AFTER 25 years of litigation, a Honolulu federal judge ordered on Thursday the distribution of $7.5 million to victims of human rights violations under the regime of the late President Ferdinand Marcos.
The amount comes to about $1,000 for every complainant who signed up for the case when it was filed in 1986. A total of 7,526 signatories to the case had been deemed eligible to receive the amount under a plan approved by U.S. District Judge Manuel Real, according to the Associated Press.
Distribution of the money will start in mid-February and take about a month, AP said.
Robert Swift, lead lawyer in the case, said the development was an important milestone for the complainants.
“We know they are anxious for distribution. Most of our members are poor, very poor, and live in a Third World country that hasn’t compensated them for any injuries they suffered, or loss of loved ones,” Swift said during a hearing at federal court in Honolulu.
The AP report said the funds will come “from a $10 million settlement of a case against individuals controlling Texas and Colorado land bought with Marcos’s money. Legal fees and a payment to the person who located the properties will consume most of the remaining $2.5 million of the settlement.”
Swift said his team is still pursuing an additional $70 million in Marcos assets through courts in New York and Singapore.
The case was the first class action lawsuit on human rights violations filed anywhere in the world. It was submitted after Marcos’s ouster from power and during his exile in Hawaii.
Advocates of human rights in the Philippines welcomed Real’s order.
The Philippine Daily Inquirer quoted Satur Ocampo, a former political detainee and party-list representative of Bayan Muna, as saying, “It is a confirmation, an acknowledgment that the Marcoses had amassed ill-gotten wealth.”
Commission on Human Rights Chairperson Loretta Ann Rosales, herself a political detainee during the Marcos years, said she was “happy” for the complainants. She said she was waiving her rights to her share in the amount to be distributed.
Malacañang welcomed Real’s order and called it a “positive development” in the long struggle for justice by victims of human rights violations.