President Marcos placed the entirety of the Philippines under Martial Law on Sept. 23, 1972 through Presidential Proclamation No. 1081 that was dated Sept. 21, 1972.
This dark period in Philippine history is remembered for human rights abuses and unprecedented corruption, when political opponents, student activists, journalists, religious workers, farmers, and others who fought against the Marcos dictatorship were persecuted, imprisoned, or disappeared.
Based on Amnesty International, Task Force Detainees of the Philippines, and similar human rights monitoring entities, historians believe that the Marcos dictatorship was marked by 3,257 known extrajudicial killings, 35,000 documented tortures, 77 desaparecidos, and 70,000 incarcerations.
From the beginning of the 14-year period of the one- man rule until Marcos and his family were exiled to Hawaii on Feb. 25, 1986, Ferdinand “Bongbong” Romualdez Marcos Jr. (BBM) was living the life of the very privileged as the only son of the dictator who got what he wanted and when he wanted anything.
As one true story in the 1970s goes, Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos and family, together with their entourage of cronies, were visiting Kenya for a safari tour — as people in power casually do. Taken by the beauty of the wild animals there, they sought to take home to the Philippines 15 Somali giraffes, 15 Grevy’s zebras, 18 impalas, wild boar, 11 Thomson’s gazelles, and 45 other animals from Africa. David Anthony Parkinson, in the business of transferring animals from Africa to zoos, was handed a briefcase full of money to make it happen. The animals that the Marcoses wanted were captured, packed into boxes, and shipped across the world by boat.
Then they handpicked Calauit Island in Busuanga in Palawan to be their own safari so that BBM could go hunting.
With the wild animals imported, the natives of Busuanga were ordered to clear the bamboo forests to convert the place similar to the savannahs of Kenya. In doing so, the Marcoses forcefully displaced around 254 indigenous Tagbanua tribe families, casting them off to Halsey Island, a former leper colony. The families were resettled on barren land, and often went hungry.
For decades, the Tagbanua families struggled to return to what they considered their ancestral home in Calauit. They would start building their homes, only to be demolished by Philippine soldiers there, who also barricaded the water sources, and built fences to keep out the indigenous community.
In 2001, members of the Tagbanwa community were jailed for trying to resettle on Calauit island. A United Nations report on human and indigenous rights noted how the Tagbanwa families suffered relocation under stress and duress, after Marcos turned their ancestral lands into a sanctuary for African animals.
At present, the Calauit Safari Park, formerly known as Calauit Game Preserve & Wildlife Sanctuary established on Aug. 21, 1976 by Presidential Proclamation 1578 issued by then President Marcos, covers almost 3,800 hectares.
BBM was 23 years old when he became vice governor of Ilocos Norte, running unopposed under the Kilusang Bagong Lipunan party of his father in 1980. Then he became governor in 1983, holding that office until his family was ousted from their offices through the People Power Revolution, and fled into exile to Hawaii in February 1986.
So did BBM participate and benefit from the Marcos Martial Law rule? Your answer is as good as mine.
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