Martial law under Ferdinand Marcos

This article is part of a series about Ferdinand Marcos
Early life Military career Stonehill scandal Prime Minister Presidency Cult of personality Economy Monopolies Cronies Coco Levy Fund scam Gintong Alay Timeline Communist insurgency Moro conflict First term 1965 election 1st Inauguration balance of payments crisis Second term 1969 election campaign 2nd Inauguration First Quarter Storm Plaza Miranda bombing Vietnam War Martial law Proclamation No. 1081 Human rights abuses Torture Rolex 12 Escalante Massacre Chico River Dam Project Masagana 99 Bataan Nuclear Power Plant Journalism Resistance Religious Indigenous Workers Protest art Protest music Third and fourth terms 1981 election and referendum 3rd inauguration Assassination of Benigno Aquino Jr. 1986 election 4th inauguration People Power Revolution Family Mariano (father) Pacifico (brother) Imelda (wife) Bongbong (son) Imee (daughter) Irene (daughter) Aimee (daughter) Unexplained wealth Overseas landholdings Marcos mansions Marcos jewels Tallano gold conspiracy theory Legacy Burial Historical distortion Bust Solid North Marcos Japanese ODA scandal Operation Big Bird Marcos in film Related "Conjugal dictatorship" Edifice complex
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At 7:15 p.m. on September 23, 1972, President Ferdinand Marcos announced on television that he had placed the Philippines under martial law,^[1][2] stating he had done so in response to the "communist threat" posed by the newly founded Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), and the sectarian "rebellion" of the Muslim Independence Movement (MIM). Opposition figures of the time (such as Lorenzo Tañada, Jose W. Diokno, and Jovito Salonga) accused Marcos of exaggerating these threats and using them as an excuse to consolidate power and extend his tenure beyond the two presidential terms allowed by the 1935 constitution.^[3] Marcos' signed Proclamation No. 1081 on September 21, 1972, marking the beginning of a fourteen-year period of one-man rule which effectively lasted until Marcos was exiled from the country on February 25, 1986.^[4][5] Proclamation No. 1081 was formally lifted on January 17, 1981, although Marcos retained essentially all of his powers as dictator until he was ousted in February 1986.^[6][7]

This nine-year period in Philippine history is remembered for the Marcos administration's record of human rights abuses,^[8][9] particularly targeting political opponents, student activists, journalists, religious workers, farmers, and others who fought against the Marcos dictatorship.^[10] Based on the documentation of Amnesty International, Task Force Detainees of the Philippines, and similar human rights monitoring entities,^[11] historians believe that the Marcos dictatorship was marked by 3,257 known extrajudicial killings, 35,000 documented tortures, 737 "disappeared", and 70,000 incarcerations.^{[11][12][page needed][13]: 16} After Marcos was ousted, government investigators discovered that the declaration of martial law had also allowed the Marcoses to hide secret stashes of unexplained wealth that various courts^[6] later determined to be "of criminal origin".^[14]

While Marcos' presidency began in late 1965,^[15] this article is limited to the period in which he exercised dictatorial powers under martial law^[1] and the period where he continued to wield those powers despite lifting the martial law proclamation in 1981.^[16][17]