Painful memories of martial rule
Two scores and two years ago today, President Ferdinand E. Marcos issued Proclamation 1081, placing the entire country under Martial Law, and declaring that he would govern the whole nation in his capacity as the Commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of the Philippines. Both houses of Congress, the Senate and the House of Representatives were rendered "functus officio", or essentially inoperative. All anti-government tri-media were shut down, including print, radio and television, and many were arrested, jailed and taken from their homes and since then were unheard of. Fear gripped the nation and the people were in the darkest days of Philippine democracy.
This writer then was a second year Law student in the Gullas Law School and I just won the Presidency of the UV Supreme Student Council, the biggest in Cebu and among the top five biggest councils all over the country. It was the height of student activism in the whole nation. At past midnight of September 21, I was arrested by uniformed men who did not show the name plates and badges and was blindfolded. I was hauled to what I heard from the arresting team to be a six-by-six vehicle and brought to an unknown place. I soon heard young voices crying. They were student leaders from other universities and colleges in Cebu.
I spent almost a month in the detention center and was constantly subjected to interrogations on many intelligence matters that pertain to the alleged subversive movements of the Kabataang Makabayan, the Malayang Pagkakaisa Ng Kabataang Pilipino, and the Samahang Demokratikong Kabataan . I never joined any of those but I must have attended some of their teach-ins because the officers confronted me with tape-recorded voices that appeared to be mine. There were many students who were used by the military then to act as spies or deep penetration agents.
Every day then, we were singing BAYAN KO inside the stockade, and became close friends with such personalities whose names I can not reveal because those times' revolutionaries are today's big defenders of the establishment. There are people in today's capitalists and feudal classes who used to denounce and condemn capitalism and feudalism. We were so nationalistic at those days that even the Pambansang Awit would make us teary-eyed, and the BAYAN KO would lead us to shed a lot of tears. We would embrace each other as we sang peasants' songs of freedom and liberation from social injustice, oppression, and class struggles.
We were not socialists nor communists. We just simply loved our country and struggled for our people before our arrest, by demonstrating, rallying and marching in Fuente Osmeña, Plaza Independencia, Freedom Park, and even in Colon. Many of our "comrades" were kidnapped and never found again. We were lucky to be merely put in the stockade because were simply activists and never a dyed-in-the-wool ideologues. We opposed tuition fee hikes, we resisted demolition of squatters' shanties. We shouted "Makibaka, Huwag Matakot" and "Ibagsak ang Imperialsmo," "Ibagsak Ang Feudalismo," and "Ibagsak ang Clerico-Fascismo."
Today, we have become parts of the establishment that we complained about. The injustices are still there. The oppressors have changed faces. But the oppression remains. Our scars and wounds have healed but after forty two years, the painful memories linger. And I still shed tears now as I write with deep nostalgia and regrets.
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