Ben Madilynn
We welcome the ceremonial blessing of the site of the Freedom Memorial Museum on Friday, Sept. 20, 2024, the eve of the 52nd anniversary of martial law.
The construction of the Freedom Memorial Museum, the first and only state-sponsored museum that officially recognizes the atrocities committed during martial law, was one of the provisions of Republic Act 10368, or the Human Rights Victims Reparation and Recognition Act signed into law in 2013.
The Museum, envisioned as a place to recognize and honor those who resisted martial law, was supposed to open in September 2022, the 50th anniversary of martial law, at a site within the University of the Philippines (UP) in Diliman, Quezon City. But the construction has been delayed for over 20 months. Recently, however, UP announced that the museum’s actual construction will begin in December 2024.
So much time has passed since Marcos Sr.’s martial law that many of those who fought the dictatorship have already died without witnessing the museum’s construction. Martial law survivor and former Karapatan chairperson Marie Hilao Enriquez died on April 24, 2022, former senator Rene Saguisag died on April 24, 2024, while Prof. Temario Rivera, a political prisoner during martial law who later chaired the Center for People Empowerment in Governance, died on Sept. 17, 2024.
Now that the country is under another Marcos, the number of victims of human rights violations continues to rise, with 105 extrajudicial killings, 15 involuntary disappearances and 755 political prisoners documented from the start of Ferdinand Jr.’s rule in July 2022 up to June 30, 2024. And the names of victims keep piling up.
The lessons to be learned from the Freedom Memorial Museum will help the younger generations grasp the nature of dictatorship and the importance of preventing its recurrence. It can make a huge contribution to countering the historical revisionism being vigorously pushed by the Marcos Jr. regime.
Hopefully, a people mindful of these lessons can also act to stem the current upsurge in human rights violations and the rise of another Marcos-led dictatorship.
The ceremonial blessing is considered part of UP’s Sept. 21 Day of Remembrance which then UP president Danilo Concepcion declared in 2018.
