For four years, the Filipino people have endured suffering under Marcos’ puppet, oppressive, and fascist regime. Despite all of Ferdinand Marcos Jr’s efforts to paint Philippine “progress,” he cannot conceal the reality of worsening conditions of the country and the Filipino people. Marcos officials have repeatedly declared the defeat of the revolutionary armed struggle, yet military operations across all guerrilla fronts throughout the archipelago remain relentless. Marcos continues to fan the flames of the people’s war.

The situation of workers, farmers, fishermen, and other basic classes and sectors comprising the majority of the people further deteriorates. On the other hand, the few ruling classes, accomplices of US imperialism, feast on wealth accumulated from oppression and exploitation of the toiling masses, bureaucratic corruption, plunder of natural resources, and grabbing people’s land and livelihood. The nation’s security is in peril as Marcos allows the US to use the Philippines as a giant military base.

Living standards plummet amid skyrocketing prices of oil, food, and daily necessities. Marcos’s photo-op gestures like rice giveaways and aid programs are hollow. Workers’ wages and the salaries of ordinary employees fall short of half what a family of five needs to live decently. Farmers are sinking deeper into debt in the face of rising costs of production and living.

The unemployment crisis is acute. Millions are jobless, especially among the youth. Thousands of Filipino workers migrate overseas daily seeking employment. This results from the decline of local production in both manufacturing and agriculture, caused by all-out import liberalization and flooding of foreign commodities. There is no program to build local national industries to produce basic needs. Marcos continues to bury the Philippines deeper into debt.

While the people struggle, factional strife over corruption and power continues unabated. The 2028 election remains far off, but maneuvering and posturing have already begun. To preempt Vice President Sara Duterte’s candidacy, the Marcos camp is pushing for her impeachment. What the people truly want is justice and accountability for all those involved in corruption and plunder of public funds, particularly Marcos himself as the highest official and chief of bureaucrat-capitalism.

Marcos surpasses all previous puppet presidents in his subservience to US imperialist dictates. In the economic field, he provides boundless incentives and privileges to foreign capitalists. Everywhere, land is being taken away by plantations and “renewable energy” projects. While no land is allocated for farmers, Marcos will open 1,620 hectares of land for an “economic security zone” for American corporations under the Pax Silica framework. Militarily, there is an unprecedented increase in US military forces within Philippine territory as they prepare an imperialist war against China. Marcos blindly allows the Philippines to be used as a vast military base and launchpad for US aggression and intervention, showing utter disregard for Filipinos who will suffer from being dragged into a US-instigated war.

The US provokes and fans fascist oppression in the Philippines to suppress the Filipino people’s anti-imperialist resistance in all forms—armed and unarmed. More than one billion dollars has been allocated by the US for the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) in the coming five years. The US military wages all-out intervention in counter-guerrilla warfare, campaigns of suppression and martial law imposition in the countryside, under the guise of the “Salaknib” and other military exercises. The US supplies AFP units with weapons and equipment for small-scale operations desperately attempting to crush the continuing spread and expansion of the NPA.

From the people’s point of view, the Marcos regime equates to unparalleled corruption, suffering and hunger of the masses, subservience to foreign capital, and fascist oppression. Among the broad people, it is clear that Marcos represents the rotten and decrepit system ruled by US imperialism in collusion with the few ruling classes. Today, Marcos is the primary catalyst driving the Filipino people to rise up and take the difficult path of struggle.

From various corners of the country, mass struggles are bursting forth to defend land and homes, struggle for living wages, expose corruption, hold plunderers accountable, defend people’s rights, oppose the destruction of the environment, protest the presence of foreign troops, and fight for national sovereignty. They are getting organized and acting together to defend their welfare and the interests of the entire nation.

In the countryside, armed struggle advances steadily and expands across guerrilla zones and fronts. Wherever they go, Red fighters of the New People’s Army are warmly welcomed by the masses who firmly embrace them as their true army. With the NPA, the broad masses of peasants are emboldened to rise and fight against land grabbers and their fascist mercenaries.

Amid the gross sufferings of the Filipino people, the Party is determined to serve as the core and vanguard of their struggle to end oppression, alter their destiny, and establish a new sovereign and democratic nation. In the spirit of the rectification movement, cadres and Party members devote their mind and strength to the people’s cause. Wherever the masses are, the Party takes deep and wide roots to guide them along the path of struggle.

#International #ThePhilippines #AngBayan #CommunistPartyofthePhilippines #NPA #Marcos

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