Political detainees under the Marcos dictatorship

Historians estimate that there were about 70,000 individuals incarcerated by the authoritarian regime of Ferdinand Marcos in the period between his 1972 declaration of Martial Law until he was removed from office by the 1986 People Power Revolution. This included students, opposition politicians, journalists, academics, and religious workers, aside from known activists. Those who were captured were referred to as "political detainees," rather than "political prisoners," with the technical definitions of the former being vague enough that the Marcos administration could continue to hold them in detention without having to be charged.

Most of these political detainees were arrested without warrant, and detained without charges; 11,103 of them have been officially recognized by the Philippine government as having been tortured and abused. They were held in the various military camps in the capital - there were five detention centers in Camp Crame, the three detention centers in Camp Bonifacio, and the New Bilibid Prisons and a detention center in Bicutan all held a large number of prisoners. In addition, there were about 80 detention centers in the provinces, as well as various undocumented military "safehouses" located throughout the Philippines. Four provincial camps were designated as Regional Command for Detainees (RECAD) - Camp Olivas (RECAD I) in Pampanga in Central Luzon; Camp Vicente Lim (RECAD II) in Laguna in Southern Luzon; Camp Lapulapu (RECAD III) in Cebu in the Visayas; and Camp Evangelista (RECAD IV) in Cagayan de Oro City in Mindanao.

Volunteers by the Roman Catholic Church-established Task Force Detainees of the Philippines initially took it upon themselves to document the detention conditions and detainee tortures in the detention centers, and after international pressure, teams from international human rights agencies such as Amnesty International were eventually allowed to conduct their own observation missions. Provided by Wikipedia