It is the young people’s responsibility to hold, and pass on, the memories around martial law in the Philippines. a university student writes. The declaration of martial law, whose 50th anniversary was on 21 September 2022, was among the instruments of dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos, whose son and namesake is now the country’s president.

Martial law had a ‘smiling’ face, a law-and-order face and one of outright repression, which meant that Filipinos had different kinds of trauma from that time that persist in today’s polarized spaces. But to correct the neglect of the nurturing of public memories, it is time to teach “historical empathy”.