“The real heroes who deserve to be honored at the Bantayog ng mga Bayani are those who genuinely thought that going against martial law will restore unbridled freedom in the Philippines, and not the rebels who opposed martial law because it permanently derailed their plans of establishing a communist government in this part of Asia.

For the past three decades, a communist propaganda venue escaped public notice. Worse, a government agency has been maintaining it, and at the expense of taxpayers.

It’s the Bantayog ng mga Bayani, a political shrine erected on government property in Quezon City, and operated by the anti-administration Commission on Human Rights (CHR). The shrine is supposed to honor heroes but ended up as a memorial park mostly for fallen rebels.

There may be a few genuine nationalists listed at the Bantayog, but most of the names there are not exactly the type a democratic country memorializes.

Ever since the idea for the Bantayog came about after the end of the administration of President Ferdinand Marcos in 1986, the local communist movement saw the shrine as an opportunity to whitewash the crimes against national security committed by its cadres before and during the period of martial law in the Philippines. It was a convenient and inexpensive means of reinventing fallen rebel leaders by passing them off as heroes who fought or died fighting the martial law regime.

Almost overnight, the troika of the local communist movement, namely, the Communist Party of the Philippines, the New People’s Army, and the National Democratic Front (which is anything except democratic), threw their support for the construction, at public expense, of the Bantayog.

The communist propaganda strategy was simple enough.

First, the communists emphasized that everything about martial law is evil.

In cultivating that kind of public mentality, the Reds conveniently avoided essential facts like in 1972, the communists were determined to violently overthrow the duly-elected government of the Philippines, and had it succeeded in that regard, they would have installed a communist state headed by Jose Ma. Sison, and which took orders from communist China.

Their propaganda excluded any talk that rebellion is a crime under Philippine law; that the local communist insurgency triggered the government’s resort to martial law; and that martial law derailed the communist timetable for overthrowing the Philippine government, which is the real reason why communists hate President Marcos and martial law with the greatest of passion.

If martial law is the evil that the communists label it to be, then why is resort to martial law allowed in the 1987 Constitution, the charter drafted by, among others, Jose Luis Gascon, the incumbent head of the CHR? That’s one question the communists are unable to answer and refuse to discuss.

Another issue avoided in the anti-martial law communist propaganda is why Juan Ponce Enrile, the architect of Marcos’ martial law, was elected senator for several terms by the sovereign Filipino people in the decades following the martial law years.

They are also hard put to explain why the same sovereign electorate voted, and continue to vote, members of the Marcos family to high public office.

Second, the communists urged everyone and anyone opposed to martial law, regardless of the reasons for their dislike for the authoritarian era, to support the Bantayog. Doing so made public funding and acceptance for the monument less cumbersome.

That move also explains why traditional politicians from the Liberal Party are against President Rodrigo Roa Duterte and are allies of the communists. Proof of that alliance is CHR head Gascon, a kiss ass of ex-President Benigno Aquino III of the Liberal Party, who enjoys operating the Bantayog.

Third, the communists equated heroism to opposition to the “evil” that was martial law. This way, departed communist cadres who participated in their failed attempt to violently overthrowing the government could be whitewashed of their crime, and reinvented as heroes who fought the martial law regime.

At present, the bulk of the names listed in the Bantayog are deceased rebels who wanted to overthrow the same democracy obtaining in the Philippines that, ironically, now allows them to be honored at the Bantayog.

The real heroes who deserve to be honored at the Bantayog ng mga Bayani are those who genuinely thought that going against martial law will restore unbridled freedom in the Philippines, and not the rebels who opposed martial law because it permanently derailed their plans of establishing a communist government in this part of Asia.