Manila: ROBERTO Verzola used to watch how his uncle and older cousins would slaughter a pig when he was a child.
“As soon as it realised something bad was going to happen, it would shriek for dear life,” said Verzola, a student activist and writer for the student paper of the University of the Philippines Diliman in the early 1970s.
He found himself squealing like a pig on the night he was arrested by officers of the Philippine Constabulary’s Metropolitan Command (Metrocom) in 1974.
“It was a shriek of helplessness, desperation and terror,” Verzola said as he began to narrate his ordeal at the hands of his torturers at the soft-launch on Tuesday of the book Marcos Martial Law: Never Again, written by investigative journalist and award-winning political blogger Raissa Robles.
Robles’ book, which will be out in March, guides the reader through a brief history of the atrocities committed by Marcos’ New Society.
Current estimates place the count of victims at 3,257 killed, 40,000 tortured and more than 60,000 illegally detained.
Using official records, Marcos’ own books, reports of local and foreign human rights lawyers, and non-government organisations as well as eyewitness accounts and interviews with survivors and military officers, Robles provides a brief historical narrative relating to how and why the late strongman Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law in 1972.
In her book, she also reveals how Cory Aquino was stripsearched several times when she visited her imprisoned husband, opposition Senator Ninoy Aquino.
At the launch, Verzola and military historian Ricardo Jose showed the audience how a military field telephone had been turned into a torture device during martial law.
Showing a military telephone manufactured during World War II, Jose said the device could generate current strong enough to cause electric shock.
Verzola, now 63, could remember clearly how the device was used on him, apart from the body blows and hitting through hard objects that he received.
During the electrocution, it was as if his body was “invaded by the current,” a thousand spikes.
He let out screams. “It was that kind of scream from the soul. I couldn’t stifle it no more than I could stop my hand from jerking,” Verzola said.
Verzola still found himself luckier than those who were tortured to death.
“I can just imagine the experience of those who knew they were going to die with that process. The worst victim of torture was Ka Rolando Olalia who was mutilated beyond recognition,” Verzola said.
Also at the book launch, former Sen Rene Saguisag, cofounder of the Movement of Attorneys for Brotherhood, Integrity and Nationalism, said the return of the Marcoses in elective positions in government showed how Filipinos could be forgiving as a people.
“Apology is the beginning. He has to acknowledge that indeed the atrocities happened and his parents robbed the country. They have to make amends including the mother and (his sister) Imee,” Saguisag said.
Ilocos Norte Gov Imee Marcos is running for reelection for her third and final term, while her mother, Ilocos Norte Rep Imelda Marcos, is also seeking her third and last term. — Philippine Daily Inquirer/Asia News Network
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