Philippines mourns democracy icon Corazon Aquino

MANILA, Philippines — Thousands of Filipinos lined up for hours Sunday to see the body of former President Corazon Aquino — the beloved democracy icon who swept away a dictator and inspired nonviolent resistance to autocratic rule.

Aquino, 76, died early Saturday in a Manila hospital after a yearlong battle with colon cancer.

Thousands trooped to a suburban Manila university stadium where Aquino’s coffin, teeming with yellow roses and orchids, was displayed on a platform.

Some mourners openly wept and carried yellow ribbons — the color that symbolized her democratic advocacy. One held an old poster of Ferdinand Marcos, the strongman she helped depose in 1986.

Aquino rose to prominence after the assassination in 1983 of her husband, opposition leader Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr. The uprising she led in 1986 brought down Marcos’ repressive 20-year regime and served as an inspiration to nonviolent resistance across the globe, including those that ended communist rule in eastern Europe.

Chinese President Hu Jintao sent condolences to Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said in a statement Sunday.

“Mrs. Aquino is an outstanding leader of the Philippines and she is also a good friend of the Chinese people,” Jiang said. “The Chinese government and the Chinese people deeply lament her death.”

President Barack Obama was deeply saddened by Aquino’s death, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Saturday.

Aquino’s supporters had been holding daily prayers for her in churches around the country since she was rushed to intensive care after she stopped eating in late June.

Arroyo, who is on an official visit to the United States, remembered Aquino as a “national treasure” who helped lead “a revolution to restore democracy and the rule of law to our nation at a time of great peril.

Arroyo declared a 10-day national mourning period Saturday.

Maria Corazon Cojuangco was born on Jan. 25, 1933, into a wealthy, politically powerful family in Paniqui, about 75 miles (120 kilometers) north of Manila.

Her unlikely rise began in 1983 after her husband was gunned down at Manila’s international airport moments after soldiers escorted him from a plane on his arrival from exile in the United States to challenge Marcos, his longtime adversary. Investigations showed one of his military escorts was the assassin.

After the murder, Aquino returned to the Philippines and led the largest funeral procession Manila had ever seen, with crowd estimates as high as 2 million.

The killing enraged many Filipinos and unleashed a broad-based opposition movement that thrust Aquino into the role of national leader.

“I don’t know anything about the presidency,” she declared in 1985, a year before she agreed to run against Marcos, uniting the fractious opposition, the business community, and later the armed forces to drive the dictator out.

In the wake of that election, the Marcos regime — which declared martial law in 1972 and had jailed Aquino’s husband — started to unravel.

But Marcos claimed victory in those polls — widely seen as fraudulent — leading a group of military officers to mutiny against him on Feb. 22 and holed up with a small force in a military camp in Manila, leading to three days of protests by hundreds of thousands that finally toppled him.

On Feb. 25, Aquino was sworn in as the Philippines’ first female leader and Marcos flew to exile in Hawaii, where he died three years later.

She stepped down in 1992 after serving for six years.

Associated Press writers Hrvoje Hranjski and Oliver Teves contributed to this report.