Presidential aspirant and namesake son of former dictator Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. received criticisms after his one-on-one interview with Boy Abunda on January 25 after he shrugged off the figures of human rights violation committed under his father’s dictatorship. The numbers were reported by Amnesty International from its publicly documented fact-finding missions in the Philippines during that time.
During the interview, Abunda enumerated Martial law rights records from rights group Amnesty International: 72,000 incarcerations, 34,000 documented tortures, and over 3,200 extrajudicial killings.
“I do not know how they (AI) generated those numbers, and I haven’t seen them,” Marcos Jr. said.
“How can Marcos Jr. pretend that he has no knowledge of the human rights violations documented by Amnesty International during Marcos Sr.’s dictatorship? Marcos Jr. was old enough during his father’s regime, including the martial law period, to know and discern the thousands of human rights violations committed then — and he was old enough then to be vice governor and governor of Ilocos Norte, and be appointed as chair of the board of the Philippine Communications Satellite Corporation (Philcomsat),” Karapatan Secretary General Cristina Palabay said.
Marcos Jr. was a senator during the 15th Congress when Republic Act No. 10368 or the Human Rights Victims Reparation and Recognition Act was deliberated upon and approved by the Senate. It was signed into law on February 25, 2013, or almost nine years ago on the anniversary of EDSA People Power that toppled the Marcos dictatorship.
“The only way that justice can be delivered in part is to recognize that these violations were committed. […] Do not mock the victims further by feigning ignorance,” she added.
The Campaign Against the Return of the Marcoses and Martial Law (CARMMA) also expressed their statement on a Facebook post saying that the late dictator’s son ‘tries very hard to ignore the gravity of Marcos’s martial law crimes.’
In the same interview, Marcos Jr. also stated his stand on the International Criminal Court’s probe the of President Rodrigo Duterte’s bloody war on drugs.
“I do not see the need for a foreigner to come and do the job for us, and do the job for our judicial system,” he said. Marcos Jr. said that the Philippines is “perfectly capable” of investigating alleged human rights violations and crimes committed under Duterte’s Oplan Tokhang
