Construction of museum honoring Martial Law victims eyed to start January 2024

The construction of the Freedom Memorial Museum, which will honor the lives of the victims of human rights violations victims during the Martial Law rule of the late former president Ferdinand Marcos Sr., will begin in January 2024, an official said Tuesday.

Executive Director Carmelo Crisanto of the Human Rights Violations Victims Memorial Commission made the disclosure upon the questioning of House Deputy Minority Leader France Castro of ACT Teachers party-list concerning the delay in establishing the Freedom Museum, considering that the Human Rights Victims Reparation and Recognition Act or Republic Act 10368 was passed into law 10 years ago in 2013.

Section 26 of Republic Act 10368, which grants monetary and non-monetary compensation in recognition of the heroism of the victims of human rights violations during the Martial Law regime from September 21, 1972 to February 25, 1986, provides for the establishment of the P500 million worth of Freedom Memorial Museum  “in honor and in memory of the victims of human rights violations whose names shall be inscribed in the Roll [of Victims].”

The same states that a compendium of their sacrifices should prepared and made readily viewed and accessed online.

Crisanto said that while the state-run University of the Philippines-Diliman inked a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Memorial Commission in 2018 for the use of 1.4 hectares of its land for the establishment of the museum, the university has not completed transferring the offices that will be affected by the construction.

“Part of the agreement [under MOU] said that the existing building, which are the community affairs offices of UP, needs to have a relocation [site] because they are sitting on the property designated by UP as Freedom Memorial grounds. The Freedom Memorial Museum is on track, [and] we should have actually started many, many months ago, if UP complied with their end of the bargain to move their offices to relocation sites we already finished [constructing] and provided. UP, actually, has been very slow in actually moving,” Crisanto said during the deliberations on the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) proposed P976-million budget for 2024 before the House appropriations panel.

The Memorial Commission is an attached agency of the CHR.

“But they did await the entry of their new UP President, Angelo Jimenez, and his new team has already tasked the entire UP Diliman campus to quickly provide space for the Memorial Commission’s [construction of the Memorial Museum]. In the last meeting, they committed that they will be giving a partial way for construction starting January of 2024,” Crisanto added.

Jimenez was elected UP President in December 2022.

Jimenez’s predecessor, Danilo Concepcion inked the MOU with the Memorial Commission in 2018. Concepcion’s term ended in February 2023.

Cristano said that the Memorial Commission’s Board of Trustees will meet in October to decide on the approved budget ceiling (ABC) for the Freedom Memorial Museum.

The Memorial Commission’s Board of Trustees provided under Republic Act 10368 is composed of the following:

• chairperson of the Commission on Human Rights as chairperson;
• chairperson of the National Historical Commission as co-chairperson;
• chairpersons of the Commission on Higher Education (CHED), the National Commission on Culture and the Arts (NCCA), the Secretary of the Department of Education and the Head of the University of the Philippines Diliman Main Library, as members.

“After we [in the Board of Trustees] approve or determine the ABC, we could actually have the infrastructure work bidded out and awarded before the year ends,” Crisanto added.

Under the MOU between the Memorial Commission and the UP-Diliman inked in 2018, the Freedom Memorial Museum will be located in the 1.4 hectare UP Diliman land for 50 years. — BM, GMA Integrated News