House of Representatives, House for Impunity?

The Philippine Alliance of Human Rights Advocates (PAHRA) calls on our House of Representatives to prevent the passage of a House Resolution endorsing the burial of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos in the heroes’ cemetery. For this end, we especially ask for our lawmakers who already did sign to withdraw their signatures.

An approval for this House Resolution would turn our House of Representatives into a House for Impunity.

Ferdinand E. Marcos could never be a Filipino hero.  This is tantamount to justifying the numerous atrocious human rights violations perpetrated during his dictatorial regime and his imposition of martial law.  The Task Force Detainees of the Philippines (TFDP) has a Museum of Courage and Resistance that contains the documentation of at least 21,000 cases of human rights violations during the marital law period.  The Museum’s documentation since 1974 belies not only the blatant denial of Marcos that “no one but no one has been tortured”, but upholds the position that the impunity of that period persists beyond EDSA.
The initiative of Representative Salvador Escudero is a resolution for impunity, not for justice to the martial law victims and their families who were tortured, subjected to enforced disappearances and extra-judicial killings.  It is a resolution to make of Marcos a historical model of an internationally known human rights violator for generations to come and to discourage any sincere compliance of the Philippines as State Party to at least 8 Human Rights Treaties.

Ferdinand E. Marcos could never be hero for the rights of people to participate in governance and to development.  His imposed rule instead had undermined our democratic institutions and our country’s development.  The wide-spread impoverishment at the end of martial law could in no way be a basis for developing into another Singapore unless perhaps induced by intensified repression.  Rather, it must be recalled that the corrupt dictatorial regime of Marcos was the one responsible for turning the Philippines into the “sick man” of Asia.

PAHRA calls on all Filipinos who uphold dignity and human rights to persuade our legislators to junk the resolution of Representative Salvador Escudero to bury Ferdinand E. Marcos in the Libingan ng mga Bayani.

UPHOLD DIGNITY AND HUMAN RIGHTS. STOP IMPUNITY.
JUNK THE ESCUDERO RESOLUTION.

Max M. de Mesa,
Chairperson-PAHRA

PRESS STATEMENT
Reference:
Max de Mesa (0920) 9080480
Candy Diez (0927) 401-2416