Ninoy Aquino Day in the Philippines - August 21, remembering the democracy leader assassinated in 1983

Ninoy Aquino Day is a Philippine holiday on August 21, marking the assassination of Senator Benigno Aquino Jr. in 1983. It leads directly into Independence Day ten days later, and it is set on his death rather than his birthday by design.

The one-line summary

Philippine special non-working holiday on August 21, commemorating the assassination of Senator Benigno Aquino Jr. in 1983. Secular-memorial category, standard tier.

Origin

Benigno Aquino Jr. - Ninoy - was the most prominent opponent of the Marcos dictatorship. After being arrested for subversion in 1972, he spent seven years in prison and then three in exile. He planned to return for elections, and was granted safe conduct by a worried government that expected a hostile reception.

On August 21, 1983, a minute after his plane touched down at Manila International Airport, Air Force Major Arturo Almonte fired an M16 rifle into the back of his head on the tarmac. Almonte was convicted decades later, by a Philippine court, as part of the wider conspiracy behind the assassination. The airport's Terminal 3 was subsequently named after him.

The holiday was set on the date of his death rather than his November birthday deliberately, and it sits ten days before Independence Day so that the two commemorate as a single run of national remembrance.

When it falls

August 21, fixed. It always precedes Philippine Independence Day on August 31 by ten days, which is why the two are often discussed together: the first restores the democracy leader whose assassination galvanised the opposition, the second commemorates the independence from Spain that came in 1898.

How it is observed

The day is marked by memorials, mass intentions and commemorative masses, and by the naming of streets and public spaces. Political organisations on both sides of the divide lay wreaths. The airport Terminal 3 - renamed for Aquino - is the site of the most visited commemoration.

It is also the conventional marker of the month of mourning and protest that followed the assassination and preceded the 1986 People Power revolution.

Public status

Ninoy Aquino Day is a special non-working holiday in the Philippines - a distinct classification from a regular holiday, and one that affects pay rules under the country's observance laws for some categories of worker.

Where it is contested

Ninoy Aquino Day is not disputed as a commemoration, but the holiday calendar around it is actively contested. It sits close to June 12, the date commemorated for the 1898 declaration of independence from Spain, which has generated repeated proposals to shift the two and unify the country's independence narrative. The proposal to fold both dates into a single Araw ng Katatagan - the Day of Patriotism - was raised and then set aside.

Related holidays

Ninoy Aquino Day is the first of the two great Philippine August commemorations, leading into Independence Day on August 31. It is also the mirror image ofHeritage Day in South Africa in one respect - both are the dates on which a country chooses to remember how it came to be democratic rather than how it came to be independent.

Sources

• Official Gazette of the Republic of the Philippines(holiday proclamation, August 21 and its special non-working classification).
• Encyclopaedia Britannica - Benigno Aquino Jr.(the assassination, the exile and the conviction of Almonte).
• National Commission for Culture and the Arts(commemoration and memorial documentation).
• Manila International Airport Authority(the terminal renaming after the assassination).