by: Benigno S. Aquino, Jr.

Our history as a people has been an epic Struggle to end oppression and to be free. In whole-and even in part-it ranks with the immortal stand made by Leonidas' at the Pass of Thermopylae, the storming of the Bastille by the rebels of Paris, the Liberty-or-Death fight waged by Thirteen American Colonies3, the Defense of Britain by the English on nothing more than Winston Churchill's promise of "blood, toil, tears, and sweat."

As a history, it has been ennobling as it has been inspiring-washed, as it were, in the blood of our forebearers, which gave it its glory and its purity, and sanctified as we shall always recall proudly, with their lives, which gave it its sterling nobility.

It is the supreme irony of our history that, having shaken off alien yokes, we now find ourselves groaning under a domestic yoke even more oppressive.

We are captives of a domestic Tyranny that has outdone any and all of the foreign invaders in denying us our right and liberties as men, and in the bestial fashion in which this was done.

So, we find ourselves again in a time of trials-a time that demands each of us an unstinting, heroic response.

We must fight to regain our Freedom. We cannot merely remain passive and wait for it to fall as a gift from heaven. For it is a futile hope, as the tyranny has shown us, to hope that it will come by the grace of the tyrant. Rather than give up martial rule, he will "institutionalize" it, as the tyrant himself has bluntly told us.

But, if we must be truly free, it must be a freedom never to be purchased at the cost of conviction and self-respect. Man must be ready—nay, willing!—to  die if he cannot live as a free man. For freedom, is never dear at any price.

Truly, it is the breath of life.

And man's readiness to suffer-to die-will light the torch of freedom, which can never be extinguished! No, not when it is in his heart and the hearts of his fellowmen!

It may not come today-or in this lifetime. But it’ll come, inexorably. In any case, wherever such a man stands-be it in a tyrant's dungeon, where he makes his freedom's cry, or before a military tribunal, where he stands in righteous defiance-there, Mr. President, gentlemen of this Commission, there freedom stands. You cannot stifle it, much less kill it, with trumped up charges, perjured witnesses, "evidence tortured into existence."

I find no need to affirm my innocence. In God's own season, the truth will be known.

My struggle is against the system of injustice that enables one man to judge the truth of his own actions-to be the accuser, prosecutor, and judge in a tribunal of his own creation; a court inescapably bound to follow his dictates.

My struggle is against the system that makes a mockery of justice by ' reducing all our judges to the status of hirelings, subservient to the will of the dictator.

My struggle is against the system that enables the dictator to own, control, and manipulate-by himself or through his proxies-the mass media, so he can distort the truth, mislead the people by making vice appear as virtue and thereby weaken the resolve to be free.

My struggle is against the system that purports to promote the public welfare while enriching a few who shamelessly display the fruits of their greed and lust for wealth.

My struggle is against the system that not only enslaves our people but compels them to declare themselves for tyranny and their oppressor. My struggle is against the system that pretends to save democracy while actually destroying it.

The tragedy of our time is that our people are faced by a double fear: the fear of the problem, which is the continuing tyranny; and the fear of the solution, which is the need to resist and suffer, if need be, with true courage.

Many of us have become like eunuchs: We know how to do it, but we cannot. We have lost our manhood.

My duty, as I see it, is to tell our people that we must not only dream of a good and just society. We must resolve to make this dream come true.

At the risk of being hated and despised, we must expose those despicable cowards in our midst who call themselves leaders while hiding behind the cloak of false prudence.

We must resolutely oppose those molders of public opinion who display such sycophancy as to put to shame those functionaries described in Suetonius' life of Tiberius.