Humanitarian Endeavors and Political Turmoil: The Sovereign Order of Malta’s Role in the Philippines

In 1981, Don Jesus S. Cabarrus, Sr., founder and chairman of Marinduque Mining Industrial Corporation, among his many other gold and nickel mines, and also chairman of The Chamber of Mines, became the Philippine Order’s president. Learning that the United Nations was supporting a large shelter camp for Vietnamese war refugees in Puerto Princesa, Palawan, he established an Order of Malta Primary Health Care Center there by special arrangement with the Philippine government and the United Nations.

The medical project was funded by the Ouvres Hospitalieres de l’Ordre de Malta (France), enabling medical assistance and services such as pre- and post-natal care, Day Care Center services, and Family Planning and counseling for Vietnamese refugees and Filipinos who lived near the camp. The refugees eventually were repatriated to France and the United States, according to their preferred destinations. Referred to as “boat people,” most of them had withstood harrowing experiences fleeing Vietnam, after 1975.

In the United States, a political opponent of President Marcos announced he was returning home to Manila in August 1983, having completed professorial stints at Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His decision to return would turn out to be fatal.

On August 21, 1983, while Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino’s supporters and news reporters waited in the terminal building of the Manila International Airport, two shots rang out. Descending the plane’s staircase, Aquino had been shot in cold blood by his uniformed military escorts. While it was generally accepted that President Marcos had not ordered the assassination because he was too sick to order it, and would have been aware of its repercussions, the killing led to an ocean of political demonstrations, eventually led by Aquino’s widow, Corazon Aquino, which slowly undermined the Marcos regime.