Bulacan Martyrs | |
---|---|
Location | Bulacan, Philippines |
Date | 21 June 1982 |
Attack type | Soldiers raided the farmer house and massacred a group of youth activist |
Deaths | 5 |
Perpetrator | Soldiers of the 175th Philippine Constabulary (PC) Company |
The Bulacan Martyrs of 1982 was a group of young activists who worked together to oppose the Ferdinand Marcos dictatorship and restore democracy in the Philippines. [1] [2] They were meeting at a farmer's residence on June 21, 1982, when the house was raided by 30 armed soldiers from the 175th Philippine Constabulary (PC) Company. They were arrested and were found dead the following day in another town 20 kilometers away. [1] [2]
At the time of their deaths, the Bulacan Martyrs were helping farmers organize themselves to push for the implementation of an agrarian reform program. [3]
The names of these young activists were added in 2012 to the Bantayog ng mga Bayani's Wall of Remembrance. [2]
A group of young activists were trying to help farmers organize themselves in the province of Bulacan. They were trying to form a local chapter of Alyansa ng Magbubukid sa Gitnang Luson (AMGL), [3] a militant farmers’ alliance based in Central Luzon. [4]
AMGL had organized a series of actions to demand that the government implement an agrarian reform program. AMGL was then a new organization looking for volunteers to help form a chapter in Bulacan. The Philippine military was in control of the province and martial law was in full effect throughout the country [3] under then-president Ferdinand E. Marcos. Bulacan landowners had been using private armies to harass farmers. [3] Organizing was a dangerous activity at the time. [3]
Danilo Aguirre, Edwin Borlongan, Teresita Llorente, Renato Manimbo, and Constantino Medina all volunteered to help organize a Bulacan chapter for AMGL. [1] [3] [5] They had been meeting to evaluate their organizational work and plan a program of action when they were arrested on June 21, 1982, and killed. [1] [2] The bodies of Borlongan and Manimbo were found three days later; the bodies of Aguirre, Llorente, and Medina were found 10 days after the incident. [3] Their bodies all showed heavy bruises and multiple gunshot wounds. [3]
Another companion was able to escape arrest. [1]
Details of the arrest and death of the Bulacan Martys were documented by human rights group Task Force Detainees. The members of the group were meeting at a farmer's house when they heard shouts telling them not to move and telling them that the house has been surrounded. Some 30 heavily armed members of the 175th Philippine Constabulary (PC) entered the house. [1] One member of the group climbed out the window and hid himself on the roof. The rest of the group readily surrendered. [1]
The next morning, in San Rafael, a town 20 kilometers away, people found the bodies of the five organizers riddled with bullet holes in a corner of the municipal hall. The PC soldiers said the five were killed in an encounter. Municipal hall employees raised money among themselves to buy caskets for the five and a pair of jeans for the body of the woman who was in pajamas. The bodies were buried that afternoon. [1]
The member of the group who was able to escape went to the victims' relatives and told them of the raid. He still did not know that his companions had been killed. The relatives went to the PC camp and were told that the five organizers were not under their custody. The families learned of the deaths the following day. [1]
The families of the victims met with the local PC authorities to retrieve the family of their loved ones. The families of Borlongan and Manimbo were given the run-around and complied with several demands, including paying a fee, before they managed to recover the bodies of the two on June 26, five days after the incident. [6] [7] Three days later, the families met with the Malolos diocese bishop Cirilo Almario, Jr., congressman Rogaciano Mercado, and Rev. Edgardo Villacorte to discuss the incident. After providing their testimonies, they implored Bp. Almario and Rev. Villacorte, who was part of the Church-Military Liaison Committee (CMLC) to help them retrieve the bodies and seek the truth by facilitating a dialogue with the local PC unit. [8]
The meeting took place on July 1, and it was attended by the PC's Provincial Commander and Bulacan's Police Superintendent, along with one of the PC captains implicated in the incident. They insisted that what happened was an encounter between the government troops and terrorists. Both sides unmoving in their version of the events, the family opted to request the PC's authorization to have the bodies exhumed. They were redirected to the provincial health officer, then to a municipal judge, before finally being able to retrieve the bodies of the remaining three victims. [9] [10]
By midnight of July 2, ten days after the incident, they were able to place the bodies in sealed coffins for a short period of mourning at the Barasoain Church in Malolos for relatives and sympathizers. Nine priests said mass for the last three bodies that were recovered. The bodies were buried at the Meycauayan Cemetery. Not long after, the AMGL chapter that the Bulacan martyrs formed began to take root in the province. Church and human rights groups in Bulacan began a campaign to press for justice for the slain activists. Despite these efforts, the suspected perpetrators of the killings are not known to have ever been prosecuted. When Benigno Aquino Jr. was assassinated the following year, residents of Bulacan took part in the protest, recalling the recent deaths of the young Bulacan martyrs. [3] [11]
Horacio "Boy" Morales, Jr. was a Filipino economist and politician. A prominent figure in the underground left during the martial law rule of President Ferdinand Marcos, he later served as Secretary of Agrarian Reform during the presidency of Joseph Estrada.
Mayapa is an urban barangay, located to the east of Sirang Lupa and southeast of Canlubang in Calamba, Laguna, Philippines. It is next to the Mayapa-Canlubang exit of the South Luzon Expressway. As of the 2020 census, Mayapa had a population of 28,302.
The Free Legal Assistance Group (FLAG) is a nationwide organization of human rights lawyers in the Philippines. It was founded in 1974 by Sen. Jose W. Diokno, Lorenzo Tañada, J.B.L. Reyes, and Joker Arroyo during the martial law era under former President Ferdinand Marcos. It is the first and largest group of human rights lawyers established in the nation. They work on countering varied abuses against human rights and civil liberties. Its current chairman since 2003 is human rights attorney Chel Diokno, the founding dean of the De La Salle University Tañada-Diokno School of Law.
The Bantayog ng mga Bayani, sometimes simply referred to as the Bantayog, is a monument, museum, and historical research center in Quezon City, Philippines, which honors the martyrs and heroes of the struggle against the dictatorship of 10th President Ferdinand Marcos.
Student activism in the Philippines from 1965 to 1972 played a key role in the events which led to Ferdinand Marcos' declaration of Martial Law in 1972, and the Marcos regime's eventual downfall during the events of the People Power Revolution of 1986.
The Southern Tagalog 10 was a group of activists abducted and "disappeared" in 1977 during martial law in the Philippines under Proclamation No. 1081 issued by President Ferdinand E. Marcos. Of the 10 university students and professors who were abducted, only three, Virgilio Silva, Salvador Panganiban, and Modesto Sison, "surfaced" later after being killed by suspected agents of the state. Two of those who surfaced were apparently summarily executed. The rest were never found.
Benjamín Roberto "Behn" Holcombe Cervantes was a Filipino artist and activist. He was highly regarded as a theater pioneer, teacher, and progressive thinker who was detained multiple times during martial law in the Philippines.
Rizalina "Lina" Parabuac Ilagan was an anti-martial law activist who belonged to a network of community organizations in the Southern Tagalog region in the Philippines.
Religious sector opposition against the dictatorship of President Ferdinand Marcos included leaders and workers belonging to different beliefs and denominations.
The dictatorship of Philippine President Ferdinand E. Marcos in the 1970s and 1980s is historically remembered for its record of human rights abuses, particularly targeting political opponents, student activists, journalists, religious workers, farmers, and others who fought against the Marcos dictatorship. Based on the documentation of Amnesty International, Task Force Detainees of the Philippines, and similar human rights monitoring entities, historians believe that the Marcos dictatorship was marked by 3,257 known extrajudicial killings, 35,000 documented tortures, 737 'disappeared', and 70,000 incarcerations.
During the presidency of Ferdinand Marcos, Filipino workers in the labor industry experienced the effects of government corruption, crony capitalism, and cheap labor for foreign transnational industries, One of the objectives of Martial Law was to cheapen labor costs, in order to attract transnational corporations to export labor to the Philippines. Marcos signed many presidential decrees beneficial only to his associates, while allowing for the forced relocation of indigenous peoples, decreasing workers' wages, and murders of labor activists. Minimum wage was a fixed PHP8.00 per day. Many workers were unemployed or underemployed. It was also during the Marcos presidency when the practice of contractualization began, enabling managements to avoid giving regular, permanent status to employees after six months of work. Strikes were banned and the government controlled trade unions, leaving workers without effective protection against employers who had unfair labor practices and regulations.
Captain Danilo Poblete Vizmanos, PN, Ret. was a Filipino activist and retired captain of the Philippine Navy. He is best known for his resistance against the Martial Law regime of former Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos. On November 30, 2016, Vizmanos' name was engraved on the Wall of Remembrance of the Bantayog ng mga Bayani, which honors the martyrs and heroes who fought against the Marcos dictatorship.
Rogelio Concepcion Morales was a Filipino master mariner, educator, Navy captain, and activist best known for his role in the transformation of the Nautical School of the Philippines/Philippine Nautical School into the modern-day Philippine Merchant Marine Academy, and for his activism to promote the rights of Filipino seafarers, which led him to become the president of various advocacy societies and unions through the 1950s and 1960s, and to become founder of the Concerned Seamen of the Philippines (CSP) in 1983.
Mariani Cuevas Dimaranan,, also known as Sister Mariani, was a Catholic nun and activist in the Philippines who fought against the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos.
Violeta Marasigan, better known by her nickname "Bullet X", or more plainly "Bullet", was a Filipino-American social worker and activist best known for her key role in the International Hotel eviction protests which became an important incident in Filipino American history; as well as her resistance against and eventual imprisonment under the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos; and for helping establish the Filipino feminist organization GABRIELA and the released-political-detainees group SELDA. She also did advocacy work focused on education for Filipino immigrant children, equal military benefits for Filipino American World War II veterans, and ending racial slurs against Filipino women on American television.
David Triunfante Bueno was a Filipino human rights lawyer and radio show host from Ilocos Norte, best known his work as the most prominent human rights lawyer in Ilocos Norte during the later part of the Marcos administration and the early part of the succeeding Aquino administration. He was a member of the prestigious group called the Free Legal Assistance Group or FLAG, the oldest and largest group of human rights lawyers in the country.
The Daet massacre, which took place on June 14, 1981, in Daet, Camarines Norte, resulted in four people dying on the spot, with at least 50 others injured when forces of Ferdinand Marcos' administration opened fire on protesters marching to demand an increase in copra prices, and to denounce "fake elections" and the Coco Levy Fund scam. The Daet massacre is particularly noted for happening shortly after Proclamation No. 2045 was issued in January 1981, supposedly lifting Martial Law on the Philippines.
Jacobo Sybico Amatong was a Filipino lawyer, politician, and newspaper publisher from the province of Zamboanga del Norte. He was best known for founding the Mindanao Observer, a community newspaper which became well-known for criticizing the martial law administration of Ferdinand Marcos, and for being assassinated by uniformed soldiers on September 24, 1984.
Romraflo R. Taojo was a Filipino labor and human rights lawyer, activist, and educator best known for his work with the Free Legal Assistance Group, where he pursued human rights cases against military personnel who were implicated in torture cases. He was killed on April 2, 1985, when unidentified gunman entered his apartment in Tagum, Davao Del Norte, and shot him five times in the eyes and mouth. The gunmen were believed to be part of a paramilitary group acting on orders from the military.
Historians estimate that there were about 70,000 individuals incarcerated by the authoritarian regime of Ferdinand Marcos in the period between his 1972 declaration of Martial Law until he was removed from office by the 1986 People Power Revolution. This included students, opposition politicians, journalists, academics, and religious workers, aside from known activists. Those who were captured were referred to as "political detainees," rather than "political prisoners," with the technical definitions of the former being vague enough that the Marcos administration could continue to hold them in detention without having to be charged.