Fight Back News Service is circulating the following statement from Ang Bayan (“The People”), the official publication of the Communist Party of the Philippines.

Protest actions staged by progressive groups greeted the visit of new US Defense Sec. Peter Hegseth to the Philippines on March 28. Hegseth was in the country until March 29 to meet with Philippine defense and military officials to drive the US’s war agenda in the Philippines and Asia.

Hegseth’s agenda includes the deployment of US military equipment in the country, in line with its strategic goal of surrounding China using the first-island chain. After deploying the Typhon Missile System in northern Philippines, the US plans to deploy the NMESIS (Navy Marine Expeditionary Ship Interdiction System) in the country.

The NMESIS is an anti-ship missile system that can be loaded onto an unmanned ground vehicle called the ROGUE Fires Carrier, which carries the Naval Strike Missile (NSM). The NSMs are missiles that can fly up to 185 kilometers with stealth features to avoid detection. The US Marine Corps used this system for long-range attacks against ships from land.

Along with the NMESIS, the US will deploy unmanned surface vessels in the South China Sea. These drones are usually small and portable, designed for harsh sea conditions and narrow waterways. They are equipped with sensors, cameras, ISR systems, and sonar. They can be controlled directly or indirectly by humans and are used for surveillance, surveys, reconnaissance, and directing sea traffic.

The newly formed Littoral Rotational Force-Luzon of the US 3rd Marine Littoral Regiment will handle these equipment. Like previous rotational forces, their presence will be permanent in Philippine seas and coastlines, violating the reactionary constitution prohibiting the presence of foreign troops. The upcoming Balikatan 2025 will introduce this permanent force leading a “full battle test” where the US will use the Philippines as a springboard for war against China.

#International #Philippines #CommunistPartyOfThePhilippines

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

We condemn the Philippine National Police (PNP) for the unlawful and baseless arrest of retired National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) consultant, Ruben Abenir Saluta, 75 years old, literary writer and newspaperman, together with wife Presentacion Saluta and a female companion identified as Yvonne Losaria, last night in Doña Soledad, Barangay Labangal, General Santos City.

Saluta, who is frail and suffering from hypertension, as well as from chronic pulmonary disease, has long retired from active duty since being released from imprisonment after cases against him and his wife were dismissed from 2016 to 2019. Presentacion, likewise, suffers from hypertension and heart disease.

We condemn the police for planting firearms and explosives against Saluta et al.

The Party supports the call for the immediate release of Saluta and company.

The Party denounces the gross inhumane treatment of the elderly revolutionaries who have lived lives in service of the oppressed and exploited masses.

We call on human rights defenders, as well as journalists and cultural workers to come to the aid of Saluta and raise the demand for their immediate freedom!

#Philippines #PeoplesStruggles #CommunistPartyOfThePhilippines #Asia

The Party today joins the Filipino people and their broad democratic and patriotic forces in marking International Human Rights Day. We cannot overemphasize the significance of this year’s commemoration of Human Rights Day as the Filipino people face increasingly worse forms of political repression under a government that employs its armed minions to terrorize the people.

The Philippines today is under a de facto martial law regime in which the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and the Philippine National Police (PNP) dominate all aspects of society and government through the National Task Force (NTF)-Elcac, its RTFs, “peace and order councils”, “regional development and security” and others.

In complete contempt of the principle of civilian supremacy, the military and its fascist doctrine increasingly dominate the state, its bureaucracy, by imposing “counterinsurgency” as the central objective of the state and all its agencies, through appointment of former military and police officials, intimidation of courts and collusion with judges, and allotment of hundreds of billions of pesos to purchase more and more weapons, multiply its battalions, spend money for its widespread campaign of disinformation and psywar operations, and to line the pockets of its present and former officers.

A culture of impunity prevails among the military and police forces as they commit rampant violations of human rights in both the cities and countryside. This is in line with the vain attempt of the ruling reactionary state to quell the patriotic and democratic forces, their resistance to imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism, and their heightening clamor for national democratic change. The number of police killings in the sham drug war also continue to increase, with the number under Marcos’ first six months surpassing the last six months of the previous regime.

Human rights defenders, church people as well as journalists are targeted and subjected to intimidation in order for the military to continue with their fascist rampage without fear of public culpability. The NTF-Elcac and the AFP brandish the Anti-Terror Law to threaten anyone who stand against their way. The reactionary state continues to build a machinery of mass surveillance.

In the cities, the fascist state targets union leaders, members and organizers, as well as community organizations. In violation of their right to form unions or associations, they are frequented by military and police agents who subject them to endless harassment to force them to leave their organizations or disaffiliate from national democratic centers. Big capitalists connive and fund these armed agents of the state. People in urban poor communities are being rounded up (typically in the guise of giving economic aid), made to sign blank papers, and falsely paraded as “surrenderees.” In schools and factories, the military and police deploy agents to spy on workers and students or conduct seminars that invariably ends with a threat against joining patriotic and democratic organizations.

The situation is worse in the countryside where military and police rule is imposed, especially in remote villages. Entire peasant and indigenous peoples communities are placed under hamlet. Fascist agents relentlessly carry out abductions and illegal arrests, torture, willful killings, ransacking and illegal searches of homes, food blockades, media blackouts, red-tagging, and so on. The aim of this campaign of fascist terror is to cow the people, force them to their knees, disunite them and destroy their organizations, and take away their capacity to stand up for their economic, social, political and cultural rights.

Over the past years of waging an all-out strategic offensive against the New People’s Army (NPA), the AFP has committed grave abuses of human rights and violations of international humanitarian law. Captured revolutionaries, hors de combat and civilians have been wantonly killed in a show of utter brutality and disrespect for civilized rules of warfare. Civilian lives are put in danger by military encampment in populated areas, aerial bombing and shelling near communities, farms and forests, forced conscription into paramilitary groups, having civilians serve as guides in combat operations and so on. Child rights and special protection of children under international humanitarian law are routinely violated by the AFP and PNP in the course of its military operations.

State terrorism has continued to worsen under the US-Marcos regime in its first months of rule. This nationwide campaign of terror is instigated and funded by the US in line with its sham “war against terror” which, in fact, is an interventionist war to suppress all the Filipino people’s patriotic and democratic forces, in order to strengthen its military foothold and neocolonial rule. The US imperialists continue to pour millions of dollars for the purchase of bomber planes, bombs, artillery, and bullets for its killing machine. These campaigns serve the economic aggression of US-owned and other foreign mining companies, big plantations, dams, ecotourism, and infrastructure projects that grab land and drive people away from their homes and source of livelihood.

The Party calls on the Filipino people to stand up firmly and fight state terrorism and defend human rights and international humanitarian law. They stand on high moral ground in denouncing all fascist criminal acts perpetrated by the AFP and PNP, in demanding justice for all victims of state terrorism, in demanding the dismantling of the NTF-Elcac, and in calling for an end to US intervention and military support to the fascist Marcos regime.

At the same time, the Party directs the New People’s Army (NPA) to continue fighting state terrorism and punish the most notorious fascist criminals in the AFP and PNP. The NPA must continue to mount tactical offensives in the course of waging protracted people’s war to advance the cause of national democracy.

#Philippines #Asia #PeoplesStruggles #CommunistPartyOfThePhilippines

The broad masses of workers, peasants, and the rest the Filipino people must firmly advance their urgent socioeconomic demands and intensify their national and democratic mass struggles in the face of increasing possibility of a sharp economic decline in the coming months. The steady devaluation of the Philippine peso is set to further worsen their conditions of high fuel and food prices, low wages, rural bankruptcies, and widespread unemployment and cause the accelerated deterioration of the people’s living conditions.

The international capitalist system currently stands at the precipice of another explosive financial crisis, with rising fears of major capitalist countries falling into another round of recessions one after another, and backward economies suffering from increasing costs of commodity imports and the burden of unpayable debts.

Last week, for the fourth time this year, the US Federal Reserve raised interest rates by 75 basis points (bps), bringing the total increase to 300-bps since June and pushing further the value of the dollar to its highest levels in 20 years. The US central bank has resorted to these measures in the face of threats of stagflation (rising inflation and low growth) caused by sharp increases in fuel prices and other commodities. However, by taking these measures, the US is risking to force a slow down and pull itself into a recession. So far, US attempts to pull down inflation has failed.

The rising value of the dollar has resulted in the devaluation of currencies around the world. The British pound fell to a 51-year low last week, while the Japanese yen is at a 24-year low, the Korean won at a 14-year low, and the Euro fell to a one-to-one exchange with the dollar for the first time. Currency devaluations are putting pressure on central banks to resort to pushing up interest rate, increasing the risks of recession. The United Kingdom is now officially in recession and will likely not be the last to declare so. It is also increasing risks of debt defaults of at least 20 highly indebted countries.

Over the past few weeks, the value of the Philippine peso against the dollar has been dropping to record lows almost everyday. Since the start of the year, the peso’s value against the dollar has slid by more than 15 percent from ₱50.9 to ₱58.9 to the dollar. There are estimates that the peso will further tumble to between ₱65 and ₱70 to the dollar before the end of the year.

The devaluation of the peso relative to the US dollar has grave consequences on the local economy and livelihood of Filipinos. Combined with rising prices of petroleum products and other commodities, and increasing dependence on imported food supplies, the peso’s devaluation is pushing up the costs of imports and, as a consequence, raising domestic prices. With the peso sliding further, Filipinos face the threat of sharp increases in the prices of food, petroleum products, as well as other basic commodities in the coming months.

Rising fuel prices has resulted in the rapid rise in the country’s trade deficit, with the 7-month (January to July) gap already at $35.75 billion, more than 45% higher than the $24.6 billion trade deficit for the entire 2021. The country’s widening trade gap will weigh down heavily on the economy especially with the devaluation of the peso. The country’s balance of payments deficit during the first half of the year widened by 63.1% to $3.1 billion compared to the same period last year, due to rising shortfall in the current accounts which is expected to hit $20.6 billion this year. The country’s dollar reserves have steadily declined over the past six months to $99 billion, a two year low.

These drastic consequences of the peso devaluation on the Philippine economy and the socioeconomic conditions of the Filipino people are a result of the country’s dependence on imported commodities, especially capital goods, equipment, manufactures, consumer products, and increasingly on food supplies. As a result of the destruction of local productive forces over the past 40 years, the country is now practically importing everything (including salt), making it vulnerable to currency devaluations. Local production remains largely backward, agrarian and non-industrial. Manufacturing is limited to assembly of import-dependent components (including semiconductors), the demand for which has sharply declined.

Marcos Jr and his economic managers have no plan to end the country’s over-dependence on imported commodities. Instead of addressing the need to raise the country’s capacity to produce food and other manufactures, they are bent on perpetuating dependence on imports, foreign investments, and foreign debt-infusion. The previous Duterte regime dealt the country’s economic sovereignty a triple blackeye with the amended Public Service Act (RA 11659), the Foreign Investments Act (RA 11647) and the Retail Trade Liberalization Act (RA 11595).

Marcos’ recent declaration before the United Nations General Assembly that “we will swing the doors even wider” bodes of plans to further the neoliberal policies of the past four decades which have resulted in the massive devastation of local agriculture and manufacturing. Marcos’ plan to push all-out neoliberal policies will pave the way for foreign capitalist exploitation of labor and plunder of the country’s resources (expansion of plantations, mining, land reclamations) which contribute to worsening climate change.

In a desperate bid to stem the fall of the peso, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas last week raised interest rates by 50-bps to 4.25%, which can at best, temporarily stop the peso from further sliding, but risks further slowing down domestic production and worsening unemployment. Further rate increases are expected in the coming weeks and months, even as government technocrats are hinging their hopes on an increase in dollar remittances from overseas Filipino workers in the coming months.

Marcos and his technocrats are not addressing the underlying causes of the Philippines’ overdependence on imports which results in chronic trade deficits, wage repression, rural dislocation, environmental plunder and other social and economic ills. Nor are they putting into place measures to assist workers, peasants and millions of unemployed Filipinos who are gravely suffering from rising prices, low wages and lack of social services. While Marcos’ technocrats push to provide tax incentives to foreign capitalist investors, they declare that giving economic subsidies to people is unproductive. Filipino are being left by Marcos and his technocrats to fend for themselves.

A large majority of Filipinos continue to live in a state of poverty. State agencies themselves disclosed that around 19 million Filipino families do not have cash savings and live constantly on the brink of destitution. The throngs of people who desperately line up for cash assistance is a manifestation of the magnitude of poverty in the country.

The Filipino people must stand firm and advance the fight for their national and democratic interests, specifically their demand for land reform and national industrialization. The outstanding clamor for various forms of state subsidies or assistance are just and should be asserted alongside urgent demands for jobs, lower prices, higher wages, expansion of free education, health and other social services and affordable or free use of public utilities (water, electricity, transportation and telecommunications). They must heighten the demand to reverse neoliberal policies of import liberalization, deregulation and privatization.

The toiling masses must intensify their efforts to get organized and form and strengthen their unions and various forms of organizations in factories, communities, schools, offices, and across different classes and sectors. There should be a strong propaganda and education movement to raise the people’s anti-imperialist and antifeudal consciousness and understanding of their fundamental social and economic problems. The history of neoliberal policies of the past four decades, IMF-World Bank economic imposition and interference, and subservience of the past successive regimes to foreign capitalist interests must be thoroughly exposed.

Only through organized efforts and carrying out collective actions such as strikes and various forms of protest actions, can they effectively advance their aspirations. In particular, there must be a concerted and concentrated effort to build the organized strength of workers and peasants who form the majority of the toiling people, and to amplify their voices and bring their demands to the center of the national discourse.

At the same time, the Filipino people must resist political repression and fight back against the agents of state terrorism and fascism. The suppression of the people’s democratic rights aim to perpetuate the people’s state of poverty and allow multinational corporations, big bourgeois compradors, big landlords and bureaucrat capitalists all the freedom to continue accumulating profit through oppression, exploitation and plunder.

Advancing the urgent socioeconomic demands of the Filipino people is firmly linked to their demand for national democracy and put an end to the semicolonial and semifeudal system. These are linked specifically to their demand for genuine land reform and national industrialization. Land reform or the free distribution of land can be completed in a couple of years and, with state support, mass organized efforts and in combination with industrialization, will immediately transform the countryside to become productive and progressive. At the same time, there must be a program to build steel and other basic and strategic industries, combined with intermediate industries for the manufacture of consumption goods. This program will lay the ground for socialist revolution and construction.

The worsening socioeconomic crisis marked by worsening poverty, spiraling prices, low wages and lack of public service, is clear evidence of the moribund state of the semicolonial and semifeudal system. Thus, while the people advance their democratic mass struggles, the Party must also mobilize the people to wage revolutionary struggle, especially armed struggle, and advance along the strategic line of protracted people’s war, to fight for genuine national freedom and democracy, as key elements to building a progressive and modern economy.

#Philippines #Asia #PeoplesStruggles #CommunistPartyOfThePhilippines

Fight Back News Service is circulating the following August 27 statement from the Communist Party of the Philippines.

We join the clamor of women’s groups, artists, poets, rights defenders and other democratic organizations for the immediate release of Adora Faye de Vera. Adora Faye was arrested by police last Wednesday afternoon in her place of residence in Quezon City, and later brought to Calinog town, Iloilo, where she is being made to face false criminal charges. She joins at least 800 other political prisoners in the Philippines who continue to suffer unjust incarceration.

Adora Faye is an artist, a poet, and a dedicated and tenacious servant of the people. She is a patriot, a fighter for women’s rights and revolutionary. At a young age, she joined the fight against the Marcos martial law regime and fought in all fields of battle against the fascist dictatorship.

She and her two companions were abducted in 1976 by military forces in Quezon province and kept in a military “safehouse” in Bicol. They were subjected to extreme forms of torture, including being forced to carry out sexual acts. Her two companions – Flora Coronacion and Rolando Federis –were later disappeared by the military.

Adora Faye was repeatedly raped by her captors and later forced to undergo an abortion. She was sexually enslaved for more than a year. She would succeed in freeing herself from her torturers one year later.

She later joined the armed revolution in the Bicol region where she served the peasant masses, joined in their struggle for land reform and continued to fight the detested dictatorship. In 1983, in an attack by Marcos’ fascist troops, she was shot in the leg which caused her grave injuries.

Adora Faye was released along with hundreds of other political prisoners in 1986 after the downfall of the US-Marcos dictatorship. She was among those who led in the class suit against Marcos for gross human rights violations which they won. Their victory is a landmark jurisprudence and established historical reference for the multitude of crimes against humanity perpetrated by the military and police forces under the US-Marcos dictatorship.

In the face of unchanged social and political conditions, Adora continued to dedicate herself to the cause of women’s liberation and the people’s national democratic movement. Over the past years, despite her injuries and weakened physical state, she defied all difficulties of travel and trekking long distances just to be with workers, peasants, and other oppressed sectors of society.

Throughout her life and now at 66 years old, Adora Faye never wavered in her dedication to serve the people. She continues to give all her strength and talents to the people’s cause. She continues to write poems and songs and imparts her broad knowledge to enlighten and raise the consciousness of the youth and the new generation of revolutionaries.

Adora Faye continues to be steadfast in the fight against imperialism, feudalism, bureaucrat capitalism. On orders of Marcos, the fascist running dogs went after Adora Faye to have her put back in jail. She is being punished by the reactionaries for refusing to give up on her dedication to serve the people. This is unjust and cruel punishment. For all her service to the cause of the oppressed and exploited masses, Adora Faye de Vera deserves to be free!

#Philippines #PeoplesStruggles #CommunistPartyOfThePhilippines #Asia

The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) denounces the National Security Council and various agencies of the reactionary government for the push to erect a Marcos Anti-Democracy (MAD) Internet Firewall in a desperate bid to censor online criticism and dissent against the incoming illegitimate Marcos II regime, as well as suppress progressive, patriotic and revolutionary journalism and literature that exposes the ills of the ruling system.

In a June 6 letter, Gen. Hermogenes Esperon, NSC director general and officer of the National Task Force (NTF)-Elcac, told the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) to order internet service providers to block access of Filipino subscribers to 25 websites including those of the Communist Party of the Philippines (PRWC or Philippine Revolution Web Central), the National Democratic Front of the Philippines and several of its allied organizations. In a June 8 memorandum to all internet service providers with the subject “For Blocking Illegal Online Cockfighting Websites,” the NTC ordered “the immediate blocking of the reported websites found to be affiliated to and are supporting terrorists and terrorist organizations.” We have received recent reports that subscribers of Smart and PLDT could no longer access the PRWC (https://cpp.ph).

Of the list of websites which the NSC wants banned, only seven are actually affiliated with the CPP and NDFP. The rest are websites of local cause oriented groups (6), alternative news websites (3), progressive journalists and academics (3), international organizations (2), international alternative news (2), a news blog and a blog of Indian activists. At least six websites in the haphazardly drawn list are inactive with some last updated ten years ago. Surprisingly, the list also includes the Monthly Review and the Counterpunch, both highly regarded US-based organizations that promote progressive views.

The MAD Firewall is an authoritarian measure meant to suppress the people’s freedom to express criticism or grievance against the ruling government and ruling system and promote progressive, patriotic, anti-imperialist and revolutionary ideas. This is the latest measure promoted by the militarists in the NSC and NTF-Elcac after the push to purge public libraries of books and literature related to peace talks and the NDFP, the funding of incessant distributed denial-of-service attacks against the PRWC and several other websites, the terrorist-tagging against patriotic and progressive bookstores, and the repeal of the UP-DND accord banning military personnel in UP campuses.

We believe that the MAD Firewall is just the opening scene for a general crackdown against Philippine media under the incoming Marcos II regime. On the pretext of “anti-terrorism,” Filipino reporters and journalists will soon be under intense pressure to suppress information, news reports and views expressed by the CPP, as well as progressive and patriotic, and eventually of any views and reports that are critical of the incoming Marcos regime on the likely rationale that such news writing “destabilizes government” and “undermines unity.”

The NSC/NTF-Elcac’s internet ban exposes the intolerance of militarist zealots in power and how they use “national security” and “anti-terrorism” as pretext to clamp down on basic people’s freedoms. The push for the MAD Firewall is a direct outcome of the so-called Anti-Terrorism Law and exposes its real authoritarian and draconian intent. In fact, the MAD Firewall has nothing to do with “anti-terrorism” as it is nothing but barefaced censorship. It shows how “anti-terrorism” is being used as an arbitrary category to suppress all forms of opposition and people’s resistance.

On behalf of all the oppressed and exploited classes and sectors, the CPP asserts the intrinsic right of people of whatever affiliation–social, political, ideological, national, cultural or gender-based–to express their ideas and views, and promote patriotic, progressive, anti-imperialist and revolutionary programs as alternative to the ruling pro-imperialist, reactionary, fascist and militarist agenda of the ruling system.

We urge all democratic, progressive and patriotic organizations and individuals, journalists and academics who value press freedom and freedom of expression to resist the MAD Internet Firewall. Fight authoritarian censorship against the promotion of progressive, anti-imperialist and revolutionary ideas!

We urge Filipino internet readers to use alternative means of accessing information, including the use of the Tor Browser, proxies and virtual private network services (VPNs) in order to circumvent the Marcos Firewall.

More importantly, we call on the broad masses of the people to take action, organize against online censorship and protest and manifest their indignation against the burgeoning authoritarian regime.

#Philippines #PeoplesStruggles #CommunistPartyOfThePhilippines #Asia

The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) today, June 4, revealed that its affiliate accounts were censored and suspended by Twitter on its social media platform without “warning or advise.” The said accounts served as platforms for the Philippine revolutionary movement to express its views, and share statements and updates on its activities.

CPP Chief Information Officer Marco Valbuena said that the accounts of the @prwc_info, the @cpp_angbayan, and @sineproletaryo, and that of National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) Chief Political Consultant @JoseMariaSison were suspended since yesterday, June 3.

“We see this as part of heightened efforts to silence anti-imperialist voices on social media on the pretext of the sham US ‘war against terror,'” Valbuena said.

The CPP spokesman (@cpp_marco), added his account may be targeted next by Twitter’s “artbitrary suspension,” which he says will “deny me and the CPP the chance to use Twitter as a self-declared platform for free expression.”

The Twitter suspensions came after Facebook and Google, both based in the US, censored and closed the social media and email accounts of the CPP last April. Valbuena further elaborated that these aim to “deny space for anti-imperialist forces to challenge and expose the official lies of the US and its fascist cohorts.”

He also said that these intend to allow US imperialists to “have absolute control over the social media narrative.”

Valbuena said that they “will continue to publish the CPP’s views in all possible ways.”

Official statements and articles of the Philippine revolutionary movement, the CPP, the New People’s Army and the NDFP can be accessed on its website at https://cpp.ph.

Valbuena ended with an appeal to the friends of the CPP and people interested in the Philippine revolutionary movement to help in sharing their views over social media platforms.

“We hope our friends and people interested in the views of the CPP can help by sharing our statements and publications on Twitter, Facebook and other social media platforms. Let us continue to stand up to the US imperialists and not allow ourselves to be silenced,” Valbuena said.

#Philippines #PeoplesStruggles #CommunistPartyOfThePhilippines #censorship #Socialism #Twitter #Asia

Fight Back News Service is circulating the following March 8 statement from the Communist Party of the Philippines

The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) extends its revolutionary greetings to women in the country and across the world on the occasion of the International Working Women’s Day. Let us recall the heroism of women from the ranks of workers, peasants and other progressive classes and sectors who broke through imposed gender, cultural and economic barriers and took their place as cadres and fighters of the Philippine revolution.

It is significant that in ten days, we are set to mark the 50th anniversary of the Makabayang Kilusang ng Bagong Kababaihan (Makibaka), the forerunner of the women’s liberation movement in the Philippines, which has been at the vanguard of women’s struggle over the past five decades. The militance and courage of the Makibaka continues to inspire women to shoulder ever important tasks in rousing the people and in waging revolutionary armed struggle. From among the ranks of Makibaka have emerged Red fighters and commanders of the New People’s Army.

Amid the rapidly worsening economic crisis marked by a sharp fall in standards of living of millions, it is urgent that women, together with the rest of the toiling people, come together and take action to defend their welfare and interests and resist the policies that worsen their oppression. Overall worsening social conditions hit women particularly hard as it intensifies their oppression and suffering from unemployment, unequal wages and unequal conditions in the household.

Knowing first hand the burden of the socieconomic crisis, Filipino women are determined to march among the head of the toiling masses as they condemn the misogynist U.S.-Duterte regime, its corrupt bureaucrat capitalists, cronies, big bourgeois compradors and military generals that impose burdensome policies and measures. They must militantly demand an immediate rollback in the prices of fuel products, food and other necessaries, jobs, higher wages, land, the elimination of land rent, higher farm gate prices, reduction of taxes, an end to all-out import liberalization, and other urgent measures. At the same time, they must fight without letup for their rights as the Duterte regime resorts to more brazen acts of state terrorism in its desperation to silence the people and secure its power.

As the chronic crisis of the ruling semicolonial and semifeudal system worsen amid the international capitalist crisis, Filipino women are bound to rise up in greater numbers, building and strengthening their unions and women’s committees in factories, community and campus organizations, marching on the streets and waging all forms of mass struggle, and joining the revolutionary armed struggle to fight for national and social liberation.

#Philippines #International #Asia #PeoplesStruggles #CommunistPartyOfThePhilippines #InternationalWomensDayIWD

From: Freedom Road Socialist Organization

To: Communist Party of the Philippines

Dear Comrades,

The leadership and members of Freedom Road Socialist Organization send our warm and militant greetings to the Communist Party of the Philippines on the occasion of the of your 53rd anniversary and we wish the CPP every success in developing the people’s democratic revolution.

Working and oppressed people around the world, including here in the U.S., take inspiration from heroic struggle of the people of the Philippines and the great advances made by the CPP. Your party has grown from a relatively small organization of proletarian revolutionaries into a powerful nationwide political force which is leading an armed struggle that aims to end the semi-colonial and semi-feudal social system. We are confident that you will defeat the U.S. imperialists, the big bourgeois compradors, and the class of big landlords. We are proud to stand in solidarity with your efforts to achieve national and social liberation.

This past year we joined with you in mourning the cowardly murder of New People’s Army spokesman Ka Oris, and we restate our view that his passing is a loss for revolutionaries everywhere. We have the greatest respect for the courage, sprit of sacrifice, and the will to win that the CPP has shown again and again.

We reject the absurd claims made by the Duterte regime and its U.S. backers that the CPP is somehow “terrorist,” and we oppose the “red tagging” of Filipino activists, which in being utilized in efforts to repress the national democratic movement. We condemn attempts by the U.S. government to use the “material support for terrorism” laws to criminalize the struggle of the people of the Philippines.

The people of the Philippines and the American people share a common enemy – monopoly capitalists who are at the apex of the U.S. empire. The growing struggle in our respective countries helps to create favorable conditions for all of us to move forward.

We place a high value on our militant friendship with the CPP and look to build upon it in the years ahead. The decline of U.S. imperialism is accelerating. Together we will win!

Long live the Communist Party of the Philippines!

Long live the unity between the people of the Philippines and the people of the U.S.!

Long live proletarian internationalism!

#UnitedStates #PeoplesStruggles #CommunistPartyOfThePhilippines #FreedomRoadSocialistOrganization #Socialism

Fight Back News Service is circulating the following Oct. 31 statement from the Communist Party of the Philippines.

Ka Oris (Jorge Madlos), spokesperson of the New People's Army (NPA), was not killed in an armed encounter. He was ambushed on the road between Impasug-ong town proper and the national highway at 8 pm of Oct 29. He and his medical aide were riding a motorcycle on their way to seek medical treatment. This is according to his wife Ka Maria Malaya.

Ka Oris and aide Eighfel Dela Peña (Ka Pika) were both unarmed when ambushed. Whether they were ambushed while moving or were accosted and thereafter executed is still unclear. Clearly, however, they were not in a position to give battle or fight back and were murdered in cold-blood.

To conceal their crime of murdering unarmed revolutionaries and create a false picture of an armed encounter, the 4th ID staged aerial strikes four hours later in the vicinity of Barangay Dumalaguing, Impasug-ong, Bukidnon. For around two hours, from 12:40 a.m. to past 2 a.m. the AFP dropped at least six large bombs, fired dozens of rockets and strafed the mountainside shattering the peace and causing fear and panic among the people. They then issued a fat lie claiming of an armed encounter at 11 am (10 hours later) where Ka Oris and Ka Pica were supposedly killed.

Since last night, Gen. Brawner of the 4th ID and other AFP officers shamelessly faced the media. They brazenly wove one lie after another in an attempt to fool the people. They are utterly dishonorable officers for propagating false information. We hold Gen. Brawner and the men and officers of the 403 IBde responsible for the murder of Ka Oris and Ka Pica and its coverup.

Given the circumstances, the families of Ka Oris and Ka Pica are in a position to demand that independent pathologists perform an autopsy on the bodies of the victims to determine the actual circumstances of their killing.

We also support the wishes of the families to have the bodies of Ka Oris and Ka Pica be immediately released to them in order for them to conduct a proper wake and give all those who knew Ka Oris the opportunity to pay their last respects.

Ka Oris had long wished to return to Siargao Island where he grew up as a boy. Perhaps, his wish could be fulfilled.

#Philippines #PeoplesStruggles #CommunistPartyOfThePhilippines #KaOris #Asia

The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) condemns in the strongest terms the Philippine National Police (PNP) for the massacre of at least five peasants yesterday early morning in Barangay Bugtong, Mandaon town in Masbate province.

Contrary to the PNP’s claims in their press releases, the victims were not members of the New People’s Army (NPA). The PNP identified one of the victims as Eddie/Arnold Rosero, a local resident.

According to the NPA’s Regional Operational Command in Bicol, there was no armed encounter yesterday nor was there an NPA unit in the area.

We hold the PNP accountable for this heinous crime. This was committed by the police following direct orders of the police chief to “put an end” to the NPA in Masbate and the Bicol region.

The local unit of the NPA must seek to immediately identify and arrest those directly responsible for the massacre. We urge local police officers, whether involved or not in the crime, to cooperate with the NPA and reveal the whole truth about the massacre. The NPA must do everything in its power to give justice to the victims and their families.

This massacre forms part of the worsening acts of state terrorism perpetrated by the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and the PNP against the peasant masses and people of Masbate. The AFP and PNP seeks to terrorize the people through killings, abductions, unlawful arrests, beatings, armed intimidation, forced surrenders, hamletting of communities and other abuses in their futile drive to put an end to the people’s armed resistance.

Masbate is one of the provinces that has seen the biggest number of extrajudicial killings attributed to the military and police. Based on our information, there are now at least 74 killings in the province under the terrorist Duterte regime.

#Philippines #PeoplesStruggles #CommunistPartyOfThePhilippines #Asia

The Party calls on all revolutionary forces to lead in efforts to mobilize all possible resources to extend aid to all victims of massive flooding in various provinces, especially in northern Luzon.

Just several months after suffering from widespread economic devastation brought about by rains last December, millions of people of northern Luzon provinces have been ravaged again by widespread flooding following a few days of heavy rains and landslides brought by typhoon Maring. Widespread inundation has caused the destruction of thousands of homes and hundreds agricultural crops.

People have been forced to flee their homes and congregate in evacuation centers where they are vulnerable to the spread of disease and infections. Cagayan province, one of the worst hit by the floods, saw spikes in Covid-19 infections last month, as well as in the period immediately after last year’s floods.

The most devastated are the peasant masses, the ethnic minority groups, gardeners and working people whose source of livelihood was damaged by floods. Large areas of vegetable and strawberry farms in Benguet are submerged in water. Hundreds of sacks of newly harvested corn were washed away by raging waters. Classrooms and educational materials were destroyed. People fear that the plan to open the floodgates of Magat dam this afternoon will bring greater destruction.

As before, the Duterte government is showing utter lack of concern for the sufferings of the victims of massive flooding. People are again being left to fend off for themselves. For months, thousands were able to avoid fatal hunger only through the effort of their own organizations, with the assistance of private foundations.

The devastation caused by the floods underscore the need to urgently address the demands of the peasant masses for a suspension or cancellation of usurious debt as well as loans owed to government agencies, and the demand for higher farmgate prices for palay and other crops to allow them to recoup their costs. The situation also puts a spotlight on the grave conditions of feudal and semifeudal oppression and exploitation and the demand for genuine land reform.

Amid the massive disaster, all revolutionary forces, including units of the New People’s Army (NPA) must pay attention to addressing the urgent needs of the masses and help them surmount the devastation. Peasant mass organizations can immediately form mutual aid groups to help each other amid the devastation to their farms. As before, Red fighters of the NPA can form production brigades to help the people repair their farms and resume production as soon as possible.

#Philippines #Asia #PeoplesStruggles #CommunistPartyOfThePhilippines #NewPeoplesArmyNPA

Today marks the last day of the deadline given by healthcare workers to Rodrigo Duterte and Department of Health (DOH) Sec. Francisco Duque III, to heed their demands for their long-denied special risk allowance and other benefits. We join the Filipino people in applauding the health workers for their display of militance and determination to fight against their oppressive conditions and assert what is rightfully theirs, especially as they play an invaluable role during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Billions of unspent and misused funds by the DOH as reported by the Commission on Audit (COA) reflects the Duterte regime’s mistreatment and contempt of healthcare workers. They are forced to work in oppressive and detestable conditions, many compelled to work beyond normal working hours.

There are reports of nurses and other healthcare workers resigning in droves over sheer exhaustion and a desire to seek other opportunities to earn better compensation. Around 40 percent of private hospital nurses have quit their jobs. We can only blame the Duterte regime and the big capitalist hospital owners for the resignation of nurses and other health workers who have long been ill-treated and neglected. This utter neglect of health workers is forcing some organizations to stage a mass resignation in protest.

Because of the failure of the Duterte regime to allot sufficient funds to extend the public health system, hospitals and other medical facilities are now overstretched. The DOH failed to recruit more nurses and staff to beef up its hospital personnel. It has offered measly compensation for “volunteers” who give care to Covid-19 patients. Recently, the Philippine General Hospital, Philippines’ top hospital for Covid-19 patients, has begged off from receiving patients to its emergency ward since August 24.

The Covid-19 pandemic has exposed the decades of neglect of the healthcare system. One regime after another allowed public hospitals to become dilapidated, health equipment and facilities outdated, and healthcare workers underpaid and oppressed.

Healthcare workers’ unions from various hospitals have started their week-long protests which is set to culminate on September 1. Democratic and progressive organizations must join them in pushing the government for support.

People’s organizations can show solidarity by waging protests from their communities, mount assemblies in universities and offices, ring bells and sign petitions in support of the struggle of health workers, as well as to manifest the demands of the people for free mass testing and expansion of pandemic health measures, as well as for higher wages, jobs and subsidies.

#Philippines #PeoplesStruggles #CommunistPartyOfThePhilippines #Asia

Today we mark the 50th anniversary of the Diliman Commune, a 9-day uprising of the students of the University of the Philippines in Diliman, Quezon City. The Diliman Commune was part of the widespread strikes and protest actions against oil price increases, imperialist control of the economy and police brutality under the Marcos regime.

The student uprising was part of the continuum of the surging national democratic mass movement of students and workers from the previous decade. It broke out one year after the First Quarter Storm of 1970 which saw tens of thousands marching on the streets clamoring for an end to imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism and seeking revolutionary change.

The uprising was sparked by police repression against students who took to the streets to join workers and drivers to protest oil price increases and denounce imperialist control of the economy. From February 1 to 9, students of UP Diliman formed barricades, occupied university buildings and dormitories, took control of the local radio station and printing press, mounted mass teach-ins and built mass organizations.

They fought police and military forces and helicopters with militant protests, barricades and molotov cocktails. Marcos relented the fascist assaults and gave the university the “responsibility” to administer campus affairs, thereby earning the students and the UP community victory for academic freedom.

While pressing with the people's economic demands, university students carried out a cultural revolution within the campus. They aired revolutionary songs over radio and issued written declarations espousing national democracy. They studied revolutionary theory, promoted the leadership of the working class, and rallied the pettybourgeoisie and peasantry under the banner of the people's democratic revolution. They called on the broad masses to join and support the revolutionary armed struggle in the countryside.

The university students mounted the uprising knowing fully the limitations of their power, that social revolution cannot be attained by their actions alone. They would lift their barricades and end the commune with a clear view of the revolutionary path.

Scores upon scores who took part in the Diliman Commune and hundreds more from the surge of the national democratic student movement would march to the countryside to join the New People's Army. They served as commanders and political instructors of the people's army and take direct part in the revolutionary armed struggle. Many still linked up with the workers movement and helped build unions.

Veterans of the upsurge of the national democratic student movement in the 1960s and early 1970s were among the most resilient fighters for freedom and democracy against the US-Marcos dictatorship and would dedicate the rest of their lives to the people's democratic revolution. A number of them remains active in the revolutionary underground as well as in the legal democratic movement.

Inspired by their example, succeeding generations of students would take the national democratic path of militant struggle. Together with the workers strike movement, the student protest movement would resurge in the mid-1970s and shatter the Marcos dictatorship's reign of terror and mount sustained mass protest actions until the ouster of Marcos in 1986. Over the past three decades, student protests have surged time and again against rising costs of education, US military bases, trade liberalization, government corruption, against the return of the Marcoses, and other people's issues. The student protest movement continues to be a steady source of patriotic and democratic forces as well as revolutionary armed fighters of the people's army.

Drawing lessons from the Diliman Commune at this time is doubly significant after the Department of National Defense (DND) unilaterally abrogated the 1989 UP-DND accord which safeguarded student and academic freedoms by prohibiting the intimidating and repressive presence of the military in the UP campuses. The Duterte fascist regime is using anticommunism to pursue its evil aim of taking away the students’ hard-won freedoms and place UP and other university campuses under his tyranny. The ultimate aim is preventing students from linking up with the broad masses of workers and peasants and performing their historical role in social movements and people's revolution.

Let us mark the 50th anniversary of the Diliman Commune by reaffirming the people's national democratic cause and the struggle against the Duterte's fascist regime. The national democratic student movement must continue to arouse, organize and mobilize the student masses in order to advance their welfare and democratic rights, fight for a nationalist, scientific and mass-oriented educational system and unite with the Filipino people in their patriotic and democratic mass struggles.

The students must never tire of exposing imperialism as the principal enemy of the Filipino people—the big foreign monopoly capitalist corporations, the IMF-WB-ADB and other creditors and credit rating agencies, the US and Chinese government and their militaries. It is the imperialists, in connivance with the local reactionary classes of big bourgeois compradors and landlords who exploit Filipino cheap labor, plunder the country's minerals and natural resources, dump surplus products to the detriment of local industry and agriculture, keep the country backward and reliant on foreign capital and loans and trample on the country's sovereignty through political interference and military domination.

The national democratic student movement must continue to serve as the indefatigable voice of the Filipino people's resistance, exposing the rotten semicolonial and semifeudal system and waving the red banner of national democracy.

Let us reaffirm the Filipino people's struggle for national liberation and social justice as we also mark 500 years of colonialism and resistance. Starting April 27, the day that Datu Lapu-Lapu defeated the Magellan-led contingent of Spanish colonial forces, let us celebrate the Filipino people's five centuries of valiant struggle against foreign aggression and neocolonial subjugation.

The Filipino proletariat and people also mark this year the 150th anniversary of the Paris Commune, which was also one of the sources of inspiration of the Diliman Commune. The Paris Commune was the first successful working class government in history which, despite being short-lived, proved in practice the necessity for the working class to seize and wield state power in order to effect the revolutionary transformation of society and establish socialism.

#Philippines #PeoplesStruggles #CommunistPartyOfThePhilippines #DilimanCommune #Asia

Fight Back News Service is circulating the following message of Freedom Road Socialist Organization to the Communist Party of the Philippines.

Dear Comrades,

On the occasion of the 52nd anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of the Philippines, Freedom Road Socialist Organization sends its warmest greetings and salutes your many accomplishments. Your persistence in leading the people’s national democratic revolution with a socialist orientation, that aims to lift the burdens imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism from the backs of the Filipino people, is an inspiration to all who yearn for a better world.

FRSO stands in solidarity with your efforts. Your progress in building the New People’s Army, expanding the size and scope of the people’s war, as well as growing the urban mass movements are welcome developments.

On this important occasion, we note our sorrow at the passing of the outstanding communist Ka Fidel V. Agcaoili, who made so many contributions to the revolutionary movement in the Philippines and the international communist movement.

We condemn the cowardly acts of repression carried out by the gangster regime of Duterte, and its imperialist backers. And we demand that the U.S. get out of the Philippines.

Internationally, the system of monopoly capitalism finds itself beset by a massive economic crisis, the likes of which has not been seen since the 1930s. Not only have the rich and powerful failed to address the pandemic in meaningful way, capitalism, with its profit-driven health care system, is responsible for the deaths hundreds of thousands of working people. As Lenin pointed out, imperialism is a stage of moribund, dying capitalism. The decline of U.S. imperialism is accelerating, and around the globe the revolutionary movement is growing in strength.

The people of the Philippines and people of the United States share a common enemy. We wish you every success in the year ahead, and we look forward to building on the militant friendship that exists between our organizations. For working and oppressed people, the future is bright.

Long live the Communist Party of the Philippines!

Long live the unity between the people of the Philippines and the people of the U.S.!

Together we will win!

With communist greetings,

Freedom Road Socialist Organization

#UnitedStates #Philippines #Asia #PeoplesStruggles #CommunistPartyOfThePhilippines

Before the entire world, Duterte revealed himself a remorseless fascist when speaking before the United Nations General Assembly a few days ago, he denounced how human rights have been “weaponized” against his regime. Duterte used the term “weaponize” to denigrate human rights as if it were some malevolent tool used for underhanded aims and to denounce the advocates of human rights as subversives.

In fact, human rights are weapons of the people to defend themselves against state abuses. Only the oppressor and abusers who covet limitless powers would condemn human rights the way Duterte does.

Human rights instruments were forged in response to abuses perpetrated by state powers against the powerless for them to have something to hold the abusers accountable for their actions. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in particular, was forged so that the slaughter and torture perpetrated by Hitler under Nazi rule, and the gross abuses of rights during the World War II will never be repeated.

The existence of various human rights instruments, however, have not guaranteed against the emergence of abusers and oppressors. Indeed, state terrorist regimes have emerged in the Philippines and various parts of the world under which human rights have been wantonly violated by ruling class tyrants possessing an insatiable crave for power.

Invariably, human rights have been asserted and promoted to pursue the protection of the people in the face of state terrorism. To be effective, however, human rights and its various instrumentalities must be wielded by the people as weapons as they defend their rights and resist armed suppression by state forces. These must be used as a political, legal and moral instrument to expose and oppose the grave abuses perpetrated by state terrorists, unite the people and embolden them to resist and carry forward their democratic cause.

However, under the Duterte fascist regime, human rights instruments are brazenly being disregarded and unscrupulously thrown aside. Thus, it will take more than the defense and advocacy of human rights to end the grave sufferings under the brutal state terrorist regime.

In their struggle against the Duterte fascist regime, the Filipino people, possess the New People's Army (NPA) as their ultimate weapon to defend their rights against the oppression of the regime's armed instrumentalities. They have the NPA in order to fight back and seek an end to the oppressive and exploitative system on which sprout such outgrowths as Duterte.

#Philippines #Asia #PeoplesStruggles #CommunistPartyOfThePhilippines #OustDuterte

U.S. Marine Lance Cpl. Joseph Scott Pemberton does not deserve early release from imprisonment. He has not even properly served his sentence having been afforded the privilege of being “detained” in a “special military jail” inside Camp Aguinaldo.

The Party opposes Pemberton’s bid for a reduction of his jail term through the so-called “good conduct time allowance” as he has yet to rightfully suffer the consequences of his heinous crime. On the contrary, having enjoyed special privilege since his conviction in 2014, Pemberton’s 6-10 year jail term must be extended.

It is a national shame that since being convicted of the October 2014 rape and murder of Jennifer Laude inside an Olongapo motel, the American marine officer has yet to be placed under the jurisdiction of the Philippine penitentiary system. Granting Pemberton early release will be a gross act of injustice to Laude and her family.

Pemberton’s specially made facility inside the military camp is maintained by American military and security personnel. It is beyond the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court, much less the Bureau of Corrections. Not even the AFP (Armed Forces of the Philippines) chief is allowed to enter the facility without asking permission from the U.S.

The special privilege afforded to Pemberton underscores the unjustness of the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) which gives American military personnel extraordinary legal status while in the country, and by default shields them from legal action, in cases where they commit criminal violations.

The Filipino people must oppose Pemberton’s demand for early release and demand that he properly serves his sentence inside Philippine jail facilities. At the same time, they must reiterate their demand for the abrogation of the VFA and all other unequal treaties.

#Philippines #PeoplesStruggles #CommunistPartyOfThePhilippines #Asia

Wage all forms of protest and resistance to junk Duterte's Terror Law and end the regime of state terrorism

The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) joins the rest of the democracy-loving Filipinos in condemning Rodrigo Duterte for the signing of Republic Act 11479, inappropriately titled Anti-Terrorism Act of 2020. Duterte signed the law in contempt of widespread opposition by broad democratic sectors of Philippine society as well as international human rights advocates.

In the guise of fighting terrorism, Duterte has appropriated powers that contravenes basic civil and political rights and extends the authority of the president as stipulated by the reactionary 1987 constitution. He and his Anti-Terror Council have impinged on judicial powers and can now subject anyone it designates a “terrorist” to arrest and 16-24 day detention.

Duterte and his security officials have peddled the law on state terrorism on claims that it will help their fight against the New People’s Army, which is a revolutionary army, not a terrorist organization. In fact, there is nothing in Duterte’s state terror law that will stop the growth of the NPA which continues to gain in strength because of widespread social injustice and national oppression, especially landlessness, poverty and military abuses in the countryside. On the contrary, worsening state terrorism will only drive more and more people to join the NPA.

The real aim of Duterte’s terror law is to terrorize and cow the people. It will serve as an instrument of widespread state terrorism. Providing a vague and overly broad definition of terrorism, the law gives Duterte vast powers and prerogative to designate as “terrorist” or “terrorist supporters” anyone who criticizes, opposes, defies or challenges his regime. This will put on steroids the red-tagging campaign against progressive and democratic forces, including unionists, peasant leaders, social activists, human rights advocates, stalwarts of the Moro people's rights, environmentalists, opposition parties, journalists, lawyers and others. Duterte’s law on state terror is bound to further worsen abuse of power by state forces which are notorious for committing extrajudicial killings, surveillance and unlawful arrests and other gross violations of human rights under Duterte's fake drug war, war against the Moro people and war of suppression in the guise of anticommunism and counterinsurgency. In the countryside, Duterte's fascist terrorist forces have committed murders and massacres, aerial bombings, abductions and other abominable crimes. With the signing yesterday of Duterte's Terror Law, the last brick of his House of Tyranny is complete. Through legal fiat, the entire country is now under Duterte's complete dictatorial rule. It bolsters Duterte's scheme of fascist dictatorship and ambition of extending his now 4-year rule to an eternal reign of state terrorism, corruption and national treachery.

Duterte's Terror Law tears away whatever is left of the ruling state's trappings of democracy. With a rubberstamp Congress, a compliant Supreme Court, a puppet Comelec/Smartmatic, and now with extraordinary power, Duterte has now placed the entire reactionary government under his virtually unquestioned authority and limitless power.

Duterte signed the Terror Law while the country faces Covid-19 pandemic and the regime's failed militarist response. This has justly roused the Filipino people's indignation, especially the workers, the urban semiproletariat and pettybourgeoisie, who have suffered the most from Duterte's militarist lockdown measures and lack of health response. Duterte has displayed utter lack of concern and utter incompetence in leading the country to overcome the pandemic. By prioritizing the Terror Law, Duterte has caused his further isolation.

With the Terror Law, Duterte is poised to use the full powers of the fascist state against the people, in the same manner that Marcos used martial law to suppress all democratic forces. In the face of these threats, the people must be ready to defend their legal rights. At the same time, they must be prepared to fight wisely. They can employ clandestine methods to protect and preserve the people’s organizations, as well as online precautions to fight and defeat state terrorist surveillance and all-out attacks once the full force of the law is unleashed. Undoubtedly, however, Duterte’s acts of state terrorism will only ignite greater resistance.

The Party is one with the Filipino people in their fight against Duterte's Terror Law. It urges all well-meaning people in the bureaucracy, military and police to abandon the rotten regime. The Party calls on the international community to withdraw recognition of the Duterte's regime of state terror.

The Party encourages the Filipino people to stand up, get organized and unite in a broad front, and vigorously resist Duterte's Terror Law and fight for their democratic rights. The time to be quiet and timid is over. They must wage street marches and protest and all other forms of resistance in their numbers in order to muster enough strength to clamor for the scrapping of Duterte's Terror Law and demand his resignation and the ouster of his regime of state terrorism.

The Party also directs the New People's Army to support the people's resistance against Duterte' Terror Law by defending the people against the state terrorist forces. While the NPA continues to exert efforts at extending health and economic services to the people amid the Covid-19 pandemic, its units and Red fighters must heed the people's aspiration for justice and mete out punishment against the fascist terrorists.

Junk Duterte's Terror Law! Oust the US-Duterte regime!

#Philippines #InJusticeSystem #OppressedNationalities #Asia #PeoplesStruggles #CommunistPartyOfThePhilippines #PoliticalRepression #Antifascism #RodrigoDuterte #AntiTerrorBill

“The Party calls on local and international environmentalist and human rights advocates to look into the escalating incidents of abuses perpetrated by the Duterte fascist regime against anti-mining communities while fast-tracking the enactment of the fascist Anti-Terror Bill (ATB),” stated Marco L. Valbuena, Information Officer, Communist Party of the Philippines.

The victims were arrested during the conduct of a raid by the joint elements of the police, military and local barangay officials in the said community at around 3:30 a.m.

Ayuma and his companions are not members of the New People's Army (NPA), contrary to the claims of the military and police.

Arrested with Ayuma were Lumads Pablita Hilogon, Glenn Hilogon, Bambi Hilogon, Toto Hilogon, Jun-Jun Ayoman, and Jesson Langka, all members of the Kalumbay Lumad Organization. The victims were originally from Sitio Camansi, Barangay Banglay in Lagonglong town, and were among residents who evacuated from the said community in 2018 due to intense military operations and attacks against them.

The victims have long been subjected to red-tagging and harassment by the regime's National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC), because of their leading their community's opposition against expansion plans of multinational companies in the area.

#Philippines #InJusticeSystem #OppressedNationalities #Asia #PeoplesStruggles #WorkersAndGlobalization #CommunistPartyOfThePhilippines #PoliticalPrisoners #EnvironmentalJustice #PoliticalRepression #RodrigoDuterte #AntiTerrorBill

Denounce brutal suppression of U.S. protests against racism and fascism! Support and draw inspiration from the American people's mass protest actions!

The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) joins the American people in condemning U.S. President Donald Trump for ordering the mobilization of police and national guard forces to “dominate and crush” mass protest actions currently sweeping across the United States. He has denounced the mass actions and organizations and threatened to “designate” them as “terrorists.”

Over the past three days, hundreds of thousands of Americans have risen up in mass protest actions demanding justice for the May 25 murder of black worker George Floyd. “I can't breath,” Floyd’s last words while on the ground and while being knelt on the neck by a police officer, has reverberated across the country and galvanized the American working people of all colors to unite and take collective action.

These demonstrations and various forms of protests manifest the collective outrage of the American people over racism and police brutality against Blacks and other minority groups in the US. The protests are directed against the Trump government which has fomented the worst kind of misogyny against women and racial bigotry against blacks, immigrants and other minorities. The demonstrations have expressed the united sentiment of hundreds of millions of workers and middle-class Americans against the Trump government amid widespread unemployment, worsening social, economic and public health conditions, and its failed response to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Large protest demonstrations have been mounted over the past three days and nights in Minneapolis, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Kentucky, New York, Washington and scores of other cities. Demonstrators have breached White House barricades and protested inside its premises. Riots, burning down of police cars and other property and incidents of looting have erupted across the nation.

Police, US Marshals and Secret Service have resorted to using tear gas and firing rubber bullets and other projectiles against demonstrators in a vain attempt to push back against the rising protests. At least one person has been killed while scores have been injured in brutal dispersal methods employed by state forces.

Trump has unmasked himself as a fascist brute determined to silence and put down by force the mounting protest actions of the people. The fascist core of the US government is unraveling as trappings of bourgeois democracy are being shed off. Trump wants to openly employ the US fascist machinery because he is gripped by fear that the demonstrations sparked by police violence will inspire even greater protests.

The need to raise their voices and collectively manifest indignation is driving millions of Americans to join street demonstrations even amid the Covid-19 pandemic. In the face of an acute crisis of mass unemployment and worsening desperate straits for millions of American workers and middle-class families, the people's anger has become so many time greater and more urgent than the fear of the virus.

Demonstrations supportive of the American people's mass protests have also been mounted in front of the U.S. embassies in London, Berlin and Denmark, as well as in Rio de Janeiro and Jerusalem. International solidarity has flooded social media.

Just as the American people have long been inspired by the democratic mass movement in the Philippines, the Filipino people today draws inspiration from the protest movement in the United States in this time of pandemic.

On the same day George Floyd was killed, the lifeless body of Carlito Badion, secretary general of the urban poor group Kadamay, was found in a shallow grave in Ormoc City, Leyte. He was abducted two days before by armed men believed to be military agents. Badion earned the ire of the Duterte regime for leading the fight of the urban poor against the demolition of their communities, as well as against the anti-poor drug war killings. His body bore marks of torture.

Like the killing of George Floyd, the murder of Badion is utterly condemnable and rouses indignation. State forces under the Duterte regime are carrying out increasingly abominable crimes with impunity. Brutal fascist attacks against the democratic forces are set to worsen even more with the impending enactment of the Anti-Terrorism Law.

In the same way that Trump is now invoking “anti-terrorism” to quell the protests, the Duterte regime will undoubtedly use this impending law against the democratic forces to terrorize and suppress them and silence all opposition against Duterte's corruption, fascist brutality and subservience to the US and China and remove all hindrances to establishing a fascist dictatorship.

Drawing inspiration from the American people, the Filipino people can carry out their own mass protests actions to express solidarity and amplify the demand for justice for George Floyd and all victims of racial violence, and an end to racism, and Trump-instigated bigotry in the U.S.

There must also be mass protest actions to give expression to the Filipino people's indignation over the regime's military lockdown purportedly to contain the virus, but merely used as a brutal instrument to force the people to their knees and require compliance with the dictates of the Duterte-Año-Lorenzana-Esperon junta.

Just like the American people, the Filipino people demand the right to express themselves outside social media and come together in various forms to vent their protest over the regime's corruption, incompetence and failure to manage the pandemic and address the socio-economic needs of the Filipino people resulting in widespread hunger and poverty during the lockdown. They also seek to vent out their protests over the worsening militarism and the anti-people and debt-driven neoliberal policies that the regime is imposing under its oppressive “new normal” order.

#UnitedStates #International #OppressedNationalities #Philippines #US #Asia #PeoplesStruggles #AsianNationalities #AfricanAmerican #PoliceBrutality #CommunistPartyOfThePhilippines #Antiracism #Socialism #Antifascism #DonaldTrump #JusticeForGeorgeFloyd #MinneapolisUprising