The head of the Church People-Workers Solidarity (CWS) urged the public to “resist” the plan to distort history and “deodorize” the 1970s Marcos dictatorship.
Bishop Gerardo Alminaza of San Carlos said the “sinister attempt” to revise the history and remove the phrase “Marcos dictatorship” in textbooks must be opposed.
CWS issued the statement on the 51st anniversary of the imposition of military rule by the dictator President Ferdinand Marcos Sr.
The prelate said the “plot to whitewash and deodorize Marcos dictatorship” is now happening in a “de facto martial law” under the administration of Ferdinand Marcos Jr.
Alminaza warned that the “signs of the times are written on the wall” when government critics and opposition are labeled communists and terrorists.
“A creeping martial law is unleashed under the Anti-Terror Law and its chief implementor the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC),” he said.
Half a century after the martial law began, 11,103 people have been officially recognized as victims of torture, killings, enforced disappearances, and other abuses.
They have been compensated with some of the wealth, estimated to be in the billions of dollars, stolen by Marcos and his wife Imelda.
But human rights groups say there has never been a true reckoning of the abuses — or those responsible held to account.
Marcos was toppled from power by a bloodless “people power” revolt in 1986 and the family was chased into exile.
After the patriarch’s death in 1989, they returned to the Philippines and began a remarkable political comeback that culminated with Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s victory in the May 9 presidential election.
Alminaza said 51 years have passed but Filipino workers are still suffering “with a severe socio-economic crisis” while “Marcos, Jr. and the family are watching the prestigious F1 Grand Prix in Singapore squandering taxpayers’ money.”
