Binay backs plan to create Memory Museum

MANILA, Philippines - Vice President Jejomar Binay is supporting the plan of the EDSA People Power Commission (EPPC) and the National Historical Commission of the Philippines (NHCP) to establish a Memory Museum to remind Filipinos about the martial law days and the 1986 Edsa People Power revolution.

Binay, who hosted the other night a dinner for the participants of the roundtable discussion on the establishment of a Memory Museum, said his son Makati Mayor Junjun Binay suggested its creation after visiting several museums during his recent trip to Israel.

“I said why not? So I asked my fellow detainees (during the Martial Law regime) like Mrs. Arroyo, wife of Sen. Joker Arroyo, and Tina Turalba. We had a dinner with Maria Montelibano who also broached the idea of creating a museum for EDSA ’86,” he said.

Binay said he told Montelibano that they were planning to establish a martial law museum.

“In fact, I told the President about that and he told me to talk to the National Historical Commission. So I wrote to the National Historical Commission and we learned later that Mrs. Montelibano has contacted those who established the EDSA ’86 Museum in South America,” he said.

“Hopefully in three years’ time we will have our own Memory Museum,” Binay said.

He said the museum would be a better way to remind the Filipino people, especially the youth, about the struggle against martial law.

An activist and human rights lawyer who was detained during martial law, Binay previously proposed the creation of a Martial Law Museum, which he said would serve “as a shrine and repository of our memories of the Filipinos’ struggle against martial law and dictatorship.”

He said it was a shared responsibility of those who experienced martial law to keep the memory of the fight for democracy alive, and to remind the younger generation of the price we will pay if we are not vigilant.