No ‘moving on,’ no ‘closure’

I WAS a freshman in college when martial law was declared, but had done my share of marching in the streets and doing “propaganda” work for a student organization while in high school. Still, I thought it kind of “OA” (overacting, for those born long after the term passed from fashion) for my mother to send an older brother to my classroom to fetch me and bring me home when we all realized what had transpired the night before, when Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law.

I was far from being a “big fish” in the student movement, not even a slightly medium-sized fish fry. As far as I was concerned, there was no chance of my being picked up by the Metrocom. I was just a small-time player in a field of big names and prominent figures. And practically all of them had already been taken for detention or had fled to the hills to join the armed rebellion.

Still, even if, with typical youthful arrogance I ignored my parents’ anxieties and went my own way, at the back of my mind there was a niggling fear of one day being confronted by soldiers or police and being hauled off to “ABC”—or Aguinaldo, Bonifacio and Crame, the “holy trinity” of police and military camps in the capital.

And as the years wore on, reports circulated in the underground press and through word of mouth of the violations of human rights that ran rampant around the country. A friend who had been a student activist in Baguio and who went home to our hometown after martial law was declared, told of how one day he was suddenly yanked off a jeepney and brought to the local military camp. There, along with a group of other young men, his head was shaved, since the authorities were apparently offended by his shoulder-length hair. They didn’t care about his political beliefs or activism, only about the length of his tresses.

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MY friend told me the story years after, when we happened to be studying in the same college. But the bitterness he felt, the helplessness he regretted, were still evident in his tone of voice.

He had spent only a night in the camp, but it haunted him for years after. What do you think it was—is—like for the men and women who were caught in the net of law enforcers soon after the declaration of martial law and in the years to follow? How do they recover, if ever, from the physical, mental and existential scars of torture?

True, the government has begun the process of compensating victims of human rights violations during martial law, with money confiscated from one of the accounts of the Marcoses. The amounts are by no means humongous or even impressive. But even if one wins an “award” of millions of pesos, can the money compensate for the years lost in detention? Can it soften the mental and physical blows of torture? Can cash pay for the years lost that should have been spent with one’s family and friends? Or for the lives of those “disappeared”?

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THIS is what angers so many, even those who did not spend even a day in detention or suffer a bit of torture, when Sen. Bongbong Marcos talks about the need to “move on” from the “martial law thingy.”

World War II is long over, but we haven’t “moved on” since we still observe occasions like Bataan Day. We have long been a republic, but still we go to great lengths to celebrate Independence Day, even if we discarded July 4, 1945, as the anniversary of our independence from America (and liberation from the Japanese) in favor of June 12, 1898, when Emilio Aguinaldo raised the Philippine flag in a show of defiance against the Spanish regime. And of course, even if 30 years have passed since 1986, we still gather to remember those glorious days of the Edsa revolt.

Despite the outcry raised against President-elect Rody Duterte’s early declaration that he was in favor of the burial of the moldering corpse of Ferdinand Marcos in the Libingan ng mga Bayani, an outcry in which even some of his designated Cabinet members have joined, plans seem to be proceeding apace in that direction.

The day before Independence Day, the defeated vice presidential candidate, who just happens to be the son and namesake of the dictator, expressed optimism that his father would soon be buried and released from his refrigerated tomb.

He even thinks the interment may take place as early as September, a double slap against survivors of martial law since the month is not only the birth month of the dictator, but also the month he put the country under dictatorship.

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“I THINK it will bring closure not only to my family but to the rest of the country,” BBM said of the planned burial, adding that it was time to put the differences and conflicts engendered by his father’s strongman rule “to rest.”

I doubt very much if that will happen. For one, none of the surviving Marcoses have said as much as a feeble “sorry” for everything that had been done by the Marcos patriarch, the members of his personal and official family, and the forces he unleashed on the nation. And of course, none of them have given up willingly or in good grace a centavo of the millions or billions they are reported to have stolen from us.

Instead of closure, all this talk of a “hero’s (or even a soldier’s) burial” for the late strongman (and recipient of fake medals of valor) has opened wounds of remembrance, recrimination, regret and ruefulness among those still surviving and those born after martial law or Edsa, whose memories have not been dulled.

Bongbong Marcos, I’m sure, doesn’t care a whit about the effects of a Libingan burial on the national morale. And by his pronouncements, neither does Duterte, who seems bent on starting his six years in office under a noxious cloud of controversy.