Plaza Miranda bombing
The Plaza Miranda bombing occurred during a political rally of the Liberal Party at Plaza Miranda, Quiapo district, Manila, the Philippines on August 21, 1971. It caused nine deaths and injured 95 others, including many prominent Liberal Party politicians.
Bombing
The Liberal Party's campaign rally was held to proclaim the candidacies of eight senatorial bids as well as the candidate for the mayoralty race in Manila. After local Liberal candidates for Manila were proclaimed, Manila LP chairman Salvador Mariño, the emcee for the event, began to speak before an audience of about 4,000 when two grenades were reportedly tossed on stage.Victims
Among those killed instantly were a 5-year-old child and The Manila Times photographer Ben Roxas. Almost everyone on stage was injured, including representatives Ramon V. Mitra Jr. of Palawan and Salipada Pendatun of Cotabato, Senators Jovito Salonga, Eva Estrada-Kalaw, and Gerardo Roxas, Judy Araneta-Roxas, former representative Eddie Ilarde of Rizal, former Cebu City mayor Sergio Osmeña Jr., Governor Felicisimo San Luis of Laguna, Manila Councilors Martin B. Isidro and Ambrosio "King" Lorenzo Jr., and Congressman Ramon Bagatsing, the party's mayoral candidate for Manila.Salonga was among those most seriously injured. The blast left him blind in one eye and deaf in one ear. Small pieces of shrapnel remained lodged in his body until his death in 2016. Councilor Ambrosio "King" Lorenzo Jr. was in a coma for two weeks. He lost sight in his left eye and hearing on the same side. Ramon Bagatsing, the Liberal Party mayoralty candidate for Manila, lost his left leg and suffered a crushed right cheek bone and a shattered right arm.
Suspects
Marcos blamed the communists and subsequently suspended the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus.During the police investigation into the bombing, Manila Mayor Antonio Villegas was initially named the primary suspect of the bombing, but later evidence suggested otherwise. Suspicion of responsibility for the blast fell upon incumbent President Ferdinand Marcos. At the time, there was suspicion that Marcos perpetrated the bombing as a pretext for his declaration of martial law. There were a series of deadly bombings in 1971, and the CIA privately stated that Marcos was responsible for at least one of them. The agency was also almost certain that none of the bombings were perpetrated by Communists. Defectors from Marcos' cabinet also contained further evidence implicating Marcos. A proven false flag attack took place with the attempted assassination of Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile in 1972. President Richard Nixon then approved Marcos' martial law move on the rationale that the country was being terrorized by Communists.
Some prominent personalities laid the blame on the Communist Party of the Philippines under Jose Maria Sison. Jovito Salonga, in his autobiography, stated his belief that Sison and the CPP were responsible. Retired Armed Forces general Victor Corpus, a former New People's Army member who defected from the group in 1976, alleged in a 2004 interview that Sison dispatched the cadre who attacked the meeting with a hand grenade. In the prologue of his 1989 autobiography, Corpus claimed that he was present when some leaders of the CPP discussed the bombing after it took place. In interviews by The Washington Post, unnamed former CPP officials alleged that "the party leadership planned -- and three operatives carried out -- the attack in an attempt to provoke government repression and push the country to the brink of revolution... Sison had calculated that Marcos could be provoked into cracking down on his opponents, thereby driving thousands of political activists into the underground, the former party officials said. Recruits were urgently needed, they said, to make use of a large influx of weapons and financial aid that China had already agreed to provide." José María Sison has denied these accusations and the CPP has never claimed responsibility for the incident.
Historian Joseph Scalice has argued that "the evidence of history now overwhelmingly suggests that the Communist Party of the Philippines, despite being allied with the Liberal Party, was responsible for this bombing, seeing it as a means of facilitating repression which they argued would hasten revolution." Sison, however, continued to deny this claim, arguing that Scalice, alongside his primary source, columnist Gregg Jones used sources from military intelligence and rejectionists.