Human rights victims who suffered during the regime of former Philippine president Ferdinand Marcos filed petitions yesterday asking the Philippine Supreme Court to order the exhumation of his remains that were buried last week at the country’s Heroes’ Cemetery.
They also want the court to hold his heirs and officials involved in contempt for carrying out the burial before the court had heard final appeals against it.
Left-wing former lawmaker Saturnino Ocampo and other advocates urged the court to hold Marcos’ widow, Imelda, their three children, Philippine Secretary of National Defense Delfin Lorenzana and two military officials in contempt for “the hasty, shady and tricky” burial on Friday of the long-dead president at the cemetery.
Photo: AFP
They should be fined and detained for mocking the legal process that gave petitioners 15 days to appeal the court’s Nov. 8 ruling allowing the burial, the petition said.
Philippine opposition Congressman Edcel Lagman, who represents another group of petitioners, sought a court order to have the remains exhumed “because the hasty and surreptitious interment was premature, void and irregular.”
Lagman asked that the remains be examined to determine they are not a wax replica.
The secrecy-shrouded burial at the cemetery reserved for presidents, soldiers and national artists shocked democracy advocates and human rights victims, prompting street protests across Manila and in other cities.
Ferdinand Marcos, whose rule was marked by massive rights violations and plunder, was ousted by a largely nonviolent army-backed uprising in 1986. At the height of the political turbulence, he flew to Hawaii, where he lived with his wife and children until he died in 1989.
Groups opposed to the burial called for a national day of protest on Friday at Manila’s Rizal Park and in other parts of the country.
Organizers called on Filipinos to protest against the public’s desire not to bury Marcos in the cemetery and to hold Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte accountable for allowing the burial and the court for obscuring “the crimes of the dictator.”
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