that a quarter of century following his humiliating ouster and 22 years after his death in ignominious exile Marcos is still a figure that divides, rather than unites, the nation.
Aren't heroes supposed to exemplify national unity—not division?
Nuke shrine
Reacting to my column Friday last week, reader Lito Diwa of Sydney sent the following e-mail:
"Mr. Marcos should be buried in the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant on April 9, Bataan Day. He was a World War II hero and he needs a shrine where the 216 congressmen can pay homage to him. Marcos built that plant, let him use and enjoy it."
Indeed, why not? But only after his estate reimburses the government for what taxpayers paid to construct that white elephant in Morong.
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