PREFACE
There are compelling reasons why I decided to publish the contents of a diary that I have kept to myself for the last thirty years. Among these are the following disturbing observations that I gathered in recent public forums, symposiums and assemblies:
With certain exceptions, many members of the “First Quarter Storm” generation now suffer from some form of amnesia on the subject of the Marcos martial law regime. “Acute amnesia” applies to former FQS activists who are now active collaborators of the “decadent” system and establishment they struggled against once upon a time. “Mild amnesia” refers to those who believe that the decadent social order they used to despise has metamorphosed to a point where reforms, instead of revolutionary changes, are sufficient to effect meaningful changes.
• Today’s younger generation hardly knows anything about the Marcos dictatorship and what really happened during the period of martial rule. While many of them are now active in people’s organizations, the majority remains apolitical and unconcerned with an alarming revival of excesses and abuses of the “New Society” that was supposed to have disappeared with the downfall of the “conjugal dictatorship.”
• Over a period of seventeen years since the February ’86 EDS A “people power” uprising, the 9,539 class suit victims of martial law atrocities have yet to receive justice and restitution despite a verdict of the Hawaii Federal District Court holding Ferdinand Marcos and his regime liable for “crimes against humanity” from 1972 to 1986. 1 wealth in their bid for political power at the highest level of the state hierarchy through the 2004 elections.
• Also because of public amnesia and apathy, a bloc of politicians from Ilocos region is now proposing with temerity that Ferdinand Marcos’ birthday on September 11 be declared an official holiday.
These are more than enough reasons to remind the victims of amnesia and the younger generation that once upon a time there was a martial law regime that snuffed out the flame of freedom, civil liberties and basic human rights of the Filipino people. It was a long dark night of uncertainty and insecurity; arbitrary arrest and detention; torture, “salvaging” and involuntary disappearance; impoverishment and misery; suffering and agony of a terrorized people.