Gene Viernes and Silme Domingo, officers of the International Longshoremen and Warehousemen’s Union Local 37 and Marcos critics, were gunned down at their union office in Seattle, Washington, on June 1, 1981.
Viernes died instantly but Domingo lived for several hours more and was able to name the hit men in a dying declaration made to paramedics.
In 1989, a US federal court determined that the murders were a product of a conspiracy hatched at the highest levels of the Marcos regime and carried out by US-based supporters of the regime who paid criminal elements in the Filipino community in Seattle to kill the two union officers.
The hit men and the middle-layer conspirators in the murders were convicted by a US criminal court and were sentenced to life without parole.
Those who escaped arrest and trial have either been reported mysteriously killed or sighted as having relocated back to the Philippines.
While the criminal and civil trials in the United States brought up evidence of the involvement in the murders of not only the Marcos dictatorship but also certain US intelligence agencies, the extent of the US government’s role could not be pursued and unanswered questions remain to this day.
Today, November 30, the Bantayog ng mga Bayani Foundation will include three US-based activists—Domingo, Viernes and Arturo Taca, a medical doctor—in its roster of heroes and martyrs.