Marcos Downplays Father’s Martial Law, Stifles Free Speech

Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law on September 21, 1972, making dubious claims that “communist” groups were plotting to overthrow the government and plunging the Philippines into 14 years of dark dictatorial rule.

Fifty years later, his son, Ferdinand Marcos Jr., is president. The younger Marcos bristles at being called the son of a dictator, insisting that he be judged by his own actions. But he’s been criticized for how he judges his own father’s actions – and for spreading the same “red scare” anti-communist fears that the elder Marcos used to cement his dictatorship.

Marcos, in his first one-on-one interview since being elected president in May, said his father was not a dictator, telling his critics: “You can say what you want, that’s your opinion. You’re wrong.”

Hundreds of protesters in Manila, along with some scattered elsewhere, disagreed. In the Philippine capital, demonstrators held signs reading “Never again!” and displaying images of martial law victims who were imprisoned, tortured, and killed during the crackdown.

The government estimates about 3,200 Filipinos were murdered during martial law, with more than 10,000 tortured. While the younger Marcos admits that some abuses did occur, he has downplayed them, saying they happened “like in any war.”

The elder Marcos declared martial law in response to the so-called “communist threat” of the Communist Party of the Philippines, formed by far-left leader Jose Maria Sison as a political wing for a movement then concentrated among armed rebels in rural areas. But opposition figures at the time accused Marcos of exaggerating the threats and using them to target activists and political critics by falsely branding them as terrorists.

Martial law ended in 1986, but one of its enduring legacies has remained: the practice of “red-tagging,” or falsely branding activists as communists. Red-tagging was prevalent under former President Rodrigo Duterte and in previous administrations to various extents – and it can be deadly. Under Duterte, “red-tagged” activists were put on terrorist registers that acted as unofficial kill lists – if you took out an alleged communist, you were tacitly safe from prosecution. (You may have even been eligible for a bounty.)

The effects of red-tagging have spread throughout civil society, with the government shutting down Indigenous schools it says are linked to communists, blocking foreign funding of human rights organizations, and accusing actors and models of supporting terrorism after they campaigned for progressive groups.

Under the new Marcos administration, there was hope that red-tagging would stop. Clarita Carlos, now the president’s national security adviser, said in June she wished to stop the practice, calling it counterproductive and lazy. “Let’s put our energies on the ground, addressing inequalities, lack of opportunities,” she said at the time. “If you prevent these people from becoming journalists [or] scientists, if you kill their future, they will hold guns.”

Yet the government’s recent energies have been put toward removing books it deems “subversive.” In August, the Commission on the Filipino Language issued an order calling for the removal of books that contain “subversive, anti-Marcos and anti-Duterte” contents, leading critics to accuse the Marcos administration of whitewashing his father’s history of brutality.

The commission banned five books and 17 publications, taking action just after former Duterte official and anti-communist hawk Lorraine Badoy shared more than a dozen alleged “anti-government” books on a pro-Marcos YouTube channel.

In its ban order, the commission said the books contain references to the influence of the Communist Party of the Philippines and may thus be in violation of the Anti-Terrorism Act, which was controversially passed under Duterte in 2020 and mostly upheld by the Supreme Court last year.

One of the banned books advocates for a revolution as the only solution to the struggles faced by the Philippines. Others encourage communists to go into the mountains to take arms – an apparent call to join the armed New People’s Army militia group.

The Philippines’ Commission on Human Rights denounced the bans and the decision to label texts as subversive. “Under a democracy, there is a value in allowing these publications to be publicly available so they may be discussed and even challenged openly if necessary,” it said in a statement.

Earlier this year, the national intelligence agency accused Adarna House, a children’s book publisher that had bundled a collection of storybooks about the martial law era, of “radicalizing” Filipino youth. Last month, courts ordered the telecommunications commission to unblock several progressive websites, including the news outlet Bulatlat.