21/09/2026
On this day, September 21, former President Ferdinand Marcos Sr. issued Proclamation No. 1081 declaring Martial Law. Today, as we commemorate its 54th anniversary, the ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ community pushes back against the narrative imagining this period of our history as a โ๐๐ค๐ก๐๐๐ฃ ๐๐๐โ. It was a period of state violence, censorship, political repression, corruption, and systematic attacks against the masses; hardly a period worth experiencing again.
We light a candle and refuse to let the smoke disappear as we hold on to the light of memoryโhonoring the lives, voices, courage, and sacrifices made by our people. Today, we disturb the status quo of impunity, and comfort the victims still yearning for justice and equity.
Remembering Martial Law requires us to historicize: to place it within the actual conditions that produced it, the institutions that sustained it, and the traumatic debris that remain with us until now.
Documented records alone include approximately 70,000 incarcerations, 35,000 cases of torture, 878 enforced disappearances, and 3,257 extrajudicial killings. Numbers that represent the life and dreams of what once was a warm body, turned cold. Martial Law and the Marcos regime must therefore not be reduced to a debate over whether roads were built, or that crimes were allegedly lower, or the infrastructures developed. Rather, a discursive practice should be redirected towards the political systems that produced themโthe debt, crony capitalism, corruption, censorship, and widespread human rights violations that characterized the dictatorship.
We remember ๐๐ถ๐น๐ถ๐ผ๐๐ฎ ๐๐ถ๐น๐ฎ๐ผ, a student journalist and activist who was arrested, tortured, and killed in 1973. Her death is often regarded as the first documented murder under Martial Law. We remember ๐๐ฟ๐ฐ๐ต๐ถ๐บ๐ฒ๐ฑ๐ฒ๐ ๐ง๐ฟ๐ฎ๐ท๐ฎ๐ป๐ผ, a student who questioned Imee Marcos during a youth forum and was later abducted, tortured, and killed. We remember ๐ ๐ฎ๐ฐ๐น๐ถ-๐ถ๐ป๐ด ๐๐๐น๐ฎ๐ด, the Kalinga leader who opposed the Chico River Dam project and was murdered in his home. Their cases show that repression did not target only elected politicians but largely students, indigenous leaders, journalists, workers, lawyers, religious figures, and ordinary citizens who challenged state power.
Remembering them actively resists the habit of presenting victims as nameless casualties of a supposedly necessary campaign against anarchy in the dark chapters of our history; remembering is a counter-hegemony to historical amnesia; and remembering is political as we cannot afford the luxury of forgetting ever again. We cannot afford to forget how the state labeled critics and dissenters as โsubversives,โ โterrorists,โ or โenemies of the stateโ to frame the tortures and killings as legitimate. The very language that allowed them to dehumanize radicals and justify violence against them.
Controlling information allowed the dictatorship to control what citizens could know about arrests, disappearances, massacres, corruption, and resistance during the martial law period and the same practice remains relevant today. A society cannot protect democracy when journalists are harassed, independent media organizations are discredited, and fact-checking is dismissed as political opposition. Nor can citizens make informed decisions when powerful actors flood the public sphere with fabricated narratives while attacking the credibility of those who investigate them.
In the present scene of the media, the distortion of Martial Law history continues. Where claims are not simply alternative interpretations of history, but purposeful disinformation erasing documented evidence, discrediting survivors and romanticizing the trauma, removing state responsibility, and presenting propaganda as fact. Sustained by the architecture of contemporary media and of algorithms that reward content that generates anger, nostalgia, certainty, and engagement, running a cycle of ubiquity. Commonality that creates familiarity and universality, and familiarity, often mistaken for truth.
As ๐๐จ๐ฅ๐๐ข๐๐ฌโand, more importantly, as ๐๐จ๐ ๐ค๐ก๐๐ง ๐ฃ๐ ๐ฝ๐๐ฎ๐๐ฃโwe ought to take a more critical position. Being the hope of the nation requires more than commemorating Martial Law once a year, but studying the historical record, listening to survivors more than the noise of propaganda, challenging false claims even at the face of power, and refusing narratives that exchange justice for nostalgia.
Forgetting is never neutral, and apathy towards history only benefits tyrannical rulers and those who continue to profit from denying their abuse. Remembering is our democratic act. Seeking to restore the dignity of victims, expose the mechanisms of tyranny, and give citizens the knowledge necessary to recognize authoritarianism when it returns in new language and through new technologies. For we cannot defend what we do not know, and history will be bound to repeat itself.
๐๐ฏ๐ฅ ๐ด๐ฐ, ๐ธ๐ฆ ๐ฎ๐ถ๐ด๐ต ๐ณ๐ฆ๐ฎ๐ฆ๐ฎ๐ฃ๐ฆ๐ณ.
For Liliosa Hilao, we chant and advocate once again.
For Archimedes Trajano, whose spirit of inquiry and critical thinking thrives with us, we continue to question, investigate, and challenge power.
For Macli-ing Dulag, we continue to defend the right of communities to protect their land and determine the meaning and direction of development, against the displacement he died resisting.
We remember because we, too, must burn with the same courage they carried. To keep the light of truth alive in the darkening gaps of history, until justice is served.
๐ก๐๐ฉ๐๐ฅ ๐๐ข๐ฅ๐๐๐ง. ๐ก๐๐ฉ๐๐ฅ ๐๐๐๐๐ก.
โ๏ธ: Amar, C.A.
๐ผ๏ธ:Joven, C.L.
