Marcos victims can claim some justice

THE ISSUE An appeals court panel has ordered nearly $40 million to victims of the Marcos regime.

NEARLY 10,000 human-rights victims of the late Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos received a modicum of justice last week from a federal appeals court, but they deserve much more. That should come from Marcos assets in a Singapore bank and from millions more transferred from Swiss bank accounts to the Philippines' national treasury.

The Philippines claimed ownership of nearly $40 million that grew from the $2 million that Marcos had deposited with a New York brokerage firm in 1972. A three-judge panel of the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said it had no such legal claim to the money. Judge John Noonan slammed the Philippines for failing to compensate "victims of a rough and rapacious ruler who often exercised arbitrary power."

The ruling comes a decade after a federal jury in Honolulu awarded $2 billion to 9,539 Filipinos, finding Marcos to blame for summary executions, disappearances and torture. The Philippines government has sought the money from the outset.

The 9th Circuit ruled last year that the victims, most living in the Philippines, had no right to recover $627 million in Marcos assets in Swiss bank accounts. That money has been transferred to the Philippines treasury, which is required by the republic's law to fund land reform.

President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has promised to give the victims $200 million of that amount, but changes are needed in the republic's land-reform law. The Bush administration should put pressure on the republic to make those changes.

The victims and the republic also are at loggerheads over $22 million in Marcos assets located in a Singapore bank, and other properties in various countries.

Compared with the $2 billion jury award -- now approaching $4 billion because of interest in the past 10 years -- and the amounts stored elsewhere, the amount at issue in the New York brokerage firm case is token, but the victims can claim some vindication.