NUJP STATEMENT: Amid calls to ‘move on’, we remember and will resist

(Statement of the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines on 21 September 2022)

Among the first to be silenced at the declaration of Martial Law 50 years ago was the mass media, with the dictator Ferdinand Marcos authorizing the military to take over and control newsrooms.

Supposedly to keep the free press from being used “for propaganda purposes against the government… or for any purpose that tends to undermine the faith and confidence of the people in our government,” Letter of Instruction No. 1 shut down media and allowed only the crony-controlled press to operate, and even then under the eye of government censors.

In the close to 10 years that Martial Law was officially imposed, members of the press and of the campus press were arrested and even when media control was loosened slightly in the early 1980s, stories about human rights abuses and about crises in the country would mean, at the very least, interrogation by the military.

The media today finds itself in a parallel situation, where critical reporting is easily equated with working against the government and of trying to undermine a nebulous unity that will supposedly bring back the “golden years” of the elder Marcos during the administration of his son and namesake.

On the 50th year since the declaration of Martial Law, Filipino journalists remember those who remained loyal to the truth and who did so despite a lack of resources and at considerable risk to themselves.

The Mosquito Press showed us that the press can push back against attempts to suppress it and that the press can work together and support each other against threats to their profession and existence.

It is in this spirit that we stand today with them and with each other to join the country in saying Never Again.

Reference:

National Directorate

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