Hounded by their crimes

Letter .

ILOCOS Norte Gov. Imee Marcos is a self-appointed speaker of the millennial generation as shown by her statements pertaining to the 21 grim years of martial law and her call for her generation to “move on.” This Aug. 21, Imee Marcos said in a press conference that “the millennials have moved on” and thus, so should people of her generation.

Imee has the audacity to speak on behalf of the millennials, and the discourtesy to address the generation that experienced the horrors and corruption of Martial Law first-hand. The Marcos family are thick-skinned, riding on the popularity of a vile and murderous President to creep back into power.

We remind Imee and her family that on Sept. 21, 2017, it was millennials who filled the streets with calls for accountability and justice. With the hashtag #NeverAgain, the younger generation from all over the country registered their protest against the political rehabilitation of the Marcoses and the burial of the dictator Ferdinand Marcos at the Heroes’ Cemetery on Nov. 18, 2016.

On moving on, contrary to the Marcoses’ delusions that people have not moved on regarding their narratives on the Marcos dictatorship, martial law victims and their relatives have moved forward in their quest for justice. They filed and won a landmark case reaffirming the accountability of the Marcoses for the human rights violations during martial law. They looked at all the possible places where the Marcoses stashed their loot from the nation’s coffers. They worked for a passage of a law recognizing the atrocities of the Marcos’s martial law and enabled compensation for the victims. And more importantly, they are imparting their stories and narratives to the next generations of Filipinos through their continuing struggles, asserting that the Marcoses should be meted out retribution and that system change is needed amid repressive and exploitative regimes. Their narratives contribute to the current struggles, even as we see the Duterte regime’s shameless rehabilitation of the Marcos name and the whitewashing of their crimes.”

During the 21-years under the dictator Marcos, estimates point to $10 billion of plundered wealth from the country’s coffers. Moreover, people were deprived of their fundamental rights. At least 70,000 were imprisoned and 34,000 were tortured, while more than 3,000 were killed. The accounts of torture and killings are harrowing, indicative of a regime with no regard for human rights.

There remains no justice and accountability. Where is the dictator? He was clandestinely buried at the Heroes’ Cemetery, a typical move from the family of thieves. Where is the son? The daughter? The wife? They are slowly creeping back into power with the help of wanna-be dictators, ready to pounce on every opportunity. Nobody is in jail for their crimes against the people. Imee, Bongbong, and their ilk are the ones who are stuck in the rut, hounded by their family’s crimes, by the people’s demand that they return instead of live off the money of the people. They are forever memorialised as a cabal of murderers, torturers and plunderers. They’re the ones who can never move on.

Indeed, they are the faces of impunity. They are the disgusting poison that the entire country is trying to spit out. In Philippine politics, when corrupt politicians want the people to move on, what they mean is they want their crimes forgotten; they want history revised; they want to forward their political ambitions without accountability. –Cristina Palabay, secretary general, Karapatan