“Activists of the 1960s and 1970s of the Philippines, unite and resist the rehabilitation of the fascist criminal and plunderer Marcos!”
An organization of activists who fought it out during the heyday of the Marcos regime issued the “call to arms” in response to the public invitation of Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (BAYAN) and the Campaign Against the Return of the Marcoses to Malacañang (CARMMA) to join the protest action on International Human Rights Day, December 10, at the Liwasang Bonifacio in Manila and in many other protest centers in the country.
“In our youth in the 1960s and 1970s, we were at the forefront of the struggle against the fascist puppet Marcos regime,” said the First Quarter Storm (FQS) Movement, named after the first three months of riotous antigovernment demonstrations in 1970.
Speaking through former Kabataang Makabayan leaders Ed Tablan and Francisco Blanco, the FQS Movement further said, “Countless among us laid down their lives fighting the dictatorship or else suffered in jails, military safe houses, and torture chambers. Thousands were abducted, raped, and murdered by the Marcos security forces. It was us against whom the full brutality of the dictatorship was aimed. It thus becomes our bounden duty to repulse the rehabilitation of the Marcoses by the Duterte government and the Supreme Court. This is our one, true fight.”
Tablan and Blanco added, “In large measure, the ouster of the dictator Marcos happened in February 1986 due to the painstaking work and sacrifices of the activists of the 1960s and 1970s. We cannot in conscience now allow the return of an unrepentant family whose patriarch owed us and the Filipino masses blood debts, and who until now flaunts and enjoys the wealth they stole from the people.”
“The fight against Marcos, the embodiment of the rotten political and economic system we repudiated in our youth, is on again. And so again, we cry out, arms linked arms with the fighting youth of today: “Marcos, Hitler, Diktador, Tuta! Makibaka, Huwag Matakot!” declared Tablan and Blanco.
The FQS Movement expects thousands of veteran activists of the 1960s and 1970s all over the Philippines to join the nationwide commemoration of human rights by rendering justice to victims of human rights violations then and now, demanding the release of all 434 political prisoners, addressing the root causes of the armed conflict in the peace talks, and fighting against the continuing impunity and rising fascism under the Duterte administration.
REFERENCES:
ED TABLAN, Vice-Chair, FQS Movement/ 0926-6481-653
FRANCISCO BLANCO, Secretary-General, FQS Movement/ 0918-9651-248
