Philippine election: torture victim relives horror as dictator’s son Bongbong Marcos rises
- Loretta Rosales, who was tortured and gang-raped by Ferdinand Marcos’ troops under martial law in the 1970s, fears presidential frontrunner Bongbong Marcos will take after his late father
- The Philippines acknowledged abuses in a 2013 settlement that awarded US$190 million in reparations to more than 11,000 victims out of about 75,000 claimants
Ferdinand Marcos Jnr’s quest for the Philippine presidency has Loretta Rosales recoiling in horror remembering the nightmare she went through standing up to his late father’s brutal rule.
Tortured and gang-raped by the elder Marcos’ troops under martial law in the 1970s, the former history professor, now 82, said she fears history will repeat itself.
“I don’t want this to happen again to my people,” said Rosales, an activist turned politician who has asked the government to disqualify the younger Marcos, known as “Bongbong”, from the May 9 poll.
She fears he would take after his late father, who shut down Congress and other democratic institutions as well as media outlets while ruling by decree.
Bongbong, 64, is the clear leader in the polls, running on a campaign that steers public discourse away from the crimes of his father’s dictatorship while preaching unity and mapping a path out of the pandemic.
Amnesty International estimates the late strongman’s security forces either killed, tortured, sexually abused, mutilated or arbitrarily detained about 70,000 opponents, according to its Philippine vice-chairwoman Aurora Parong.
Rosales took part in street protests during the period as an activist with the Humanist League, a group aligned with the Philippines’ Communist Party that was the only serious opposition after Marcos crushed most opponents.