Thousands of Filipinos are protesting ahead of an expected Supreme Court decision on whether to give former dictator Ferdinand Marcos a hero’s burial.
Bearing giant banners reading “Marcos is no hero!” and holding placards calling for justice for the victims of martial law, the protesters gathered outside the court in central Manila to object to plans to re-inter Marcos in National Heroes’ Cemetery.
They are opposed by a far smaller counter demonstration of pro-Marcos demonstrators, who have called for the court to “apply the law.”
There have been repeated protests since President Rodrigo Duterte announced plans to move the late dictator from his current resting place in a mausoleum in the family’s stronghold of Ilocos Norte, in the Philippines’ northeast.
‘Raw wounds’
“Let the sleeping dog lie as is. Incorrigible dictatorship, insatiable greed and inebriated lust for power do not a hero make,” Edre Olalia, president of the National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers, which brought a case objecting to the burial, told CNN last month.
“It is rubbing salt on raw wounds that still need to be healed,” former Philippines human-rights commissioner Etta Rosales told CNN Philippines.
“That is what it is doing. Because it is making a mockery of the struggle of the Filipino people to restore democracy.”
In October, Duterte said he hoped the court would decide “not on emotion” but on the “public interest.”
Duterte, whose father served in Marcos’ cabinet and was supported by Marcos’ daughter in the presidential elections, has justified the re-internment on the grounds that it is legal to do so.
“He is qualified to be buried there. If other Filipinos don’t want this, fine. You can demonstrate, go ahead. You can use the streets,” he said in August.