On the sidelines of the 30th anniversary celebration of the Edsa revolution at the People Power Monument on Thu, Feb 25, Liberal Party (LP) vice presidential candidate Leni Robredo gave a message for Filipino “millennials” or those whose birth years ranging from the early 1980s to the early 2000s. They’re the ones who are too young to remember what transpired during the administration of President Ferdinand Marcos.
Robredo lamented that many of these millenials seem to believe the martial law years were the country’s golden age, noted DJ Yap in Philippine Daily Inquirer.
Robredo explained, “When I go on social media, I see a lot of comments that are not true. Many mistakenly believe that what we went through more than 30 years ago were the best years in our history.”
Referring to the atrocities committed during the Marcos years, Robredo said, “Everything the country experienced back then truly happened. It was not a myth, it was not just a fabrication.”
The atrocities committed during the Marcos dictatorship are so brutal and dehumanizing. Most of them are detailed in historian Michael Charleston Chua’s academic paper, “TORTYUR: Human Rights Violations During The Marcos Regime.”
One of the cases cited in Chua’s paper involves that of former Bayan Muna party-list Rep. Satur Ocampo.
Chua cited a passge from Ninoy Aquino’s “Testament From a prison cell,” which described what Ocampo went through:
“Satur Ocampo, director of a workers’ union of a newspaper, was brought to a safe house. Manacled and blindfolded, soldiers poured cola drinks on him while being electrocuted, so as to cause more pain. His ears, nose, esophagus and head were slapped. His nipples and genitalia were burned. He was forced to eat manure and was threatened to be castrated or be killed. Brig. Gen. Thomas P. Diaz, First Police Constabulary Zone Commander, who didn’t believe the torture exclaimed, “My God!” when he was shown marks on Ocampo’s body.”
