LAST AUG. 15, victims of human rights violations during the dark years of martial law filed in the Supreme Court a petition to prevent the interment of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos at the Libingan ng mga Bayani. The National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers is counsel for the petitioners, who include former Bayan Muna representatives Satur Ocampo and myself, Bayan chair Carol Araullo, National Artist for Literature Bienvenido Lumbera, and multiawarded playwright Bonifacio Ilagan.
The planned hero’s burial for Marcos is an affront to the spirit and intent not only of the law that created the cemetery of heroes, but also of the law recognizing the obligation of the state to restore the dignity of the victims of the fascist martial rule, and of the Philippine Constitution which espouses the accountability of public officers.
Even more disquieting than the clear lack of legal basis for this nonhero’s burial at the Libingan ng mga Bayani is the resurgence of historical injustice and moral decay that it portends for the nation.
As the ousted dictator is deified on the resting grounds reserved only for the supposedly decent and the brave, his memory will odiously be perpetuated for “the inspiration and emulation of this generation and of generations still unborn.” The struggle of our collective memory against forgetting will have been defeated as a dark chapter of history, written with the blood of martyrs, and will have been obliterated to portray their oppressor as a hero, notwithstanding his besmirched record and reputation.
There will be no justice, only more indignity, to a people who fought and deposed a plunderer and human rights violator par excellence, and were never truly vindicated for the wrongs committed against them and the generations after them.
We shall not let the hallowed bugle and gun salute beckon the resurrection of someone who should now be a mere specter from a terrible past. The tyrant, dictator and puppet must stay where he is.
Let us just let sleeping dogs lie.
—NERI JAVIER COLMENARES, president, National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers; JULIAN F. OLIVA, president, NUPL-NCR Chapter