Human rights abuses of the Marcos dictatorship

The dictatorship of 10th Philippine president Ferdinand 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 his 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.
Some 2,520 of the 3,257 murder victims were tortured and mutilated before their bodies were dumped in various places for the public to discover - a tactic meant to sow fear among the public, which came to be known as "salvaging". Some victims were also subjected to cannibalism.
The implementation of Martial Law in September 1972 began with a wave of arrests, targeting anyone who opposed Marcos. This included students, opposition politicians, journalists, academics, and even 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.
Victims were raided and arrested in their own homes without warrants, and illegally detained without charges or clear information about the status of their case. Arrest, Search and Seizure Orders (ASSO) did not undergo its usual bureaucratic process and at times were merely lists of people to be arrested. Because of the lack of prior investigation, military men could insert names in the list of people to be arrested.
Torture was instrumental in the Martial Law rule. Young officers, some of them freshly graduated from the military academy, participated in the torture of political dissidents, suspected communists. The ‘top two’ torturers, Col. Rolando Abadilla and Lt. Rodolfo Aguinaldo were allegedly trained by CIA operatives in the United States. Various torture methods had physical, psychological, and sexual natures, many of them meant to degrade the victim. Even dissenters from high-level government officers, such as Sen. Ninoy Aquino and Sen. Ramon Mitra were detained and tortured with solitary confinement. Torture methods were used by the military to threaten, interrogate, or simply hurt detainees, as most of them released without being charged of anything. Many of the ‘salvaged’ bodies dumped in public view bore intense torture marks, instilling fear about what happens to those who oppose the Marcos regime.
Aside from the murder of particular people who opposed the Marcos dictatorship, groups of people were also murdered for collectively mobilizing against the regime. Despite the lifting of Martial Law in 1981, there were five recorded massacres all over the Philippines in the same year alone. Between 1981 and 1982, and there have been 14 recorded massacres, totaling 134 fatalities.
Some civilian massacres include the following.
The Moro people, belonging to the 14 or so indigenous communities in Mindanao whose populations are mostly Muslim, were specifically targeted by Marcos's forces. The Marcos regime had started to kill hundreds of Moros even before the imposition of Martial Law in 1972. Thousands of Moro Muslims were killed during the Marcos regime, prompting them to form insurgent groups and separatist movements such as the Moro National Liberation Front and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, which became more radical with time due to atrocities against Muslims.
According to the Marjanie Salic Macasalong's study The Liberation Movements in Mindanao: Root Causes and Prospects for Peace, the number of Moro victims killed by the Army, Philippine Constabulary, and the Ilaga (a notorious government-sanctioned terrorist cult known for cannibalism and land grabbing that served as members of the CHDF) reached as high as 10,000 lives.
Some of these massacres include:
Although various human rights abuses were attributed units throughout the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) during the Marcos dictatorship, the units which became particularly notorious for regularly violating human rights abuses were the Intelligence Service of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (ISAFP) under B.Gen Ignacio Paz; the Metrocom Intelligence and Security Group (MISG) under the command of Col. Rolando Abadilla, and the 5th Constabulary Security Unit (5CSU) under the command of Lt. Miguel Aure. An officer of the 5CSU, 1Lt Rodolfo Aguinaldo, eventually became one of the most notorious torturers of the Marcos regime.
The 5CSU and MISG were parts of the Philippine Constabulary (PC) under then-Major General Fidel V. Ramos, a distant relative of Marcos. Both Paz and Ramos answered to Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile, who was also a Marcos relative. Aside from human rights abuses, these units also hounded media entities, corporate management, and opposition groups with threats, intimidation, and violence.
The PC and ISAFP were also aided in these activities by the Presidential Security Unit and the National Intelligence and Security Agency (NISA), headed by Gen. Fabian Ver.
The irregular paramilitary forces known as the Civilian Home Defense Forces (CHDF) were supervised and deployed by the heads of the local government in the Philippines such as provincial governors, city and municipal mayors. These paramilitary forces became notorious for various human rights abuses.
The international community eventually got word of these human rights violations and applied pressure to the Marcos dictatorship to end them. In 1975, Marcos aide and chief propagandist Primitivo Mijares defected from the Marcos dictatorship and revealed in front of US lawmakers that torture was routinely practiced within the Marcos regime. Mijares' admission attracted international criticism, particularly from Amnesty International and Washington. Amnesty International's first report about the Philippines in December 1975 revealed the “systematic and severe torture” handled by the Fifth Constabulary Security Unit (5CSU). Amnesty International found convincing evidence of widespread torture among prisoners, enabled by Marcos's suspension of the writ of habeas corpus and the absence of judicial oversight. Evidence reveals that not only was he aware of tortures and murders enacted by his military and police force, but that he was condoned and at times arranged for it. This caused tensions between the United States and the Philippines, pressuring Marcos to admit human rights violations during his regime.
Marcos initially denied knowledge of human rights violations. In 1974, he proclaimed in a televised address that “No one, but no one was tortured”. But he eventually confessed at the 1977 World Peace through law Conference in Manila that “there have been, to our lasting regret, a number of violations of the rights of detainees”.
Republic Act (R.A.) No. 10368 was passed by Congress in 2013 to provide reparations and recognition to victims of human rights violations during the Marcos regime. It allocated PHP10 billion from Marcos's ill-gotten wealth to distribute to human rights victims. It also set up a Human Rights Violations Claims Board to facilitate distribution.
R.A. 10368 also created the Human Rights Violations Victims' Memorial Commission "to establish, restore, preserve and conserve a Memorial Museum, Library, Archive and Compendium in honor of the human rights violation victims (HRVVs) during the Marcos regime".
Ferdinand Marcos has denied all allegations of his involvement in any human rights extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, and arbitrary arrests which were made towards human right violations which occurred during his presidency.
On the stories of human rights abuses, Bongbong Marcos describes them as "self-serving statements by politicians, self-aggrandizement narratives, pompous declarations, and political posturing and propaganda."
His older sister, Imee, denies that their family is responsible for the human rights abuses that occurred during her family's regime and called them political accusations. According to her, "If what is demanded is an admission of guilt, I don't think that's possible. Why would we admit to something we did not do?"