COMMENTARY: By Melissa Cruz
Fifty-four years ago, this very day, martial law was declared across the entire Philippines under then President Ferdinand Marcos Sr.
On 21 September 1972, Proclamation No. 1081 was signed — marking the beginning of a terrible, dark time in Philippines history.
So today especially, more than any other day, we Filipino people, remember.
- READ MORE: Questions for Marcos Jr 40 years after Philippines ‘People Power’ revolt
- Other martial law reports
This 21 September 2026, we join our fellow Filipinos in the homeland, and across the diaspora, to commemorate the heroes and martyrs, the citizens and allies who fought against the dictatorship and its many, many documented human rights abuses.
We recognise the power of collective memory as a testament to the past. And we say, never again!
Disinformation campaigns grossly distorting the reality of martial law are rife across traditional and social media, incorporated in modern education curricula and taught in classrooms across the Philippines.
Aimed at new generations, these campaigns even go so far as claiming martial law was a “necessary good”. This we categorically reject. Our collective memory and experience are a most powerful antidote to this historical revisionism. We remember. Never Again!
Honouring the martyrs
So, we are most glad for your solidarity here, now. Thank you for being here, as we honour our revolutionary martyrs; the men and women; the students, the workers, the activists, and journalists, the farmers, religious workers, our indigenous, the youth and old alike — ordinary citizens detained, imprisoned, tortured, raped, disappeared, and for what crimes? For speaking truth against a dictatorship.
For demanding what is only right, what is true, and just. For aspiring to a life of dignity and freedom.
We will not dishonour their memory. Never Again!
Never forget, the documented, targeted and sustained human rights abuses under 14 years of martial law in which
- 70,000 people were incarcerated. That’s the entire population of Napier to put it into perspective;
- 35,000 documented tortures; and
- More than 3000 extrajudicial killings, Yet only 11,000 victims have been officially recognised and given reparations by the Philippine government through the tireless advocacy of human rights groups KARAPATAN and SELDA — the group of former political prisoners and their supporters.
Under this regime, six out of 10 Filipino families became entrenched in poverty; wages fell by 30 percent. The cost of commodities tripled. Even our precious natural resources were not spared, as almost half of our Philippines forests were denuded.
External debt skyrocketed to almost $27 billion dollars by the end of 1986, binding the future of the Philippines even more to the chains of Western imperialism and US hegemony.
Women vital in resistance
Of the recognised, documented human rights abuses cases, 15 percent were perpetrated against women. Women played a vital role in the resistance, standing on the frontlines.
- Liliosa Hilao, a student leader and journalist remembered as the first political prisoner to die under torture and detention;
- Eugena Apostol, a publisher and journalist who founded alternative publications critical of the regime;
- Coracion “Waling Waling” Chiva, a veteran guerilla from the Second World War who opened her home and shared her experiences to support young anti-martial law activists;
- Margarita “Maita” Gomes and Nelia Sancho, former beauty queens who turned activists; and
- Maria Lorena Barrios, founder of MAKIBAKA — a rallying cry for solidarity meaning “to struggle” — which helped articulate the plight of all women within the broader framework of national and class oppression.
These women, and many others, were subjected to untold atrocities, not surprisingly to include extreme gender based, sexual violence . Tactics that continue to be employed today by the state to terrorise citizens all around the globe, from Gaza and the West Bank, the United States and Occupied Palestine, to our beloved homeland, the Philippines.
A very recent case in point — the Banjawan sisters, Pauline and Fatima, detained in 2024 and 2025 and subjected to torture and interrogation under incarceration. Pauline is still in prison — she is currently suffering a severe mental health breakdown in a Batangas prison cell. She desperately needs aid.
Free the Banjawan sisters.
Which brings us to the present.
Here we are in 2026, and yet another Marcos — this time the late dictator’s only son — continues his father’s legacy. The plague of political family dynasties “continues to bear diseased, rotten fruit as the same spectres of graft and corruption, of bureaucrat capitalism and Western imperialism flourish under yet another Marcos regime”.
The Philippines may no longer be under martial law, but the violence inflicted on our people is still real, and even more insidious.
For Marcos Jr is selling us out. He is selling our land from under us, without our consent; our precious resources to imperialists intent on warmongering.
Even as the Filipino people continue to be mired in poverty, forced to swim in flood waters or mourn loved ones swept away by the deluge; even as we demand justice for flood control projects that have never come to fruition because the money was stolen — yet again — to fund corrupt politicians and their so called nepo babies’ lavish lifestyles.
As the price of oil at the pump keeps climbing and the cost-of-living crisis bites even harder, all directly attributable to America and its war against Iran. Where is the accountability? Where is justice? Where is the rule of law?
Make no mistake — our precious natural resources are being offered up freely to US imperialists and the “fake state” of Israel via the Pax Silica initiative. The United States will have free reign to plunder our water, our land, our minerals for technologies used in endless war, in the genocides in Gaza, Congo, the Sudan.
Palantir, the surveillance company founded by billionaire super villain Peter Thiel, will have first dibs on materials needed for AI surveillance, which has proven to have been used to target and kill children, women, innocent civilians.
And decimate entire populations.
Pax Silica proponents claim it will bring thousands of jobs and will stimulate the Philippines economy to new heights. In truth? Those promised jobs will be on the lowest end of the production scale; low paid and exploitative.
Land — 1600 hectares of ancestral land which rightfully belongs to the indigenous Aeta people who have tended to it for centuries — will be taken for spoils; poisoned, polluted, and plundered, the indigenous living there forcibly displaced.
Our water — hard enough to get as it is — will be used to cool gigantic data centres, diverted from our communities and our farmers who grow our food and feed us. All to feed the Imperialist War Machine.
This is violence, state sanctioned and abetted. This is our government actively working against its own citizens’ interests
No one is free, until we are all free.
And the Philippines has never been truly free. Our sovereignty and self-determination thwarted by the three hundred years of Spanish colonisation, and the Japanese occupation during the Second World War, to of course, US imperialism that has coloured every aspect of Philippine daily life, without the people’s general consent or approval.
Centuries of colonisation, semi-feudalism and Western imperialism have driven millions of Filipinos — including our women, to leave their families and their children in search of financial security, to take care of your children, your elderly, your wounded and hurt, you, even as they experience discrimination, racism and unjustified hate.
We need your international solidarity, most especially now before Pax Silica is fully entrenched in material reality. Our people, our women, our children — the Collective Future — are at stake. Now is the time to agitate, organise and mobilise. Fascism is playing in our faces.
What will be your response? Will you stand with us? Free all political prisoners.
Melissa Cruz is secretary-general of GABRIELA, the General Assembly Binding Women for Reforms, Integrity, Equality, Leadership and Action. The movement is named after Gabriela Silang, a Filipino woman general revolutionary who led troops, fought and died for Philippine independence from Spain in the 18th century. This article was adapted by her speech at Te Komititanga Square, Auckland Tāmaki Makaurau, New Zealand, on 21 September 2026.
