THE AUGUST 21, 1983 ASSASSINATION OF BENIGNO "NINOY" AQUINO JR.

By Philip M. Lustre Jr.

(Notes: I was among the journalists, who covered the Aug. 21, 1983 assassination of Sen. Benigno Aquino Jr. at the Manila International Airport, now the Ninoy Aquino International Airport. The following is my narrative of the Aquino’s murder from a journalist’s lens.)

THE brief news report buried in one of the inside pages of the August 3, 1983 issue of the New York Times did not catch fire for ordinary readers. The news report, datelined Manila, said dictator Ferdinand Marcos would take a “two week seclusion” to finish "writing" his purported two books.

But the news report was enough to perk up the ebullient opposition leader Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr., then a political exile in Boston, Massachusetts since 1980. Ninoy Aquino immediately felt that something wrong was happening to his political nemesis. He knew Marcos was ill during those days, but he was not sure of the details.

Like the rest of Filipinos, Aquino had no direct access to determine the veracity of those wild talks that kept on swirling about the presidential health.

The dictator’s health condition was among the tightly guarded secrets during the martial law days. Talks of his illness kept on circulating uncontrollably, although Marcos was quick to deny them. He appeared on government television several times to insist he was healthy.

The joke of those days: Aside from hidden wealth, Marcos also had hidden health.

Marcos never disclosed the state of his health during his rule, although he was said to be ill of a kidney disease. Except for some allergy and failing eyesight, Marcos kept on insisting he was fine. The dictator felt that any public disclosure of his actual health condition could create political instability.

As a dictator, he enjoyed enormous powers, almost limitless indeed. He held the fulcrum of power; he was the law. He was the center of political gravity during those heady days.

                                                

Although the dictatorship was all about him, Marcos was unprepared for the perceived chaos that could follow his death or permanent physical incapacity; he was deeply paranoid on the grim scenarios of a post-Marcos era. He neither perceived nor understood that those scenarios sprang from his own political experiment on authoritarianism.

Ninoy Aquino had a fairly comfortable life as an academic at the fabled Harvard University in Boston. But he never felt comfortable in his exile. As a rule, nobody enjoys being away from one’s homeland unless he is willing to give up his place of birth.

Ninoy Aquino said in several interviews there that he preferred to return home and die here instead of being mowed down by a Boston taxicab.

Relying on his network of informants in Manila and the U.S., Aquino knew that Marcos was indeed ill during those days. By his own reckoning, the dictator could die anytime, as he was then suffering from renal failure brought by lupus erythemathosus, a systemic disease that affects the body’s autoimmune system.

Ninoy Aquino did not want to become politically irrelevant in the ensuing political vacuum and chaos that could arise upon the death of Marcos. Ninoy Aquino decided to return home at all cost.

His homecoming was his tryst with destiny. It was a winner-take-all situation for him, although history showed that his bold act could make him a winner whether he came out dead or alive from it. He wanted to come home to initiate a democratic transition and present himself as an alternative to wife Imelda in case Marcos died.

Although he was short on details, Aquino was correct in thinking that Marcos was ill. Marcos had a kidney transplant on August 7, 1983. A pair of American surgeons from New York City did the surgery. His son, Ferdinand Jr., or  Bongbong, a defeated vice presidential candidate in 2016 presidential elections and a former governor and senator, was the donor to lessen the risk of organ rejection.

Manila-based operatives of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) learned the identities of the two New York City-based doctors after they reportedly bribed an immigration officer, who stamped the doctors’ passports at the airport, a book about Marcos said.

In brief, Imelda did not go to New York only to shop and demonstrate to the world how she spent senselessly the people's money, but to negotiate with surgeons, who could perform the kidney transplant on Marcos. Most likely, the U.S. government passed the information to Ninoy Aquino without necessarily giving full details.

For their part, Manila-based opposition leaders, particularly Salvador “Doy” Laurel, who headed the broad alliance of opposition leaders under the United Democratic Opposition (Unido) umbrella, appraised Aquino of the local situation, firming up the latter’s decision to return home.

During those days, a kidney transplant was not yet a perfected medical procedure. Kidney transplant patients had higher risks unlike today.

Call it political naivete, but Aquino thought -and was convinced - that Marcos, his fraternity brother at Upsilon Sigma Phi, could be persuaded to start a democratic transition. But the dictator was surrounded by hardliners like wife Imelda, Armed Forces chief of staff Gen. Fabian, and businessman Danding Cojuangco, who were lusting for power too.

Ninoy Aquino, who represented the other half of the political dichotomy with Marcos, set his appointment with destiny on Aug. 21, 1983. Aquino left Boston to take a circuitous route to Manila on August 16, 1983.

Using a fake passport with his nom de guerre Marcial Bonifacio, Aquino went to Singapore, Tokyo, and Taipei before proceeding to Manila on China Air Lines 811 flight. Incidentally, Imelda Marcos met Ninoy Aquino in New York sometime in May, 1983 to tell him to cancel his plan to come home for a while and generously offered financial assistance.

Ninoy refused prompting Imelda to say: “If you come home, you will be dead.” Imelda categorically told Aquino that they (referring to the Marcos couple) might not control their supporters from murdering him.

Facing the five-man Agrava commission, which Marcos had created to probe the Aquino-Galman double murder case, Doy Laurel corroborated the May, 1983 meeting between Imelda and Ninoy and confirmed that Imelda told Ninoy he would be dead if he would insist to return home.

Prior to Aquino’s homecoming, Laurel, through his spokesman Tony Alano, gave a daily briefing to Manila-based foreign journalists about Ninoy’s movements and whereabouts. They flocked to the airport on the day of his arrival.

As a Filipino journalist working in the Manila bureau of Jiji Press, a Japanese news agency, I was among the throngs of journalists, who went to the airport to cover Aquino’s homecoming.

I did not have any inkling that I would have a front seat to history and chronicle a tragedy of unimaginable magnitude, an event that could be the tipping point in the struggle against the Marcos dictatorship and all evils associated with it.

While going to the airport with the Shuji Onose, the Manila bureau chief, we witnessed the yellow ribbons tied to the trees and lampposts along Roxas Boulevard and Airport Avenue and throngs of people, who, I was told, came from Tarlac, to grace his homecoming.

Upon arrival, airport authorities herded us to the holding room, which was normally used for foreign dignitaries, who issued either arrival or departure statements. At first, we thought Aquino would give his arrival statement there.

Manila-based journalists working with foreign news organizations were mixed with opposition leaders and Aquino family members, whom we hardly knew during those days because they did not involve themselves in politics and, ergo, were low key.

I saw the likes of Dona Aurora, the mother, and siblings Paul, Butz, Maur Lichauco, and Tessie Oreta, although we came to know their identities later.

Doy Laurel, wife Celia, and their kids were there along with Senators Lorenzo Tanada, Rene Espina, and Mamintal Tamano and human rights lawyer Joker Arroyo.

I personally felt that the Aquino homecoming would be different from previous events that I covered and chronicled at the airport, when I saw an inordinate number of fully-armed soldiers deployed in the airport terminal building.

No one among the journalists, opposition leaders, and Aquino family members were allowed to go out of the holding room the very moment we entered into it.

We were completely locked in that room; we were sequestered there. We did not know anything that had happened outside the holding room.

I saw the stern-looking Col. Vicente Tigas, a ranking official of Gen. Ver’s Presidential Security Command, walked back and forth just outside the holding room with his hand held walkie-talkie radio, as if he was checking if all journalists were locked in that holding room.

Journalists of the crony papers were assigned in a different area, but because they knew the airport terrain, they went to the area where they could see the China Air Lines plane that brought in Aquino.

Recto Mercene of the crony paper Times Journal took those iconic shots of Ninoy Aquino’s body being dragged by soldiers to a waiting van.

The combined group of journalists and civilians felt bored and restless when at around 2 pm, a moon-faced, bespectacled American national with a pair of slit eyes barged into the holding room and went straight to Dona Aurora, the Aquino siblings, Tanada, and Arroyo to tell them nervously that Aquino, while in the custody of soldiers, was shot.

I was just a few meters away when Ken Kashiwahara of U.S. network ABC, husband of sister Lupita and Ninoy’s brother-in-law, tearfully said these words that continue to resonate into my mind: “They shot him... Yes, they shot him.”

A stunned Tanada asked: “Is he dead?” “Yes, he’s dead,” Kashiwahara replied as he recounted how the soldiers dragged his body to the van. Then, the Aquinos, Tanada, Arroyo, and others broke into tears.

Kashiwahara was too overwhelmed by emotions to narrate details of Aquino’s murder. But because he was a journalist too, he took pains to explain what exactly transpired when China Air Lines Flight 811 touched down at the airport and soldiers of the Aviation Security Command (AVSECOM), under Brig. Gen. Luther Custodio, took Aquino from his seat. Kashiwahara was our first source of information.

We did not know at that time that an unidentified guy, whom the military later alleged as Aquino’s gunman with communist links, was also killed on the airport tarmac.

Kashiwahara traveled to Manila to accompany Ninoy Aquino. His wife, Lupita, earlier arrived in Manila to prepare the homecoming. Jim Laurie, Kashiwahara’s colleague at ABC, also traveled with Ninoy Aquino’s party to do the coverage with his crew.

Other journalists in the China Air Lines flight included Sandra Burton of Time magazine, Max Vanzi of United Press International, and the controversial Kiyoshi Wakamiya, a freelance Japanese journalist, who earlier said he saw a soldier shot Aquino but later recanted it.

We went back to our office in the Ermita district to file the news report about Aquino’s murder. I called up various sources – opposition leaders, defense and military officials, Malacanang, and fellow working journalists (it was customary for us to share information) – for updates.

By 5:30 pm, we went back to the airport for the press conference of Maj. Gen. Prospero Olivas, PC-INP Metrocom chief, who told newsmen that the unidentified gunman (later known as Rolando Galman) shot Aquino with a 357 handgun.

At that point, Marcos had firmed up the theory that Aquino was killed by an alleged communist hit man.

By nightfall, more details trickled in. Aquino was brought by his military escorts to the Army Hospital in Fort Bonifacio.

When told, Doy Laurel, Dona Aurora, and Aquino’s siblings went to the army hospital, but were stopped at the entrance of Fort Bonifacio, forcing them to walk for an hour under the boiling sun because the soldiers did not allow them to use their vehicles in going to the hospital, and, of course, the confirmation that Aquino was dead.

By late evening, I had an idea that Aquino was a victim of a military rubout, a conspiracy of the lowest kind.

I consulted my media colleagues by telephone and the emerging consensus was that a military plot to kill him was implemented the moment he arrived in Manila.

By midnight, I felt the extreme exhaustion of our coverage. It was a long day indeed. Suddenly, I felt tears started rolling down my cheeks.

I am a journalist trained to take distance from my coverage. But I am also a Filipino, who felt indignant at the way they killed Aquino.

It was most repugnant for me to see a patriot being murdered in broad daylight.

My Japanese boss saw how I felt. He did not say a word, although I felt he sympathized with me.

He allowed me some minutes to compose myself out of respect for my feeling. Then, he gently told me we should go home for tomorrow’s coverage.

By 8 am the next day, I was in the office for another day of hard work.