Church backs hero's burial for Marcos

BY CLAIRE WALLERSTEIN IN MANILA
Human rights victims outraged by Archbishop HUMAN RIGHTS victims have condemned the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines for its support of a controversial plan to bury the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos with full honours,
Marcos died in Hawaii in 1989, three years after the People Power revolt which forced him to flee the country.
Soon after, his body was flown home, and has lain ever since in a refrigerated glass crypt in his home town of Batac, in the north of the country.
The power was cut off twice in 1996 after the supposedly impoverished Marcos family failed to pay electricity bills and the corpse started to decay.
But his eccentric widow Imelda steadfastly refused to bury the body unless it could be in the Libingan ng rnga Bayani, Manila's Heroes Cemetery.
Both post-revolution pres
idents Cory Aquino and Fidel Ramos refused her wishes, arguing that the strongman who imposed martial law, jailed dissidents and stole up to $10 billion from his country's coffers was no hero.
But incoming president Joseph "Erap" Estrada, former film star, "champion" of the poor and a friend of the Marcos family, plans to bury the former soldier in the exclusive cemetery but without state honours saying this would help to "heal wounds and unify the nation".
Now Archbishop Oscar Cruz, a prominent member of the CBCP, has created shockwaves here by going even further.
In an interview with a Manila newspaper, Archbishop Cruz said "He should be buried as president and accorded the full honours due him.
"Despite Marcos's denier
its, the people cannot overlook that he also did some good for the country when he was president."
But victims of human rights abuses under Marcos's draconian regime who have still not received a penny of the US$2 billion compensation supposedly awarded in 1992 are outraged.
Marie Hilao-Enriquez, a spokeswoman for the victims, said that burying Marcos at the Libingan ng rnga Bayani would be "like giving Hider a state funeral because he was once Germany's chancellor".