Marcos declares martial law in the Philippines

On 21 September 1972 President Ferdinand Marcos signed Proclamation 1081, placing the Philippines under martial law, and announced it on television two days later. Soldiers closed Congress and newspapers and arrested opposition figures including Senator Benigno Aquino Jr. and Jose Diokno, as well as journalists and student activists. Marcos said it was needed to put down a communist rebellion and a Muslim separatist revolt in the south, and to build what he called a New Society.¹²³

Marcos had been elected in 1965 and in 1969 became the first Philippine president to win a second term, in a campaign marked by heavy spending and accusations of fraud. The constitution barred a third term, and his term was due to end in 1973. A wave of unrest in 1970 and 1971, including street protests and a grenade attack on an opposition rally at Plaza Miranda, as well as the growing New People's Army, gave him his argument. Critics said then, and most historians say now, that he used the crisis to stay in power. A new constitution in 1973 let him remain in office, and a referendum approved it under tight control.¹²

Martial law was formally lifted in January 1981, but Marcos kept sweeping powers. Amnesty International and later Philippine government bodies documented thousands of killings and disappearances and tens of thousands of detentions and torture cases, with commonly cited figures of about 3,000 killed and 70,000 jailed. Marcos and his circle also took vast sums of public money, which later Philippine courts and commissions worked to recover. The murder of Benigno Aquino at Manila airport in 1983 revived the opposition, and the 1986 election and People Power revolt ended the regime.¹²³