Asking the Right Questions

ASKING THE RIGHT QUESTIONS

by Antonio C. Antonio

December 9, 2014

In August 1977, under an authoritarian regime (meaning: favouring or enforcing strict obedience to authority, especially that of the government, at the expense of personal freedom), Archimedes Trajano was abducted, tortured and killed for asking a question in a public forum of Imee Marcos.  The young Marcos was then giving a talk on the Kabataan Barangay (KB) at the Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila.  In the open forum, Trajano stood up and told Marcos that she should not have been the head of the KB if she was not the daughter of the Dictator… the Pres. Ferdinand E. Marcos.  Trajano went on to question the human rights abuses of Marcos’ father.  This apparently angered Marcos.  Trajano never got an answer and was forcibly taken out by the bodyguards of Marcos. 

Days later, on September 2, 1977, Archimedes Trajano was found on a Manila street, dead with his body and face badly bruised and swollen.  Trajano’s mother, Agapita, was informed by the police that her son was killed in a dormitory fight but witnesses said that Archimedes never returned to his dormitory after he was dragged out of the Imee Marcos forum.  Fearing for their safety, the entire Trajano family left the Philippines.

After the People Power revolution in 1986, a class action suit was filed by human rights victims against the Marcos family.  Agapita Trajano joined the litigants to seek justice for her son.  An American human rights lawyer, Sherry P. Broder, was deeply moved by Trajano’s case and represented the family for free.  In 1993, Judge Manuel Real of Court in Hawaii found Imee Marcos liable the murder of Archimedes Trajano.

The EDSA Revolution of 1986 brought back our basic freedoms… including freedom of speech.  This ushered in a post-Marcos era where some people took special pleasure in bashing the President --- from Corazon C. Aquino to Fidel V. Ramos to Joseph E. Estrada to Gloria M. Arroyo and Benigno S. Aquino III.  I agree, however, that some of these presidents deserve to be bashed but some simply don’t.  Curiously, some of these bashers were praising alleluias to the President during the Martial Law years.

I am just wondering… could the present-day presidential bashers do the same under Martial Law; when it was not too fashionable and utterly dangerous to speak out against the President?  Probably not… especially those who are aware of the Archimedes Trajano story; and what he got for asking the right questions.

Just my little thoughts…

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