Martial Law: A Continuing Past

23 Sept 09

Presidential Proclamation 1081, the presidential fiat that placed the nation under martial law in 1972 was dated Sept. 21, but its actual effect was felt on Sept. 23 – 37th years ago today. The first few days left an indelible mark on my mind and of my fellow student activists. The feeling was of sheer terror because as if the ground of our very existence was suddenly removed from beneath us. We were totally under the mercy of the arresting officers. We could call on no one to help any one of us. Whatever support system that we had had was totally smashed by having us completely isolated. I knew then what it meant to be utterly vulnerable.

But I know of many others who had suffered worse fate.

Civil liberties were supposed to have been restored following the overthrow of the Marcos dictatorship. Indeed, we are thankful that once again we breathed freedom and basked under a more democratic climate. But for some individuals and families, the terror of martial law has continued to keep them under its thrall. Forced disappearances, extra-judicial killings, harassment and surveillance, the so-called order of battle – have not really stopped upon the supposed restoration of democracy. We have what is known as a “freedom constitution” that was crafted by the government that replaced the dictatorship but apparently it doesn’t apply to some people whose numbers are alarmingly increasing. Targeted individuals and organizations are those that are perceived by government as threats to national security.

Things like this have not changed since martial law. But then, this has existed long before Presidential Proclamation 1081. The Spaniards did the same kind of thing to those they labeled ladrones and personas suspechosas. So did the Americans against insurrectos, and on to the years of the Philippine Republic. Marcos didn’t invent the horrors of martial law. It was already there but he turned this disguised evil into a matter of national policy. And the bombings of communities, the abduction of activists, and the assassination of human rights advocates including members of the clergy did not stop during the Cory Aquino dispensation but continued with the same vigor of a fierce animal through the next presidencies and on to Gloria Arroyo’s.

It appears that the human rights situation in the country is one reality that doesn’t seem to change as one administration replaces another. And now, we are again on the verge of choosing another set of leaders some of whom are running on the platform of change – pagbabago. As far as I know, none of the leading candidates for national offices has carried the issue of human rights. Maybe because they think it’s not an issue that can win votes. But perhaps more likely, they know that the human rights situation cannot improve dramatically without effecting fundamental changes in our society.

In the final analysis, martial law is but a formal declaration of an aspect of national policy that is necessary to preserve the basic features of our society. The victims of human rights abuses are not picked out at random. Rather, they are marked for having certain similarities: they are working with small farmers and landless farm workers, with marginalized lumads and poor fisherfolks, with anti-mining and ant-biofuel environmental activists, with priests and pastors who teach the poor to reclaim their honor and dignity. The present order of society has become so unpopular for being anti-people and anti-poor that it takes the armed might of the state to suppress dissent and the clamor for reforms from catching fire.

But history has shown again and again that the brutality and terror of state violence is never enough to stifle a people’s determination to change their circumstance through legal and peaceful means. Today, a people united can actually use the constitutional and peaceful channels of change to assert their rights and to impose their collective will on those who sit in government. The truth of the matter is that the ordinary citizens of this country have not yet used the fullest extent of their rights guaranteed by the constitution and the legal system to bring about the kind of change that they want. But to do this, they have to empower themselves. Against traditional politics, people empowerment is the only kind of politics that the people can believe in and trust.