Editorial:
Reversing the verdict on the fascist crimes of the Marcos dictatorship

Basahin ang artikulong ito sa Pilipino

With the help of former Sen. Jovito Salonga and his new book A Journey of Struggle and Hope, lies about the massacre during the Liberal Party rally in Plaza Miranda on August 21, 1971 have been revived. Passing on the blame to the Communist Party of the Philippines and to Comrade Jose Ma. Sison (then Party Chairman under the nom de guerre Amado Guerrero) was a falsehood initiated by Marcos. The repetition of this accusation, 30 years after the incident and after it has been belied several times even by the fiscals and the senate, must be assailed and opposed.

Two days after the massacre, Marcos suspended the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus to give himself free rein to conduct simultaneous raids on the headquarters of democratic mass organizations and effect mass arrests of militant leaders and mass activists. The swift and systematic implementation of these fascist measures showed that even prior to the incident, the script and the sequence had been systematically planned and prepared for.

To justify all this, and likewise as part of the script, Marcos pinned the blame for the massacre on the CPP and Comrade Sison. But the senselessness of this accusation has been proven in the course of history.

It was clear that the Plaza Miranda massacre and what transpired immediately after were merely a dry run for the next plan-Oplan Sagittarius. The latter contained the blueprint for the imposition of martial law the following year and the sowing of even more intense suppression against the democratic mass movement, the people and even the reactionary anti-Marcos opposition. Events from the night of August 21, 1971 to September 21, 1972, on August 21, 1983 and many other massacres and acts of repression, showed that the Marcos dictatorship was following only one script. It will be recalled that the assassination of Sen. Benigno Aquino in 1983 and the passage of blame to the CPP was also a part of that script. Marcos and his cohorts attempted to pass off the lifeless body of Rolando Galman, a hired killer and prison inmate, as that of Aquino's assassin.

When Marcos found it difficult to pin down the Party for the Plaza Miranda bombing, he tried to pass the blame to then Manila mayor Antonio Villegas. Several prisoners already out on parole or brought out of prison were made to confess to the Plaza Miranda bombing, in exchange for up to P2 million and a house and lot. Col. Paulino Robles of the PC Anti-Carnapping Unit was in charge of convincing them. A certain Francisco Magat, a prisoner at the National Penitentiary in Muntinlupa who was out on parole, was arrested on December 31 for having allegedly perpetrated the crime. He was brought to the PC Stockade in Camp Crame, where he was tortured to force a confession. According to his sworn statement, he was brought by Colonel Robles to Malaca�ang where Marcos himself tried to convince him to admit that it was he who threw the bomb and that it was Mayor Villegas who ordered him to do so. He refused and was imprisoned for another six years. Flavio Benauro, Benigno Orquico and Francisco Agner, all prisoners, also confessed to the crime and testified on Magat's involvement. None of them was charged.

Meanwhile, a former prison inmate and a sergeant detailed at the PC Firearms and Explosives Unit had been identified, charged and jailed in connection with the series of bombings in Metro Manila-along Carriedo St., Port Area, Meralco and others-right after the Plaza Miranda incident.

Things were to become clearer only after the fascist dictatorship was ousted in 1986.

On March 14, 1989, Manuel Reyes Bogtong, a Presidential Security Unit element, executed a sworn statement admitting that he was among those who planned the Plaza Miranda bombing and that his companions in carrying this out were Maj. Rolando Pattugalan and five other PSU elements. According to Bogtong's narration, it was the AFP chief during the dictatorship, Gen. Fabian Ver himself, who led this project. It will be recalled that it was also Ver who was in charge of the project to assassinate Benigno Aquino on August 21, 1983.

Atty. Reynaldo Bagatsing, son of former Manila mayor Ramon Bagatsing, served as Bogtong's lawyer. Ex-Mayor Bagatsing was among those hit and seriously wounded in the Plaza Miranda incident.

Attorney Bagatsing closely followed the case, also for his father's sake. Three days after Bogtong made his sworn statement, Attorney Bagatsing wrote then AFP chief Gen. Fidel Ramos, to have the PSU officials and elements identified by Bogtong in his sworn statement, investigated and arrested. But Ramos did nothing. According to Ramos, he received no such letter. Attorney Bagatsing followed up the case with then Western Police District (WPD) chief Gen. Afredo Lim. Lim ordered then WPD Investigation Division chief Alladin Dimagmaliw to investigate the case, but nothing has been heard of it since. Attorney Bagatsing went to other government offices (National Bureau of Investigation, Ministry of Justice and Commission on Human Rights), to no avail. After some time, Bogtong disappeared and was never located.

According to Attorney Bagatsing, there is another witness who also participated in the operation and supervised the grenade-throwing himself. A former Philcag official, he went abroad when martial law was declared and has lived there since.

Marcos' closest associates at the time have themselves averred that Marcos was the brains behind the Plaza Miranda bombing. One of them was former Marcos Executive Secretary Primitivo Mijares, once one of the closest persons to the Marcoses. His diclosures came out in his book Conjugal Dictatorship, which he wrote when he turned his back on the dictatorship. He and his son were kidnapped and liquidated because of his exposes. In 1986, former Marcos defense minister Juan Ponce Enrile himself admitted that his supposed ambush was fabricated, and that it was Marcos who ordered the Metro Manila bombings from 1971 to 1972. This included that of Plaza Miranda. Their objective, he said, was to create a justification for the declaration of martial law.

On the other hand, the case filed by the Philippine National Police-Criminal Investigation Service Command (PNP-CISC) with the City Prosecutor's Office of Manila against Comrade Sison and others on the Plaza Miranda bombing charge was dismissed on March 2, 1994 "for lack of sufficient evidence". In a resolution by the City Prosecutor who conducted the preliminary investigation himself, he said that "the supposed participation of the respondents (Sison et al) as planners or masterminds are sheer speculations. To indict (them), therefore, based solely on the submitted sworn statements is tantamount to a hasty, malicious and oppressive prosecution."

The same accusation by Marcos against the CPP and Comrade Sison is now being revived through Salonga's new book. The book is a new publication, but its contents are a rehash. Hearsay, distortions of facts, contrived and fabricated stories were irresponsibly and maliciously used to justify the accusation.

Through this, the Marcos dictatorship has been absolved of one of its most heinous crimes and the country's history and people's verdict perverted. The Marcoses and other rabid reactionaries among the ruling classes immediately and gleefully applauded. Through this, they would like a reexamination of the people's verdict against the imposition of martial law and fascism in the country. The unequivocal responsibility of the Marcos dictatorship and of Ferdinand Marcos himself is a closed book.

More than Comrade Sison, it is the Party and the national-democratic revolutionary movement that is under fire from the false accusations revived by Salonga. The latter would like to make it appear that the Party and its leaders are a conspiratorial lot and would unhesitatingly kill innocent people and that revolution is created through artificial combustion, such as the deliberate perpetration of a massacre in an opposition rally.

The Party perseveres to achieve victory in the revolution by winning over the broad masses of the people in accordance with the national-democratic line; organizing them in legal and underground mass organizations, alliances and organs of political power; mobilizing them in the protracted armed struggle and in actions and campaigns for basic reforms and changes towards their overall liberation from the rule of imperialists and the local exploitative and oppressive classes.

Conditions for waging revolution are always excellent. The crisis of the decadent system is exploding of its own accord. So many people are enthusiastic to bear arms and wage revolution to completely break free of the bonds of exploitation and oppression.

31 July 2001
English Edition

	Editorial: Reversing the verdict on the fascist crimes of the Marcos dictatorship
	The CIA, the Marcoses' wealth and other anomalies behind Salonga's reversal
	Events of August 21 and August 23, 1971 "Treading the path of military dictatorship" � CPP
	Lies told by Marcos, Gregg Jones and Salonga's "witnesses" on the Plaza Miranda bombing
	Excerpts from the sworn statement of Manuel Reyes Bogtong of the Presidential Security Unit (March 14, 1989)