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Manila: The son of a man whom the government had wrongly tagged as killer of former Senator Benigno Aquino 25 years ago was happy to see a new documentary which reiterated his father's exoneration.
"I am happy that the screening of Beyond Conspiracy: 25 Years after the Aquino Assassination will remind Filipinos once again that Rolando Galman, my father, was not the killer of Senator Aquino," Reynaldo Galman, now 35, told the Inquirer.
"The issue is no longer clear to many people. I feel it is time to remind the people that my father was innocent of the murder," Galman said, adding his family name has also stigmatised him for long. Despite the exoneration of his father of the Aquino murder first by a fact-finding board in 1985, and then by an anti-graft court in 1986, every time he looked for a job, he felt that employers shied away from him because of his family name.
He became a nurse and worked in the Middle East for several years. He returned to the Philippines last year.
Upside down
"After the killing, our lives were turned upside down. We had to hide, moving from house to house," he recalled. He said he has been reassured several times by members of the Aquino family that they did not believe his father was an assassin. The young Galman was 10 years old when he identified beore the a fact-finding board the men who took his father away from their home in suburban Bulacan on August 17, 1983, four days before the shooting of Aquino at Pasay City's international airport on August 21. His mother Lina was abducted by unidentified men in January 1984 when the probe started and was never seen again.
Reports said that military men kept Galman and his girlfriend in a hotel near the airport from August 19 to 21. Galman's girl friend remained missing after Galman was also shot by military men following Aquino's assassination.
The documentary was produced by The Foundation for Worldwide People Power established by former president Corazon Aquino in 1992.
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