Martial Law Victims Expose ‘Dear Imee’ Open Letter

The Coalition Against the Marcos Burial at Libingan ng mga Bayani released an open letter addressed to Ilocos Norte Governor Imee Marcos on the eve of the 44th anniversary of the declaration of martial law.

The open letter is in response to the governor's earlier speech asking forgiveness for her father, dictator President Ferdinand Marcos.

The governor being Marcos' elder daughter, said that "whatever sins my father committed—he was, after all, human who made mistakes—I hope people absolve him. I hope that beyond all these issues, they would find mercy because in forgiving my father, their anger would be sated and they too would find peace."

The governor said those words at the end of a three-day celebration of her father's 99th birthday in Batac City on September 11.

The martial law victims led by Claimants 1081 and those opposed to the dictator’s burial at Libingan ng mga Bayani, on the other hand, read the open letter in the event dubbed “Dear Imee,” on the Bantayog ng mga Bayani grounds in Quezon City, as they remembered those who died for freedom during the Marcos dictatorship.

As they read the letter, it cited that like Marcos, the coalition members are also human and capable of forgiving if they see that the Marcoses had sincerely regretted their mistakes.

“For now, we can’t see that since you cannot even admit the mistakes of your father and the entire family,” the open letter read.

“You robbed the money of the country and left even the generations that followed in big debt,” it said. It challenged the entire Marcos family to admit stealing billions of pesos from the country’s coffers and to return them, it further said.

The letter also scored the Marcoses’ campaign to get 1 million signatures to support the planned burial at Libingan ng mga Bayani.

“Why are you pushing for his burial there when clearly he is not a hero,” it said.

The Marcos family should just follow the agreement it made with former President Fidel V. Ramos to bury the strongman in his hometown in Batac, it added.

Only when these requests are granted will the group and the entire Filipino people “forgive (the Marcoses),” the letter said.

After reading the letter, the members of Claimants 1081 are hoping that the governor and her family would grant their requests to prevent the youth “from being victimized by historical distortions about the Marcos era.”

Source: Philippine Daily Inquirer