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The Task Force Detainees of the Philippines (TFDP) is a non-profit, national human rights organization based in Manila, Philippines. It documents human rights violations, assists victims and their families, organizes missions, conducts human rights education work, campaigns against torture, and promotes advocacy for Human Rights Defenders and Environmental movement.
TFDP was established in 1974 by the Association of Major Religious Superiors in the Philippines (AMRSP). Its first chairperson was Fr. Mel Brady, Chairman of the Canon Law Committee of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines (CBCP). The courageous Franciscan nun Sr. Mariani Dimaranan, SFIC, led the organization for 21 years, including the entire 14-year dictatorship of the late Ferdinand Marcos. [1]
The organization is mainly credited for its staunch human rights practice and advocacy. [2] The late dictator Marcos had filled the country's prisons and military camps with political prisoners, mostly student and peasant protesters, members of left organizations and political opponents. Many were tortured, [3] some murdered. [4] [5]
TFDP undertook the difficult task of documenting human rights abuses by the regime. [6] It built a network of nuns, priests and lay persons, including released political detainees and their relatives, for this sensitive work. TFDP volunteers visited prisons, hospitals and even morgues in the course of documenting abuse cases. [7] They organized missions to exhume bodies and interview residents of terrorized communities. They sought refuge for people at risk of arrest or harm. They sometimes performed personally dangerous feats, such as securing documents in their own bodies. [8] Hundreds were trained to become paralegals in support of TFDP's documentation work.
Another of TFDP's pioneering work involved supporting productive work inside prisons, in particular arts and craft, thus helping in the promotion of prison art under the dictatorship. TFDP volunteers brought art materials to the prisoners, and took out their finished products and helped market them. [7]
It also ran other programs including a scholarship fund for families of political detainees, a fund to promote livelihood projects of released prisoners, and a small loans program to help families of prisoners cope with the day-to-day survival.
It released updates about arrests and releases, and alerts on missing individuals. Its publications include TFDP Update, Lusong, Pumipiglas, Trends, Political Detainees Quarterly Report, and Political Detainees Update. These publications were distributed worldwide, helping call attention to the state of political repression in the Philippines, and giving political detainees and their families a platform to publicly express their demands and experiences.
For legal support and assistance, TFDP worked closely with lawyers connected with the Free Legal Assistance Group (FLAG), another group that saw birth during the Marcos dictatorship, and was organized and headed by nationalist lawyer Sen. Jose W. “Ka Pepe” Diokno. Individuals working against the Marcos regime and its repressive policies were urged to always carry with them a FLAG handbook of rights, bearing telephone numbers to call in case of need.
Funding for the Task Force initially came from its mother organization, the AMRSP. Eventually more funds poured in as solidarity for the Philippine human rights movement grew. By 1981, the Task Force was running an annual operation of about 3 million pesos.
Sr. Mariani and other TFDP representatives spoke tirelessly in forums throughout Asia, Europe and the United States, as well as in the United Nations, before the Amnesty International and international meetings, gave interviews, and met with government authorities and funding organizations, in order to spread international awareness about the condition of political prisoners under the Marcos dictatorship. [7]
After the Marcos dictatorship was defeated, the Task Force pursued its campaign for human rights under subsequent Philippine administrations. It also expanded advocacy for economic rights, partly by calling against environmental destruction and large-scale mining.
TFDP supports international human rights instruments, such as the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Declaration on the Right to Development, the multilateral treaty International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the multilateral treaty International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women and the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
The Coalition Against the Marcos Dictatorship was a North America-based antiimperialist organization that was at the center of the international movement opposing the dictatorship of Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos from the 1970s.
Camp General Rafael T. Crame is the national headquarters of the Philippine National Police (PNP) located along Epifanio de los Santos Avenue (EDSA) in Quezon City. It is situated across EDSA from Camp Aguinaldo, the national headquarters of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP). Prior to the establishment of the civilian PNP, Camp Crame was the national headquarters of the Philippine Constabulary, a gendarmerie-type Military police force which was the PNP's predecessor.
Ninotchka Rosca is a Filipina feminist, author, journalist, and human rights activist. best known for her 1988 novel State of War and for her activism, especially during the Martial Law dictatorship of former Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos. Rosca has been described as "one of the major players in the saga of Filipina American writers."
Human rights in the Philippines are protected by the Constitution of the Philippines, to make sure that persons in the Philippines are able to live peacefully and with dignity, safe from the abuse of any individuals or institutions, including the state.
Joel G. Virador was a Filipino human rights advocate, activist, and politician who was partylist representative for Bayan Muna in the 12th and 13th Congresses of the Philippines.
Martial law in the Philippines refers to the various historical instances in which the Philippine head of state placed all or part of the country under military control—most prominently during the administration of Ferdinand Marcos, but also during the Philippines' colonial period, during the second world war, and more recently on the island of Mindanao during the administrations of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and Rodrigo Duterte. The alternative term "martial law era" as applied to the Philippines is typically used to describe the Marcos martial law period specifically.
The Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development (FORUM-ASIA) [previously known as Forum-Asia] is a membership-based regional human rights organisation with 85 member organisations in 23 countries across Asia. It is committed to the promotion and protection of all human rights including the right to development.
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 Philippine Alliance of Human Rights Advocates (PAHRA) is a non-profit, national human rights organization in the Philippines, Manila. PAHRA is an alliance of individuals, institutions and organizations committed to the promotion, protection and realization of human rights on the national and international level. The organization's task is to promote and defend human rights, prevent Human Rights violations and abuses by. Its main work is to build up a network on progressive human rights organization on national level as well as in the international level. The organization primarily campaigns for civil and political rights; economic, social and cultural rights; human rights defenders.
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. 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.
At 7:15 p.m. on September 23, 1972, President Ferdinand Marcos announced on television that he had placed the Philippines under martial law, stating he had done so in response to the "communist threat" posed by the newly founded Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), and the sectarian "rebellion" of the Muslim Independence Movement (MIM). Opposition figures of the time accused Marcos of exaggerating these threats and using them as an excuse to consolidate power and extend his tenure beyond the two presidential terms allowed by the 1935 constitution. Marcos' signed Proclamation No. 1081 on September 21, 1972, marking the beginning of a fourteen-year period of one-man rule which effectively lasted until Marcos was exiled from the country on February 25, 1986. Proclamation No. 1081 was formally lifted on January 17, 1981, although Marcos retained essentially all of his powers as dictator until he was ousted in February 1986.
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, 77 'disappeared', and 70,000 incarcerations.
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.
Maria Violeta Marcos, was a Filipino Roman Catholic nun. She was best known as the co-founder and first director of the Augustinian Missionaries of the Philippines, and for her contributions to the resistance in opposition to the martial Law dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos - first through her diocesan social action involvements in Negros Occidental, and later as part of the human rights organization Task Force Detainees of the Philippines.
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.
Fidel V. Agcaoili, also known as Ka Fidel, was a Filipino activist and revolutionary. He was a member of the Communist Party of the Philippines' Central Committee, along with Jose Maria Sison and Luis Jalandoni during the Marcos dictatorship. In 1974, he was arrested and became the longest detained political prisoner under Marcos, being imprisoned for 11 years. On his release, Agcaoili founded the Samahan ng mga Ex-Detainee Laban sa Detensyon at Aresto (SELDA), a prisoners' rights organization.
Felicita "Fely" Villasin was a Philippine-born activist most notable in her part in the anti-Marcos movement and domestic workers' rights advocacy.
The Military history of the Philippines during the presidency of Ferdinand Marcos, especially the 14-year period between Marcos' declaration of Martial Law in September 1972 and his final ouster through the People Power Revolution of 1986, was characterized by rapid changes linked to Marcos' use of the military as his "martial law implementor."
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