By Samahan ng mga Ex-Detainees Laban sa Detensyon at Aresto
Like his master Ferdinand Marcos Sr., Juan Ponce Enrile will be bestowed an undeserved hero’s burial.
Honors will be showered on Enrile who should be remembered both as a key figure in the planning of martial law and as Marcos Sr.’s martial law administrator who oversaw the use of the police and the armed forces as instruments for the enforcement of tyrannical rule.
Under Enrile’s watch, up to 70,000 persons were arrested without warrant and detained without charges. Some 35,000 were tortured, more than 3,000 killed extrajudicially and at least 700 forcibly disappeared.
To his dying day, Enrile did not express a shred of remorse for these atrocities. Instead, he justified martial law, rationalized his role in Marcos’ 14-year authoritarian rule and maintained a conspicuous silence on the bureaucratic plunder that marked the martial law years and from which he benefited immensely.
Enrile was also implicated in the massacre of 45 men, women and children in Sitio Sag-od, Las Navas, Northern Samar, in September 1981. The victims happened to be living within the Enrile-owned San Jose Timber Corp. (SJTC) concession. At Enrile’s behest, paramilitary forces who served as SJTC’s security guards cracked down on the villagers for holding a series of labor protests and allegedly supporting the New People’s Army. In one fell swoop, Enrile melded fascist violence with the defense of his economic interests.
Enrile’s burial at the Libingan ng mga Bayani is less a matter of his place of interment than the vicious rewriting of history. After all, Enrile will merely be joining the pantheon of fake heroes at the Libingan, ranging from Marcos Sr. to Elpidio Quirino, one of the most corrupt presidents the country ever had.
We denounce the gross injustice of bestowing honors on a fascist and crass opportunist like Enrile. He should not be hailed as a hero but be relegated to the dustbins of history where he belongs.