This report looks into the impact of the military build-up on the Island of Samar. In particular, this report contains exploratory findings of a 5-man committee regarding various cases of abuse committed by several military units in Eastern Samar and Northern Samar. Significantly, the report also included an assessment of the impact of the counterinsurgency campaign in Samar that caused a humanitarian crisis on the island.
International Commission on the Militarization of Samar. Militarization of Samar. Hong Kong: Resource Center for Philippine Concerns, 1979.
This document is a summary of the observations made by the Makabayang Makabayang Kilusan Para Isulong ang Katarungan (MAKIISA KA) during their fact-finding mission regarding the multiple reports of human rights violations on the island of Samar. The report of MAKIISA KA underscored the brutality of the ongoing counterinsurgency campaign. Most of the data gathered by the report came from actual victims of military abuse and the survivors of massacres.
Makabayang Kilusan Para Isulong ang Katarungan. Samar: The Continuing Agony of the Land: A Report on the Fact-Finding Mission to Samar, November 3 – 15, 1981.Manila, 1981.
Eight years since the ouster of Marcos, the Probe looks into the entanglements of issues on jurisdiction regarding the punitive damages claimed by human rights victims during Martial Law.
Probe Archives, “Victor at Last?” Vimeo, 15:12, May 6, 2022.
This short documentary looks at the impoverished and violent condition of the displaced urban poor in Butuan at the tail end of the Marcos regime. The film shows that as urban poor leaders and trade unionists are slain, “salvaged”, imprisoned, and disappeared, local communities continued to organize and resist notwithstanding the risk of arrest.
Asia Visions Productions, “No Time for Crying,” Cinemata video 29:45, May 5, 2022.
This BBC documentary produced in 1983, narrated by Filipino lawyer and known Marcos opposition figure, Jose Diokno, is a comprehensive and real time account of the Marcos years. The documentary exposes the farcical economic development, corruption and the human rights violation committed by the Marcos regime. The documentary also shows the persistent resistance of the people despite the repressive state.
BBC, “Third Eye: To Sing Own Song,” Youtube video, 14:17, October 17, 2018
This 21 minute film features the Museums of both the Task Force Detainees of the Philippines and the Bantayog ng Mga Bayani Foundation, while connecting the relevance of Universal Human Rights to the subject of authoritarian repression under the Martial Law Administration. Thru this backdrop, the documentary also connects issues of the past with present circumstances – laying-out critiques towards the Duterte Administration’s War on Drugs and the use of the Anti-Terror Bill, and pointing-out problems of agrarian impoverishment and labor marginalization. Speaking in the documentary are representatives of the TFDP and Bantayog organizations, as well as survivors and victims of the Marcos and Duterte administrations.
Maniquis, Malu (2023). “Karapatang Pantao, Paano na?” Task Force Detainees of the Philippines. 2023.
The documentary was produced as part of a Martial Law Oral History Project of the Philippines’ Commission on Human Rights and Human Rights Victims’ Claims Board (HRVCB) in cooperation with the Swiss Embassy. It features various accounts of survivors and victims’ relatives who faced cases of human rights violations, including torture, arbitrary arrests and the killing or enforced disappearances of loved ones under the dictatorship. The video copy available online was republished by the late Mila D. Aguilar.
Commission on Human Rights (2015). “Our Voices, Our Stories, Our Redemption.” Youtube video, 37:26, 14 June 2015.
On May 2016, the group “Campaign Against the Return of the Marcoses and Martial Law” (CARMMA) published a short video on social media days before voting commenced. Various students and young voters are shown meeting face-to-face with victims of detention and torture under the government of Ferdinand Marcos Sr., the father of then Vice Presidential Candidate Ferdinand Marcos Jr. Noting that the full education of the regime has been lacking in schools, the video ends with a call for a petition to the Department of Education to bolster textbook content on the period.
Campaign Against the Return of the Marcoses and Martial Law (CARMMA). 2016. “These young voters are in for a surprise.” Facebook, May 3, 2016.
“Campaign Against the Return of the Marcoses and Martial Law” (CARMMA) published a 3 and a half minute video for facebook which begins by showing the television broadcast for Proclamation 1081 taking place at 7pm, September 23. It proceeds to show brief excerpts of various survivors of the regime detailing their experiences during the period. The survivors give parting advice to the audience – and the video ends with a petition call towards the Department of Education to integrate the teaching of the Martial Law Period more concisely in textbooks.
Campaign Against the Return of the Marcoses and Martial Law (CARMMA). 2016. “Martial Law: declared on Sept. 23, 1972 – not Sept. 21.” Facebook, September 23, 2016.
Lualhati Torres Bautista (December 2, 1945 – February 12, 2023) was a Filipina writer, novelist, liberal activist and political critic. Bautista garnered several Palanca Awards (1980, 1983, and 1984) for her novels ‘GAPÔ, Dekada ’70 and Bata, Bata… Pa’no Ka Ginawa?, which exposed injustices and chronicled women’s activism during the Marcos era.
Desaparesidos tells a vivid narrative of the life of political activists and the persecution they have experienced/endured during the dictatorship of President Ferdinand E. Marcos. Bautista weaves a heartbreaking story of the disappeared (desaparesidos)-the people who were taken by the authorities physically or those who could not forget the memories of torture and persecution under martial rule.
Bautista, Lualhati. Desaparesidos. Mandaluyong City: Cacho Publishing House, Inc., 2012.
The 38-minute “film essay” by AsiaVisions (formerly Creative Audio-Visual Specialists or CAVS) spotlights the continuation of human rights abuses even after the Marcos administration had supposedly lifted Martial Law in 1981, taking the stories of clerical actors, activists, social workers, and truth-tellers to form a picture of Marcos’ cruel grip on power. Extensive militarization was Marcos’ weapon of choice, along with the imperialistic force of the United States, as seen in the presence of American bases.
“I would have no hesitation in saying that the situation has gone from bad to worse,” says Sr. Mariani Dimaranan, chair of Task Force Detainees of the Philippines, in the film. “During Martial Law years, we were focusing our attention only on three phenomena, namely: arrest and detention, salvaging, and disappearances. After the so-called lifting of Martial Law, all these phenomena stayed on or kept going, plus the fact that we had still to attend to massacres, salvaging, hamletting, and other things going on in the provinces, specifically.”
Aside from interviews, the film features archival and news footage alongside mass demonstrations of the time, including the funeral cortege of slain senator Ninoy Aquino. It documents the mounting resistance and foreshadows the ouster of Marcos via EDSA three years later. A speech by former senator Lorenzo Tañada closes the film: “Babawiin na ang mga karapatang kinuha, ang dangal na dinusta ng mga palalo at berdugo ng lahi (we will retrieve our rights that were taken away, our honor that was trampled upon by the wicked butchers of our people).”
AsiaVisions, “The Arrogance of Power,” Cinemata video, 38:27, May 7, 2022
This documentary contains interviews of Samar residents narrating, in great detail, their harrowing experiences of torture, sexual abuse, rape, forced labor, murder, and mutilation at the hands of the Philippine Constabulary and soldiers. The documentary also tried to explain why Samar had such strong military presence. It all boiled down to the interest of the Marcos’ cronies in the logging and mineral resources of the island.
Commission on Human Rights, “So Why Samar?” YouTube video, 27:33, May 6, 2016.
