Fight Back New Service is circulating the following statement from the Communist Party of the Philippines.

Officials of the Marcos regime are daydreaming when they make declarations of attaining “strategic victory” and defeating the New People’s Army (NPA). These wishful declarations are not new. They have been issuing exactly the same statements for three decades now and have repeatedly been proven wrong by facts.

General Año’s pronouncement yesterday of “ending the local communist armed conflict” within the term of the Marcos government rings hollow, especially after an NPA unit carried out a successful against the much detested 85th IB in Tagkawayan, Quezon last Friday morning, in which Red fighters seized five high-powered rifles and inflicted a number of casualties against the AFP. The ambush blasts recent claims that Quezon is already “insurgency free.” Together with the recent tactical offensives of the NPA in Masbate and Negros, the AFP’s much-hyped PR line that the NPA has “only active guerrilla front” is clearly a figment of their imagination.

The Filipino people and their people’s army will continue to wage armed struggle as long as US imperialism, oppression, bureaucratic corruption and social injustice prevails. The broad masses of the Filipino people are continually being roused to take up arms by widespread landlessness, grossly low wages, economic dislocation, environmental destruction, and rampant dispossession of their sources of income and means of production.

Over the past few years, the fascist reactionaries have waged an all-out campaign of state terrorism with the desperate aim of shattering the bond between the NPA and the broad masses of the Filipino people. But the more Marcos employs terrorism against the people, the more that this bond is tempered and reinforced. Indeed, without the NPA, the Filipino people have nothing to defend themselves with and will be left to the mercy of multinational corporations, the IMF and World Bank, big bourgeois compradors, landlords, and bureaucrat capitalists.

The aim of achieving complete victory might not yet be within the immediate horizon of the NPA. But it is determined to frustrate the AFP’s current campaign of encirclement and suppression, fight the Marcos regime’s rule of all-out state terrorism, and carry forward the armed struggle to even greater heights.

#Philippines #CommunistPartyOfThePhilippinesCPP #Asia

Fight Back News Service is circulating the following August 21 statement from the Communist Party of the Philippines.

One year ago today, Benito Tiamzon (Ka Laan), Wilma Austria (Ka Bagong-tao), together with eight other revolutionaries, were arrested by troops belonging to the 8th Infantry Division, on their way to the coasts of Catbalogan town, Samar. While in the custody of their fascist captors, they were subjected to severe torture before they were subsequently killed. Their lifeless bodies were loaded on a boat and brought to sea where reportedly being exploded.

The torture and murder of the Tiamzons, and their companions Ka Divino, Ka Yen, Ka Jaja, Ka Matt, Ka Ash, Ka Delfin, Ka Lupe, Ka Butig, are dastardly fascist-terrorist crimes of the Marcos regime, perpetrated under the direction of their US military advisers.

The revolutionary forces reiterate their vow to attain justice for the Tiamzons and all other victims of state terrorism.

The Tiamzons long served as among the key leaders of the Party who selflessly dedicated their lives to the Filipino people’s struggle for national and social liberation and the socialist aspirations of the proletariat.

They served as consultants of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) in peace negotiations on the belief that a just and lasting peace can only be attained by addressing the deep social, economic and political roots of the armed conflict.

Marcos and his fascist ilk are grossly mistaken to think that by murdering the Tiamzons, they could kill the Filipino people’s revolutionary cause. On the contrary, the martyrdom of the Tiamzons will forever be remembered and inspire the younger generation of workers, peasants and all democratic classes to carry forward the Filipino people’s national democratic struggle.

#Philippines #CommunistPartyOfThePhilippinesCPP #Asia

Republican Party activists are protesting the Chinese ownership of the battery plant despite the 2300 new jobs it brings to a dying city. Big Rapids has lost half of its population since the years when George Bush Sr. was president of the United States. The Gotion plant will bring industrial jobs back to an area that has 37% poverty rates. It will give small businesses a lifeline.

Members of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) organized a canvassing campaign last month and came to the council meeting to comment. In their campaign, students went knocking door to door, handing out educational flyers, and received feedback from local Big Rapids residents about the Gotion plant. Many working-class residents and business owners alike responded positively to the information campaign. Their opinions are positive about the new jobs the Gotion battery plant will bring to the area.

At the city council meeting, two student activists spoke in public comment, supporting the 2300 jobs the Gotion plant will bring, while also advocating for a labor union and high environmental standards at this new factory. They were joined in comment by local allies from the Democrat Party, as well as by residents of Paris and Big Rapids who are in favor of the Gotion plant.

One SDS member said, “We need to ensure that they are held to a higher environmental standard than what the state and federal government, which are rather lax on environmental issues, demand. I think that Gotion would be more than willing to comply, as in China they have higher environmental standards than in the United States.”

Owen Frassetto spoke next in public comment. He said, “One interest, which is not common, nor beneficial to the working people, is Sinophobia, and general bigotry against Asian people.”

Frassetto went onto say, “If there are still concerns over who controls this battery plant, or environmental concerns, the best way to solve that problem is for the workers who will be employed at the plant to have a say in how it runs through a union, to ensure their voice is a strong one.”

The student activists were met with support from allies and other pro-jobs residents. At the same time, they were confronted with opposition from the anti-jobs Republicans. The pro-jobs people defended their points both in public comment and afterwards, receiving compliments from many there.

One resident said, “Despite the outcry, the Sinophobia, and some anti-Chinese remarks of anti-Gotion people, the plan to construct the factory is moving ahead, and it’ll bring over 2000 permanent jobs to our city.”

On the same day of the city council meeting, Gotion Inc. confirmed its purchase of 270 acres in the Big Rapids area.

#ParisMichigan #ParisMI #China #Asia

The Marcos regime and its military and police forces must be roundly condemned for the increasingly malevolent use of the deceitfully named Anti-Terrorism Law (ATL) in their heightened campaign of suppression against various democratic forces, critics, and political opponents.

Over the past few weeks, human rights defenders and members of cause-oriented organizations have been “designated” as “terrorists” by the Anti-Terrorism Council or charged in court for “terrorism” in a patently arbitrary manner, without due process and in utter violation of broadly accepted standards of judicial processes.

The ATL is now being used as a tool for suppression with impunity. The most recent victim of the draconian ATL is Hailey Pecayo, a 19-year old human rights worker, who earned the ire of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) for having actively exposed the role of the military for the killing of a nine-year old child in Batangas last year. She is now being charged by the AFP under the ATL, together with other members of their human rights group.

Before Pecayo, at least six others, including Windel Bolinget and three other members of the Cordillera People’s Alliance (CPA), were tagged as “terrorists” by the ATC. In a much earlier resolution, Dr. Natividad Castro, a medical doctor working for the Karapatan Alliance in Mindanao, was similarly tagged by the ATC. It is particularly noteworthy that the ATC resolutions against Bolinget and Castro both came after courts dismissed false charges filed by the AFP linking them to armed actions of the New People’s Army (NPA).

The use of the ATL as a tool of suppression has now reached absurd and brazen levels with the ATC “designating” Congressman Arnolfo Teves and 12 others accused of perpetrating the March 4 killing of former Negros Oriental Governor Noel Degamo. Marcos officials have resorted to using the ATL against Teves after failing to build up a court case him. Aiming the ATL against Teves also serves as warning of the extent that Marcos will use the law for his purposes.

The CPP denounces the use of the ATL as a weapon of political suppression. The Party also expresses its continuing protest against the “terrorist designation” of the CPP, the New People’s Army and the National Democratic Front, of its leaders and representatives, and others being linked to the revolutionary cause.

Despite the September 21, 2022 ruling of the Manila Trial Court dismissing the petition filed by the government to declare the CPP and NPA as “terrorists” under the Human Security Act (the former name of the ATL), the Marcos regime and its agents insist on pinning the “terrorist” tag as part of its systematic campaign against all patriotic and democratic forces.

In light of the heightened attacks against the broad democratic sectors using the ATL, the Filipino people’s demand for the abrogation of the draconian law has become even more urgent. All democracy-loving people must make a stand and lend their voice to the struggle to defend the people’s rights and freedoms against state repression.

The Party supports the Filipino people’s clamor to end the so-called “war on terror” which, in fact, is a camouflage for unbounded state terrorism. This fascist framework has long been abused by the Philippine ruling class state, in order to justify the systematic erosion of the people’s civil and political rights.

The military and security establishment has used the “war on terror” to claim extraordinary powers to assert domination over society, take control of the functions of civilian agencies of government and carry out any and all acts of state suppression with gross impunity.

#Philippines #CommunistPartyOfThePhilippinesCPP #Asia

Los Angeles, CA – On July 23, hundreds of protesters marched down Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles for the People’s State of the Nation Address. The PSONA is an annual protest to counter the Filipino president’s state of the nation address and expose the real struggles of the Filipino people. This year it highlighted the issues under the Ferdinand Marcos Jr. presidency, including record high inflation and miserable wages, intense political repression with prosecution and killings, and increased U.S. military presence.

Bayan SoCal, Malaya SoCal, and the International League of Peoples Struggle organized the protest.

The march began with a rally at the Wilshire/Vermont Metro Station and progressed to the steps of the Salvadoran Consulate, where the Philippine National Police (PNP) have an office. The PNP has killed tens of thousands of Filipinos since 2016 under former president Rodrigo Duterte and continues to kill union organizers and activists under Marcos Jr. The PNP has been setting up offices across the U.S. in order to keep close ties with the U.S. government and surveil and harass U.S.-based Filipino activists who have been speaking out against the Duterte and Marcos regimes.

Jill Colcol from GABRIELA LA, which fights for Filipina women, LGBTQ and children’s rights, stated, “What purpose does it serve to have police forces here when the people are clamoring for financial aid and other resources? How can women be safe when our governments in the U.S. and in the Philippines are funding militarization and policing instead of healthcare, education and sustainable jobs? Women are not safe when government leaders prioritize war and profit over the people.”

The march continued to the Philippine National Bank at the Equitable Plaza in Koreatown, where speakers described the conditions that immigrant Filipinos – who are forced to come to the United States to find economic opportunities and escape repression – face in the U.S., including human trafficking, wage theft and hate crimes.

In his speech, Freedom Road Socialist Organization member Luis Sifuentes connected the conditions of Filipinos with the national oppression of Chicanos and other oppressed peoples in the United States. “One thing that Chicanos and Filipinos have in common is that we both have a common enemy, and that is the U.S. empire,” Sifuentes said. “While your relatives are fighting them from abroad in the motherland, we are fighting from within!”

The energetic protest ended with a song and destruction of a paper mâché sculpture of Marcos Jr, inspired by the tradition of burning dictator effigies which is practiced at protests in the Philippines. The overall call from the march was for solidarity with the Filipino people’s continuous struggle for democracy and sovereignty, and to build the fight against U.S. imperialism.

Colcol said, “When we have a combined effort to expose and oppose the conditions that the Filipino people face, we have a fighting chance in seeing a Philippines free from foreign control, free from macho and misogynistic thinking, one where women can fully participate in a society that does not see her as inferior but instead as an integral part in moving our society forward.”

The Filipino organizations and solidarity activists plan to protest the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Forum in San Francisco in November. Marcos Jr. will attend to solidify policies that open up the Philippine economy to U.S. control and further devastate the economy for Filipinos and force more immigration to the U.S.

#LosAngelesCA #Philippines #LA #democraticStruggle #Asia

Fight Back News Service is circulating the following July 25 statement from the Communist Party of the Philippines.

In his speech before the Philippine Congress yesterday, Marcos announced that he will be issuing an amnesty proclamation for all who will give up the Filipino people’s revolutionary armed struggle.

Communists and revolutionary fighters remain true to the aspirations of the Filipino people. The Communist Party of the Philippines and the New People’s Army will firmly reject Marcos’s treacherous offer of amnesty and surrender. It will vigorously exposed and condemned as an additional instrument of deception and oppression.

The revolutionary cause for genuine national freedom and social justice is far greater than any Marcos offer of amnesty. Revolutionaries are motivated not by the selfish desire for some personal gain, rather by the selfless devotion to serve and struggle with the people.

Marcos is being grossly insolent with his offer of amnesty. He is seriously mistaken to think that Red fighters of the New People’s Army will line up to gain a few individual concessions in exchange for giving up the much bigger people’s cause which they have committed themselves to.

History shows how the counterrevolutionary state have used amnesty offers as sugar-coated bullets against revolutionary forces. The US colonial government offered amnesty to Filipino freedom fighter Macario Sakay in 1905 but executed him later in 1907. In 1946, some leaders of the Hukbalahap were baited by the amnesty program of Quirino only to be murdered a few months later.

Installed into power by a combination of a military coup and giant mass movements, Corazon Aquino and Gloria Arroyo were pushed to declare amnesties and release a number political prisoners. Their regimes would later wage a brutal war of suppression marked by killings and massacres.

Marcos’ offer of amnesty for those who will surrender is duplicitous, considering that close to 800 political prisoners remain in jails, and everyday, people are being arrested and persecuted for their political beliefs and social commitment. Under the banner of the “war against terror,” people’s organizations everywhere are being suppressed and attacked, using the extraordinary draconian powers under the so-called Anti-Terrorism Law.

Marcos’ claims that his government’s “community development and livelihood programs” are effectively “addressing the root cause of conflict in the countryside” are utterly devoid of the truth, and completely out of touch with reality.

Marcos boasted of the Barangay Development Program (BDP) and the Enhanced Comprehensive Local Integration Program (E-CLIP), farm to market roads and the “New Agrarian Emancipation Act,” all of which perpetuate the basic problem of social injustice and poverty, that are rooted in the problem of landlessness.

Marcos’ declared plan to issue an amnesty proclamation fits into the so-called “localized peace talks” and “surrender drive” in which rural communities are placed under military occupation (hamlets) and subjected to the AFP’s psywar, intelligence and combat operations. In the past five years or so, a few tens of thousands of civilians have been falsely depicted as “surrenderees” without being charged in court, in violation of their civil and political rights.

The peasant masses are daily subjected to worsening forms of oppression and exploitation. Even worse, those who voice their grievances and choose to assert their demands are subjected to political repression by armed agents of the reactionary state. Military and police abuses, summary killings, torture, unlawful detention, enforced disappearances and other violations of human rights are most rampant in the countryside, and are being carried out with utmost impunity.

The Marcos regime ignores the outstanding clamor of the peasant majority population for genuine land reform, and the Filipino people’s demand for national industrialization. It represents the interests of US imperialism and those of the ruling classes of big bourgeois compradors and big landlords.

There is widespread economic dislocation and agricultural crisis in the countryside. Hundreds of thousands of farmers and minority people are being dispossessed of land and their means of production. Agricultural and ancestral land are being grabbed by the expansion of plantations and mining operations, real estate, construction of dams, ecotourism, “green” energy and other foreign-funded infrastructure projects. Millions of peasant tillers and fisherfolk are being forced to bankruptcy by wanton importation of rice, sugar, vegetables and other agricultural and aquatic produce.

The need to wage revolutionary armed resistance, alongside all other forms of struggle, is now more than ever, urgent, just and necessary. With Marcos’ outright subservience to the US, corruption, onerous economic policies, political repression, and state terrorism, he himself, by negative example, is showing the people the need to bear arms and take the road of revolutionary resistance.

The revolutionary cause is far greater than Marcos offer of amnesty.

#Philippines #CommunistPartyOfThePhilippinesCPP #Asia

Fight back News Service is circulating the following statement of Juliet de Lima, the Interim Chairperson, Negotiating Panel, of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines.

The recent ‘conviction’ of peace consultants Frank Fernandez and his wife Cleofe Lagtapon based on trumped-up charges concocted by the Manila government further exposes the US-Marcos regime’s indifference to the cause of peace. Planting of weapons and explosives on arrested persons is a well-known modus operandi of the AFP and PNP. This practice allows them to file non-bailable charges to hold forces of the revolutionary movement in prison.

Fernandez (now aged 73), accompanied by wife Lagtapon and a companion, Gee-Ann Perez were arrested in 2019 while receiving medical treatment. International Humanitarian Law (IHL) as well as the GRP-NDFP Comprehensive Agreement on Respect for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law (CARHRIHL) protect persons – noncombatants in this case –seeking access to health care, making their arrest and detention unjust in the first place.

The continued incarceration of Fernandez and Lagtapon and other consultants of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) is an outstanding violation of the Joint Agreement on Safety and Immunity Guarantees (JASIG) duly approved by respective principals of the GRP and the NDFP. The JASIG safeguards participants in the peace negotiations from surveillance, arrest, detention, prosecution, or any other similar punitive actions.

The NDFP strongly asserts that JASIG remains in full force and effect unless otherwise terminated according to the terms of the agreement.

The abduction, killing, disappearance, illegal arrest, and torture of NDFP peace consultants expose the brutal character of the US-Marcos regime, its rabid obsession for war and patent disregard of obligations to implement existing agreements.

We demand freedom for Frank Fernandez and Cleofe Lagtapon and the immediate release of all NDFP peace consultants as a matter of humanitarian and moral obligation of the GRP and in line with the principles enshrined in JASIG and international humanitarian law.

#Philippines #ndfp #Asia

For more than a year now, Ka Daisy, a transwoman, has served as full-time Red fighter. She joined the New People’s Army (NPA) during the pandemic, three years after doing revolutionary work as a member of the Kabataang Makabayan. She recounted how her unit got engaged in an armed encounter on her second day in the unit.

Ka Daisy, also called “Inday” by some comrades, now serves as a squad political guide. As an official, she ensures the strengthening of the organization. She helps outline plans and programs, and ensures its implementation. She also performs daily technical tasks such as fetching water, cooking, and transporting supply.

“I have total respect for Ka Daisy,” said Ka Alas, her squad leader. “Apart from being helpful, she teaches well. Since her deployment here, she took to teaching me LitNum (literacy/numeracy). Because I’m quite past my prime, I sometimes forget our lessons, but Inday keeps encouraging me to learn.”

Ka Daisy was warmly received by comrades as a new recruit. On her part, she was able to quickly adapt to the NPA’s military regulations.

“Even before I joined the unit, comrades were oriented about my gender. They had study meetings about the LGBT struggle,” said Ka Daisy. In her unit, instructors include the LGBT orientation when giving basic military orientation. This aims to correct wrong views and treatment of LGBTs. Some misconceptions still manifest, but these are collectively struggled in a structured and comradely manner.

Like other comrades, Ka Daisy carries a heavy pack. Her bag contains printed reading materials such as Ang Bayan and other documents and books, kitchen materials, supplies and gadgets. Thrown in the mix is her make-up kit.

“Whenever we undertake mass work, we distribute documents like AB to update the masses on important social issues,” she said.

If asked how many women are in the unit, comrades would include Ka Daisy. It was a far cry from her experiences when she was still studying in a Catholic school. She experienced restrictions and gender-based discrimination. She was prohibited to wear the clothes she prefer and had to cut her long hair short.

Within the NPA, Ka Daisy is happy to be part of forging a society that has compassion and concern for transwomen like her. For her, gender is a non-issue for one to wage revolution. It is not a hindrance nor is it a basic question. It is not a matter of competing. It is enough for one to dedicate one’s heart and time to serve the revolution.

“As an LGBT youth, our role is important in advancing the revolution. To change society’s perception, we need to transform society itself,” she added.

In waging revolution, Ka Daisy can freely express her true feelings. During the 50th anniversary of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines, she led celebrations in the guerilla front. She served as a facilitator of the program and decorated the venue. She was also one of the instructors for the dance and song cultural performances. Because of the special nature of the occasion, Ka Daisy put on some lipstick, face powder and eyeliner.

Hundreds of peasants from nearby barrios graced the occasion.

In the area of responsibility of Ka Daisy’s unit, there are a few LGBT members who belong to basic Party organs in the barrio. They actively took part in cultural performances and were open to socialize with the Red fighters.

Ka Daisy was so surprised to find someone like her, an LGBT, who is also a Red fighter.

“I have long known that the NPA accepts LGBT people like me. I am delighted finally to have met someone who came from the community. I thought I was alone here,” she jokingly said.

Indeed everyone has equal rights and responsibilities in the movement. In a society that oppresses and judges LGBT people, it is only in the revolution that they can experience genuine freedom to be themselves.

#Philippines #CommunistPartyOfThePhilippinesCPP #Asia

Fight Back News Service is circulating the following statement from the Communist Party of the Philippines.

The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and all revolutionary forces join the Filipino people in marking today 125 years of false independence under US colonialism and neocolonial rule. Let us mark this day by looking back on the history of the Filipino people’s struggle for genuine freedom and democracy and reaffirm our commitment to persevere along this path in the future.

Riding on the victories of the armed revolution led by the Katipunan since 1896 and waged by the peasants and burgeoning working class against the 300-year Spanish colonial regime, the representatives of the illustrado landlord class led by Emilio Aguinaldo proclaimed Philippine independence on June 12, 1898 “under the protection of Powerful and Humanitarian Nation, the United States of America.”

Not soon after, the naval armed forces of Spain and the United States staged the mock battle at Manila Bay with a secret agreement to transfer colonial power to the latter while helping each other suppress and prevent the revolutionary forces from gaining advantage. The transfer of colonial rule would be formalized on December 10 that year, when the Treaty of Paris was signed in which the Philippines was sold by Spain for $20 million to the United States.

Hundreds of thousands of American troops were deployed to carry out the armed suppression and colonization of the Philippines. The US colonizers carried out a brutal war against Filipino revolutionary forces–denigrated as bandits–who persisted in armed resistance for more than a decade. At least 200,000 Filipino civilians were killed by US colonial forces, while more than a million (out of a population of less than seven million) died in the course of the war.

Employing its armed might, the US colonial forces rampaged throughout the country, plundered the country’s wealth, felling trees for lumber, and taking away vast tracks of land from peasants and indigenous peoples and turning them into commercial plantations for sugar, pineapple, and other crops, as well as mines for export to the United States. It carried out a drive to colonize the Filipino people’s minds by establishing an educational system that sought to erase the country’s history and portrayed US colonialism as “benevolent assimilation.” The US pampered a breed of bureaucrat capitalists who were trained in “US democracy” who represented the interests of the US and the new class of big bourgeois compradors who melded interests with the old landlord class.

Instead of being suppressed, the Filipino people’s spirit of patriotism would be further inflamed as workers and toiling people organized and waged mass struggles over the next few decades demanding “death to US imperialism!” The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP-Philippine Islands) was established in 1930 and since then played a critical role in leading the struggle for national freedom from US colonial rule.

In the course of inter-imperialist conflict between the US allies and its rivals, the US military forces abandoned the Philippines when it was invaded by imperialist Japan. An anti-Japanese guerrilla war was waged by Filipino revolutionary forces led by the CPP-PI in pursuit of the people’s aspiration for national freedom. Across the Philippines, as in other countries, Japanese forces were defeated in guerrilla warfare. Anticipating the defeat of the Japanese, the US forces returned to the Philippines by dropping bombs in Manila causing unnecessary devastation and forcing the country to its knees. Together with its puppet forces, the US subsequently carried out a campaign of armed suppression against Filipino guerrilla forces.

To placate the Filipino people, the US granted nominal independence to the Philippines, turning over the reins of political administration of the client-state to the representatives of the ruling classes and their parties. For close to 80 years now, the country has been under neocolonial or semicolonial rule where the Philippines remains under US political, economic, military and cultural dominance.

Under US semicolonial rule, the Philippines has been robbed of trillions of dollars worth of natural resources in unequal trade and economic relations reinforced through treaties giving the US parity rights. Wages have been kept low to allow US corporations to make maximum profit. Economic policy of the Philippine government is shaped by US planners through the International Monetary Fund and World Bank and other US-controlled financial and economic institutions.

The US has maintained cultural dominance through control of the educational system, domination of the mass media and other agencies for propagating the American mindset and worldview.

The US has maintained armed dominance through military treaties foremost of which are the Mutual Defense Treaty and the now expired Military Bases Agreement, which has been replaced by such treaties as the Visiting Forces Agreement and the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA), to allow US military forces to remain in the country and use the Philippines as springboard for its wars of intervention and aggression. The Armed Forces of the Philippines, together with the entire defense establishment is the main pillar of US rule. From the very outset and to this day, the US employs and directs the AFP to carry out counterinsurgency against the revolutionary forces who continue to wage a people’s war and all forms of resistance for national and social liberation.

The past several decades of US-imposed neocolonial policies have ravaged the Philippine economy and caused widespread suffering of workers, peasants, other toiling sectors and middle classes. Large segments of local productive forces, including agricultural land and manufacturing capacity, have been destroyed by investment and import liberalization, deregulation and privatization. The ruling classes of big bourgeois compradors and big landlords, and foreign capitalists have enjoyed all-out freedom under the neoliberal policy regime to plunder and accumulate profit and wealth. The Filipino people are now experiencing the grave consequence of neoliberalism in the form of massive unemployment, dirt-cheap wages, loss of income, spiraling prices, rural dislocation, and environmental destruction. The country is in the grips of a financial crisis marked by rising public debt, loss of state revenue due corporate tax exemptions and holidays, and rising expenses for a bloated military and police force.

We are currently in the advent of a new phase in the history of the struggle against US imperialism, amid rising inter-imperialist conflicts and threats of open war, and the US push to reinforce its neocolonial stranglehold of the Philippines and its military, economic and political dominance in the Philippines in the context of its geopolitical aims and saber-rattling against China. The rush of the US to construct a number of military bases and facilities in various parts of the country under the EDCA, especially in the northern areas which are closest to Taiwan and China, has once again highlighted the country’s lack of sovereignty and underscores how it is being used by the US as a pawn in its game of strategy to protect and expand its areas of investment and influence in the Asia-Pacific region.

Amid deepening capitalist crisis, the US and other imperialist powers are increasingly resorting to wars and war preparations as means to jolt their economies and expand their markets, sources of raw materials and spheres of influence. As a consequence, semicolonial and semifeudal countries such as the Philippines are being subjected to worsening state of national oppression as the imperialist powers seek to consolidate their hegemony over countries and entire global regions. The absence of Philippine sovereignty is starker than ever before.

Since it was reestablished in 1968, the Communist Party of the Philippines has been at the forefront of the Filipino people’s struggle for genuine national freedom. The Party took up the cudgels left by the Katipunan, as well as by previous generations of revolutionary fighters. It has been waging a people’s war since 1969 and will continue to do so as long as it takes to free the country from the clutches of US imperialism.

Today let us set our sights on waging even greater resistance in order to free the country from the clutches of the US imperialist ogre and attain the Filipino people’s aspirations for national freedom and democracy. Let us commit ourselves to the struggle, however difficult and arduous, as this is the only path towards a bright and prosperous future.

#Philippines #CommunistPartyOfThePhilippinesCPP #Asia

Members of Wyeth Philippines Progressive Workers’ Union (WPPWU) and their supporters mounted a series of mass protests and other activities to demand the reinstatement of 140 workers who were illegally dismissed by Wyeth-Nestlé Philippines on May 18, 2023 and five other workers who were fired earlier, reported Ang Bayan, official organ of the Communist Party of the Philippines, on June 7, 2023.

The WPPWU fought back with more than 20 picket protests to defend the company jobs of workers and defend the union’s previous gains.

Ang Bayan said that the WPPWU protested on May 30 in front of the Nestlé Cabuyao Factory then headed to Calamba, Laguna for the third hearing of the National Conciliation and Mediation Board of Calabarzon on the “notice of strike” filed by the union. Youth groups, church people, other unions and workers, federations, union centers, migrants and artists joined the mass action to demand the reinstatement of the dismissed workers.

Nestlé is notorious worldwide for violations labor rights. In fact, Nestlé has already killed two union leaders in the country and many others in South America.

The Makabayan Bloc in the Philippine Congress filed House Resolution 1067 on May 31 which called for an investigation into the unfair “cost cutting and restructuring strategy”; used by Nestlé to justify mass layoffs.

Other Nestlé unions in the cities of Cagayan de Oro and Lipa gave support and solidarity to the WPPWU. On May 26, these unions wrote to Nestlé demanding the reinstatement of their fellow workers. They urged the company management in Canlubang, Laguna, to implement their touted policy of open communication and dialogue to safeguard the rights of their workers.

Bong Labog, Chairperson of the labor federation Kilusang Mayo Uno (May First Movement) said, “We are aware of Nestlé’s reputation as a violator of labor laws, of not honoring agreements and CBAs, of violently breaking strikes, and of killing labor leaders. It earns billions every year, but greed emboldens them to jeopardize the lives of hundreds of workers and their families.”

#Philippines #Labor #CommunistPartyOfThePhilippinesCPP #Asia

The U.S. imperialists and its military forces are notorious for outright military intervention and violating the territorial sovereignty of countries around the world. Indeed, it is well known that the U.S. military has been freely operating their drones and other aircraft within Philippine airspace to transport war matériel and personnel in their various military bases and facilities, as well as take part in local military operations, including conducting drone surveillance, in the name of “counter-terrorism.”

In the same way that U.S. soldiers played an active role in the bombing of Marawi City in 2017, American military officers are also often sighted in tactical outposts of the AFP in various parts of the country, acting as advisers and directing counterguerrilla operations of Filipino soldiers against Filipino revolutionary fighters.

It is thus not surprising, but nonetheless a condemnable act of outright intervention, that the U.S. military is flying drones and carrying out air strikes in the Philippines against the New People’s Army (NPA). A few weeks ago, a unit of the NPA in Surigao del Sur, reported that a “Hermes”-type drone fired rocket bombs at their position as they engaged members of the 30th IB in a gun battle in the Katarugan mountains, in Barangay Lobo, Cantilan, Surigao del Sur, last May 11, 2023 at around 5:15 p.m. Two Red fighters were killed in the attack. Images of the area taken after the drone strikes show surrounding burned trees and vegetation.

NPA Red fighters are familiar with how the AFP uses its noisy FA-50s, Super Tucano jets or McDonnel Douglas and Agusta Westland helicopters for firing rocket bombs and strafing.

With the AFP not having publicly acknowledged that its drones are being armed with rocket bombs, there is high probability that the May 11 armed drone strike in Surigao del Sur was carried out by the U.S. military itself, either by arming the AFP’s Hermes drones purchased from Israel with its Hellfire missiles, or using its own Reaper drones which from the ground could be mistaken for a Hermes drone.

The U.S. military is known for having carried out tens of thousands of drone strikes operations overseas, especially in Pakistan and Afghanistan, where up to at least a few hundreds of civilians have been killed. On U.S. instigation, drones are now also being increasingly used by the Indian government in its attacks against the people and revolutionary forces.

It is up to the AFP to explain whether it allowed the U.S. to operate armed drones and fire rockets or drop bombs within the Philippines, in violation of Philippine sovereignty. Or whether, the AFP is now itself using armed drones to carry out aerial bombing in its counterinsurgency operations, which puts the lives of civilians in danger, and causes excessive loss of lives, in violation of international humanitarian law.

#Philippines #drones #USImperialism #Asia

Detroit, MI – The International League of Peoples' Struggle (ILPS), Public Citizen, and local organizers united in a day of resistance to APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation). The senior officials of APEC stopped in Detroit for some of their U.S. meetings to solidify the IPEF (Indo-Pacific Economic Framework) deal.

The IPEF represents more of the same failed policy the U.S. attempts to push on workers both here and abroad – hyper exploitation and investment abroad, deindustrialization and unemployment at home. Much like the embattled TPP (Trans Pacific Partnership) which was pushed by the U.S. until 2017, and failed due to a combination of popular pressure and divisions in the ruling class. Organizers are putting the spotlight on the IPEF so it can be defeated in the same way.

Detroit stands as an example of the outcomes of such trade deals, one of the first and hardest hit by NAFTA deindustrialization and the financial fraud of the banks, so it was a natural choice for the APEC tour of the U.S. Detroiters, labor leaders from the East Coast and Midwest, and organizers from a wide variety of struggles spent the first half of the day learning and teaching each other about this trade deal, its likely outcomes, the interests and governments behind it, and what it means for the working class in the U.S. and abroad.

Bayan USA gave a presentation about the negative impact these trade deals have had on the people and the land in the Philippines: rainforests destroyed by reckless, deregulated nickel mining, labor leaders assassinated atrocious working conditions for those who can find a job, 6000 Filipinos being shipped off every day to every corner of the globe in search of work, and the list goes on.

This was only one aspect of the story, however, with the rich history of solidarity within the international working class being another. Many of the nurses who cared for AIDS patients during the crisis in the 1980s were Filipina nurses who left their homes in search of a living. When the CWA (Communications Workers of America) Verizon workers went on strike in 2016, workers in the Philippines chose to strike in solidarity rather than scab, leading to a victory for both groups and a close relationship since then between the CWA and BIEN (BPO Industry Employees Network).

When asked what we in the U.S. can do to show that same solidarity, Anakbayan USA member Diana Balitaan emphasized, “We must continue to uplift and connect the struggles in the Philippines to our struggles locally. Four of our members were arrested two weeks ago for rightfully disrupting and protesting Marcos Jr. and his crimes at a lavish dinner he held for his cabinet members and billionaire friends in Washington DC. Our members were calling out Marcos for selling out the Philippines to U.S. imperialism. We call on all comrades and allies to join our week of action to boost the call to drop the charges and that activism is not a crime!”

One UAW member in attendance pointed out that Michigan and Detroit in particular are in the crosshairs of these trade deals, saying, “Detroit is at the center of investment for electric vehicles, but trade deals like this ensure a race to the bottom,” referring to the fact that time and again, investment in and subsidies for regionally manufactured green infrastructure is overturned in trade deal lawsuits due to the subsidies “causing losses in revenue to companies not covered by the subsidy,” for example, when India sued the U.S. for subsidizing domestic solar technology in 2019.

To close out the presentations Ryan Harvey of Public Citizen summarized the spirit and policy of these trade deals, saying “Imagine if a leader of a major multinational corporation said, ‘Let’s just create a court, which operates in secret, is operated by our agents, can sue other countries for an unlimited amount of money, and there are no appeals for those decisions.’ That’s what we actually have today.”

The teach-in was followed by a rally in the heart of Detroit and a short march to the Westin hotel, where APEC officials were meeting. Demonstrators lined the hotel entrance with banners and chants, scaring off one APEC bus which opted to drop off the delegates elsewhere. The APEC tour next heads to Seattle in July and holding its final summit in San Francisco in November. Organizers are hoping to build the “No to APEC Coalition,” put APEC in the spotlight and let popular resistance put the IPEF in the dustbin of history.

More information on the DC4 can be found here: bit.ly/nomarcosvisit

#DetroitMI #Philippines #apec #Asia

Fight Back News Service is circulating the Labor Party of Turkey (EMEP) statement on the presidential and parliamentary elections held on May 14.

Despite the ruling party's use of state facilities and resources to implement all kinds of restrictions, provocations, censorship and threats against its opponents, the result of the presidential and parliamentary elections was a decline in the mass support of the one-man regime and the AKP's loss of power in parliament.

The AKP did not refrain from terrorizing the environment by recalling at every opportunity the methods of violence used between the 7 June and 1 November elections in 2015, using their connotations as election material, and fueling rumors that para-military groups would take to the streets. It has provoked the prejudices of the people in the pool media by embracing the most reactionary vein coming from the National Vision with sects and communities, with parties such as Hüda Par, the extension of the contra tradition; it has tried to expand the boundaries of a racist-chauvinist political ground. The fact that Hüda Par, The New Welfare Party (YRP) sent deputies to the parliament, that the MHP increased its vote – at a rate unexpected from itself – and that the centrifugal and, so to speak, more radical tendencies outside the nationalist-conservative vein, of which the People's Alliance is the main axis, have been drawn into the orbit of this alliance and protect it.

Unable to stop its own decline despite the increase in its allies and the contribution of its distant support, the AKP made a special effort to ensure that the presidential elections went to a second round. The interventions on the election results took place in full view of everyone. The AKP, which tried to gain time even with methods that strained the patience and physical endurance of observers and other officials by having the minutes counted again and again, still could not hide the altitude lost by the one-man regime.

The Labor and Freedom Alliance, including our party, entered the elections under extraordinarily difficult conditions. Despite the threat of the HDP's closure, the arrest of politicians and journalists, the pressure on voters, armed demonstrations and attacks on election day, the Labor and Freedom Alliance completed the process more or less preserving the number of deputies it sent to parliament, even though it could not increase the number of deputies it sent to parliament.

Various reasons for the failure of the one-man regime to be defeated in the first round will undoubtedly be discussed. The main reason that needs to be underlined is that a united struggle that directly organizes the workers and the oppressed around their own problems could not be formed at the national level. The gap arising from this organizational weakness of the working class and laborer’s was filled by parties provoking reactionary sensitivities. This situation has once again repeated the old experience that the reactionary prejudices of the poor, unemployed, precarious and unorganized masses can be mobilized. This explains the partial increase in the votes of the old and new allies of the AKP.

However, the parliamentary picture that has emerged is not merely a change in the arithmetic redistribution of the power that is dragging the country further and further into darkness.

Our party sent two MPs to the parliament from the list of the Green Left Party as representatives of the workers and laborer’s. Together with the other MPs of our alliance, our friends who entered the parliament from the Green Left Party lists will fight against anti-people and anti-laborer policies, capitalist politics, anti-democratic practices against women, Kurds and immigrants.

Our party will make a broader evaluation of the 2023 elections after the evaluations to be made both in its own boards and in the Labor and Freedom Alliance.

A new period of struggle is now opening before us. The result that our people, who express their tendency for change in one way or another, put before us with their votes is to transform this tendency into a power that can overthrow the one-man regime. This responsibility lies with the forces of labor and democracy.

Our party calls on all laborer’s to mobilize in order to overthrow the one-man regime, which was weakened in this election, in the second round.”

#Turkey #LaborPartyOfTurkey #Asia

American soldiers, together with the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), are rushing to build its military bases in Barangay Bobon, Burgos, Ilocos Norte. This location is not among those announced by the Marcos government where the US will build facilities under the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA).

The U.S. claimed 30 hectares of land to position 40 howitzer cannons. There are buildings that American soldiers themselves admit are used for monitoring China’s military movement. The U.S. is also building a seawall as wide as a road to fortify their base. It is 800 meters long, 15 meters wide, and a foundation four meters high and eight meters deep.

American soldiers behave like rulers over the place. Along with Filipino soldiers, they conducted a 7-day simulation and live-fire exercises in the area from March 16 to 26. Small fisherfolks could not fish during these days. They expressed fear of a clash erupting between U.S. and China forces.

“Our situation is precarious,” said one fisherman. “What if we are at sea and then their rockets suddenly start firing?” The “seawall” is also a problem as it blocks their path to the sea.

During military drills in San Joaquin, Sarrat, US forces involved some civilians. “(During training), we carried American soldiers who pretended to be war casualties,” said a resident who was made to take part in the training. “This mean during a real war, we will be made to carry American war casualties. Damn, they were heavy!”

Residents witnessed the blatant arrogance of American soldiers. They brag among residents that the facilities they constructed in the military camp serve to surveil the movement of Chinese troops and their rockets. They use their computers to show people their missile network focused on China. Clearly, Ilocos Norte is part of the US’s “First Island Chain” strategy against China.

At the same time, the puppet Armed Forces of the Philippines has intensified its presence in the province. Accompanying the U.S. Marines company in Barangay Bobon is the 4th Marine Brigade Landing Battalion (MBLB). This battalion first arrived in Currimao, Ilocos Norte as a Balikatan participant in June 2022.

According to residents, Filipino and American forces regularly reconnoiter the highway from Tarrag and Balaoi in Pagudpud to Claveria, Cagayan using two six-by-six trucks. Cabungan South in Laoag and Laoag Airport each has a squad of US Marines.

There are also U.S. Marines forces in Currimao, where the Balikatan was previously held. US Marines cunningly established their presence in Sarat town using the pretext of building a health center. All of these villages and towns are on the coast facing the South China Sea.

Whatever charm the American troops adorn themselves with, residents in the affected barangays know the country will be more vulnerable to the horrors of the impending imperialist war.

“Whatever claims of development these American troops bring do not matter if it means the country will face more difficult conditions in the event of a war.” This is the response of residents to the alleged mission of “community development” flaunted by American troops.

In fact, the local people were elated after learning that part of the Balikatan Exercises that were scheduled in Ilocos Norte on April 24 was cancelled.

#Philippines #CommunistPartyOfThePhilippinesCPP #Asia

Fight Back News Service is circulating the following statement from the Freedom Road Socialist Organization.

To: Communist Party of the Philippines

From: Freedom Road Socialist Organization

Dear Comrades,

The cowardly murders of Benito Tiamzon, the chairman of the CPP Executive Committee, and Wilma Austria-Tiamzon, General Secretary, by U.S.-commanded troops of the Armed forces of the Philippines (AFP), are towering crimes that will never be forgiven of forgotten. Nor will the cruel murders of the Catbalogan 10. Their revolutionary spirits and contributions to the worldwide struggle for national liberation and socialism will live forever.

Freedom Road Socialist Organization sends it condolences to it the CP and friends and family of the murdered comrades. The loss of those of those build the fight for a new world and serve the people is, as the Chairman Mao Zedong stated, “weightier than Mount Tai.”

Each and every one of the murdered comrades is a hero. Communists everywhere should learn from their example.

U.S. imperialism is responsible for this horrific crime. And we are certain the rule of the U.S puppet Marcos regime will not last long! Time is on the side of the oppressed. The many will defeat the few. The perpetrators of this crime will face a day of reckoning – sooner rather than later.

With solidarity,

Mick Kelly, for the Standing Committee of the Central Committee, FRSO

#UnitedStates #Philippines #CommunistPartyOfThePhilippinesCPP #Asia

Dear Comrades,

On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the founding of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP), Freedom Road Socialist Organization sends warm and militant greetings. The achievements of the NDFP are legion and inspiration to revolutionaries everywhere. We are certain that efforts of the NDFP to build the national democratic movement and assisting the peoples war will meet with even great successes in the future.

For the past 50 years the NDFP and its constituent organization have crystallized the aspirations of the peoples of the Philippines to end the rule of imperialism, feudalism, and bureaucrat-capitalism. From the fight against martial law under the rule of the first Marcos regime, right up until the today, the NDFP has stood in the forefront of battle for national liberation and genuine democracy.

The NDFP has successfully defeated wave after wave of repression, while growing in strength and stature. Mao Zedong spoke of fearing neither hardship nor death. The NDFP is the embodiment of that revolutionary spirit.

The people of the Philippines and the people of the U.S. share a common enemy. The monopoly capitalists, the imperialists that oppress the people of the U.S., have built an evil empire that spans much of the globe and dominates the Philippines. Anything that weakens U.S. imperialism is in the interests of both our peoples. Your victories are our victories. Together we will win!

Long live the National Democratic Front of the Philippines!

With communist greetings,

Mick Kelly, Political Secretary of the Standing Committee, FRSO

#UnitedStates #Philippines #NationalDemocraticFrontOfThePhilippinesNDFP #Asia

Fight Back News Service is circulating the following April 20 statement from Communist Party of the Philippines.

The entire leadership and membership of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) condemns in the strongest terms the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) for the brutal torture and cowardly killing of Party leaders Benito Tiamzon (Ka Laan) and Wilma Austria-Tiamzon (Ka Bagong-tao), together with eight other revolutionaries after they were captured in Samar province on August 21, 2022.

At the time of their murder, Ka Benito, 71, was the Chairman of the CPP Executive Committee, while Ka Wilma, 70, was the CPP’s Secretary General. They were travelling with Ka Divino (Joel Arceo), a subregional secretary in Eastern Visayas, along with Ka Yen, Ka Jaja, Ka Matt, Ka Ash, Ka Delfin, Ka Lupe, Ka Butig (Catbalogan 10), who all belonged to the guerrilla force of the central headquarters.

In a report, the Political Bureau said the Tiamzons were travelling on two separate vans along the national highway eastwards towards Catbalogan City. They were flagged down between 12:00 noon and 1:00 in the afternoon, after which all communications with the group were lost. They were unarmed.

It explained that it took several weeks to establish the veracity of the reports which the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) released around that time. It also had to conduct months of investigation to piece together the details of the capture and subsequent massacre of the Tiamzons.

According to the information gathered by the Central Committee, the Tiamzons suffered severe beating in the hands of their captors. Internal reports cited witnesses who saw how the faces and bodies of the victims were smashed, apparently beaten with hard objects.

The CPP PolitBureau disputed the report of the AFP suggesting that the Tiamzons were killed after their supposed boat exploded while engaging in a firefight with forces of the Joint Task Force Storm, the 8th Infantry Division and the Joint Special Operations Task Force-Trident—a unit trained and commanded by the US military—during the early morning hours of August 22, 2022 off the coast of Catbalogan.

The claimed mid-sea firefight and explosion were all a drama hatched by the AFP and its US military advisers, to hide all evidence of the ignominy of their fascist crime. In truth, the already lifeless bodies of the Tiamzons and their group were dumped on a motorboat filled with explosives, and tugged from Catbalogan midway towards Taranganan island before it was detonated. Only eight bodies were subsequently retrieved by the military.

The murder of the Tiamzons follow the pattern of the wilful killings perpetrated by the AFP against captured revolutionaries. The same cruel and cowardly methods were used in the killing of Jorge Madlos (Ka Oris), Menardo Villanueva (Ka Bok), Antonio Cabantan (Ka Manlimbasog), Julius Giron (Ka Nars) and a number of others.

The Party demands justice for the August 21 massacre of the Tiamzons et al. Their capture, torture and killing were directed by the top officers of the AFP. The CPP holds the following directly responsible for the dastardly crime:

Ferdinand Marcos Jr, commander-in-chief of the AFP, Lt. Gen. Emmanuel Bacarro, then chief-of-staff of the AFP, Lt. Gen. Edgardo de Leon, then head of the JTF-Storm and the 8th Infantry Division, and Brig. Gen. Marceliano Teofilo, head of the Intelligence Service ng AFP, as well as the US military advisers behind the Task Force Trident.

The CPP demands justice for the Tiamzons and the Catbalogan 10, and calls for their indictment in all relevant courts.

#Philippines #CommunistPartyOfThePhilippinesCPP #Asia

New York, NY – Crowds gathered the evening of April 10 as progressive organizations denounced recent United States warmongering in the Asia-Pacific and demanded an end to U.S. military presence in the Philippines. Today marked the beginning of the largest-ever joint military exercises (“Balikatan”) between the U.S. military and the Armed Forces of the Philippines; war games that are a part of war preparations against China.

The Filipino organizations hosting the Monday explained that in February of this year, the government announced that it was adding four additional military bases to the list of facilities accessible and usable by the U.S. military. In return, the U.S. announced a $3.3 million grant to the Philippine National Police, which will fund the ongoing human rights abuses committed by the current Marcos-Duterte government.

As the organizers declared, “War games will not bring more stability to the region, nor will it help the Filipino people in defending our sovereignty, the invitation of U.S. imperialism into the country is a direct affront to sovereignty. And as history has proven, greater U.S. military presence will surely lead to more violence against women and children. As the economic crisis continues to impact working class and poor communities across the U.S. – including Filipinos – BAYAN USA demands that U.S. taxpayer dollars be directed towards serving the people’s needs rather than funding war and counterinsurgency abroad.”

Briny Smith, of the International League of Peoples Struggle (ILPS), which is an alliance of organizations around the world united in the fight against imperialism stated, “Under Biden as under Trump, the U.S. pursues a foreign policy of ever-increasing aggression and repression of people’s struggles across the world. Busy saber rattling at China with no regard for the consequences, the U.S. pleads Israel’s ‘inherent right to self-defense,’ as Israeli forces brutally attack Palestinians praying in al-Aqsa during Ramadan. And closer to home, the U.S. maintains its on grip on Puerto Rico through FBI repression and economic stranglehold, denying Puerto Ricans their right to independence and self-determination, just like it denies that right to the people of Palestine, the Philippines, and oppressed nations across the world.”

Some of the other speakers focused on topics including the U.S. military’s horrible environmental footprint, the abuses of Filipino women by U.S. soldiers, and the false labelling of democratic activists as “terrorists.” BAYAN USA concluded with another call to action: “We call on the people to support the Philippine Human Rights Act, a bill to cut U.S. security assistance to the Philippine military and police for their role in human rights violations. Most importantly, we call on all Filipinos and supporters to build the mass movement to junk all unequal U.S.-PH military agreements, stop military aid and war games, and end U.S. imperialism in the Philippines.”

Hosting organizations included BAYAN USA Northeast, Anakbayan Manhattan, Anakbayan North Jersey, Anakbayan Philadelphia, Anakbayan Queens NY, Gabriela New York, Gabriela New Jersey, Migrante New York, and Migrante New Jersey.

#NewYorkNY #Philippines #InternationalLeagueOfPeoplesStruggle #Asia

Fight Back News Service is circulating the following statement from the Communist Party of the Philippines.

The leadership of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) today, March 28, issued a statement on the occasion of 54th anniversary of the New People’s Army (NPA) tomorrow, March 29. The CPP exhorted the NPA’s commanders and Red fighters to “stir up and spread the flames of the people’s war for national freedom and democracy.”

The Central Committee of the CPP cited “intensified imperialist oppression against the Filipino people” and emphasized the need to “attain freedom from US control and domination and carry out land reform and national industrialization” which it said, “are the key steps to turn (the Filipino people’s) lives around.”

It denounced the neoliberal economic measures being carried out by the Marcos regime which cause the broad masses of the Filipino toiling people to suffer from “dispossession of their livelihood by real estate companies, plantation, mining companies, infrastructure, as well as land reclamation projects.”

The Party said there is a “clear link” between “fascist suppression and the antipeople neoliberal economic policies and programs” of the Marcos regime. It lambasted the US government for being responsible for the “widespread campaign of terrorism and fascist monstrosities” under the Marcos regime.

It denounced the plan of the US to construct more military bases in the Philippines to use the country “as part of its war theater preparations against China.”

The CPP said “the broad masses of the Filipino people are suffering from increasingly intolerable forms of oppression and exploitation… they are ever determined to wage resistance in order to free the country from clutches of US imperialism and the subservient ruling classes, and attain genuine national freedom and democracy.”

The message traced the growth of the NPA over the past 54 years of waging revolutionary armed struggle saying “it has frustrated the enemy’s campaigns of encirclement and suppression one after another” from the first Marcos regime to the current second Marcos regime. The Party said the NPA has “steadily advanced and surmounted every disadvantage and setback.”

“The preservation and nationwide growth of the NPA through more than five decades of fighting clearly proves the correctness of the strategy and tactics set forth by the Party for waging protracted people’s war in the Philippines,” said the CPP Central Committee.”

“The key has always been for NPA units to constantly expand and deepen its links with the broad masses of peasants,” said the CPP.

The CPP said “there are clear prospects for a new period of revolutionary surge in the Philippines.” It said it is certain that NPA will win more achievements and victories “in the coming period of revolutionary surge.”

#Philippines #CommunistPartyOfThePhilippinesCPP #Asia

The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) denounces the US-Marcos regime and the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) for the deployment of an excessive number of counterinsurgency troops in Samar over the past weeks.

The fascist surge aims to turn the Samar island back into a “howling wilderness,” in the same manner that US colonial forces sought to crush the patriotic resistance of the people of Samar at the turn of the century. This excessive deployment of combat troops will not solve the socioeconomic problems of the people of Samar, but will only aggravate their hardships. The fascist surge will bring nothing but terror to the people of Samar. It, however, is bound to be frustrated by the revolutionary masses and people’s army in Samar and Eastern Visayas.

Since December, more than 1,000 Army soldiers have been deployed to Samar to augment the 21 battalions of enemy troops already operating in the region under the 8th Infantry Division. The purported aim of this massive deployment is to “crush the four remaining guerrilla fronts” of the New People’s Army (NPA), specifically in Northern Samar. These additional armed troops belong to the 74th Infantry Battalion (from Basilan), the 42nd IB (from the Quezon-Bicol area) and the 4th Scout Ranger Battalion. In addition, the AFP deployed more than 550 new combat troops who completed their training in Camp Eugenio Daza in Hinabangan, Samar last February 20.

These units of the AFP are notorious for attacking civilian communities and perpetrating rampant rights violations. The 4th SRC, in particular, faces numerous complaints in Agusan del Norte and Misamis Oriental. The 42nd IB is also notorious for its role in implementing Memorandum Order 32 which placed Bicol, Samar and Negros under military rule. The 42nd IB is among the perpetrators of the AFP’s rampage of killings in Bicol, murdering one victim every week since 2018.

Violations of human rights and international humanitarian law perpetrated by the AFP and Philippine National Police (PNP) have been rampant in Samar and the whole of the Eastern Visayas. Under the counterinsurgency campaign of the AFP and PNP, people belonging to all types of mass organizations have been made targets for suppression, since the issuance of Memorandum Order 32.

The AFP has blurred the lines between armed combatants and civilians by considering mass organizations in Samar fighting for land and peasant rights, and defending democratic rights, as being armed rebels. Their members are targeted by the AFP as combatants, subjected to surveillance, harassment and intimidation, arrests and killings, and forced to “surrender” without any legal or judicial process. Entire villages and communities are placed under military hamlet control where their rights are severely restricted. The AFP has also carried out a terrorist wave of aerial bombardment in Samar that target fields, forests and nearby communities. Children have not been spared from violent attacks by the military as shown by the killing of two teenagers by troops of the 20th who indiscriminately fired their weapons in Barangay Roxas, Catubig, Northern Samar last February 8, 2022. Human rights defenders and alternative media practitioners, themselves, have been imprisoned in the hope of silencing the people of Eastern Visayas and preventing them from exposing the truth.

With the deployment of more than a thousand combat troops, the AFP will again turn Samar into a howling wilderness adapting the scorched earth tactics of US colonial forces during the Filipino American war, as well as those applied in the US counterguerrilla war in Vietnam. These tactics, however, are bound to fail as these only further expose the rottenness of the ruling system and inflame the people’s anger against the ruling classes of exploiters and oppressors.

Faced with relentless fascist suppression and worsening socioeconomic oppression and exploitation, the people of Samar and the entire Eastern Visayas region have no other option but to fight back through all forms of resistance. They must strengthen and consolidate their organizations. The canons and bombs of the AFP will ultimately prove futile as the broad masses of the people of Samar courageously act and rise up as one body.

The CPP calls on all commands and units of the NPA in Samar and Eastern Visayas to continue waging extensive and intensive guerrilla warfare on the basis of an ever expanding and deepening mass base. They must exert all efforts to spread the flames of the armed revolution. They must be ready to recruit and train more Red fighters as the broad masses of the people are determined to join the armed resistance to defend themselves against the terrorist state.

The NPA in Samar and in the Eastern Visayas region continue to master the war of quick and clandestine maneuvers and ssiduously carry out the tactics of concentration, dispersal and shifting to keep the enemy deaf and blind. They can carry out strikes where and when the enemy least expects it and employ the tactic of feigning to the east and striking in the west. They are determined to mount basic tactical offensives, combined with widespread armed actions, including special partisan operations, and mobilization of militia units, to take away the enemy’s initiative and disrupt its plans. They continue to strengthen their ties with the peasant masses by helping carry out their antifeudal struggles and addressing their urgent social and economic needs.

The regional and various levels of Party leadership are determined to build the revolutionary mass movement in the cities and countryside of Eastern Visayas. The broad masses of oppressed and exploited classes are being aroused, organized and mobilized to fight for their urgent demands for alleviation from the economic crisis and calamities including wage increases for workers, lowering of land rent and loan interests, fare farmgate prices and other urgent agrarian reforms, and others.

They people of Eastern Visayas are determined to link up with the urgent struggle against rising US military intervention, especially as American troops increase their presence in Guiuan, Eastern Samar, and other parts of the region, as part of its war preparations; and denounce US supplying of weapons and military equipment for the AFP used for the suppression of the Filipino people.

The Party calls on the Filipino people, human rights defenders, church people, workers, students, women, artists and all other democratic sectors, to link-up arms and help the people of Samar and Eastern Visayas expose the crimes being perpetrated by the AFP in the course of its futile counterinsurgency drive.

Led by the Party, the people and revolutionary forces in Eastern Visayas are determined to rise, resolutely fight and wage widespread resistance against the US-Marcos regime’s fascist state terrorism and frustrate its aim of transforming Samar into a howling wilderness.

#Phillipines #Philippines #CommunistPartyOfPhilippines #Asia