Fight Back News Service is circulating the following statement by Jose Maria Sison, National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) Chief Political Consultant.

While it is frenziedly engaged in state terrorism and suppression of democratic rights in the Philippines, the Duterte regime has submitted to the UN Human Rights Office a 137-page report entitled “The Philippine Human Rights Situationer May 2020” to achieve two malicious purposes:

1) to make false accusations against the Communist Party of the Philippines, New People’ Army and the National Democratic Front; and

2) to slander and vilify the human rights organizations and the victims who have presented well-founded complaints of human rights violations against the regime.

The declared purpose of the malicious report is to accuse the revolutionary forces of committing “crimes and atrocities” against the very people whose support they are relying on and whom they are fighting for. But in fact the real main purpose of the report is to slander and vilify the human rights organizations and victims of human rights violations as mere instruments of the revolutionary movement that is also glibly accused of being adept at “exploiting human rights and democratic spaces.”

The report carries a wild and wanton witchhunt list of alleged communist-created underground, front organizations, alliances, and networks. The list works on the malicious presumption of guilt by association, which makes the legal democratic forces and human right defenders as guilty of terrorism as the victims of human rights violations whom they defend against state terrorism.

The report goes so far as to accuse the human rights defenders of “weaponizing” human rights and using UN platforms and legal spaces to advance anti-human rights and anti-democratic political agenda, as the result of “communists” using sectoral-organizing work “for political manipulation and agitation, influence operations, and as a tool for launching diplomatic offensives against the state.”

The report lacks credibility because it comes from a regime that is accountable for gross and systematic violations of human rights and for crimes against humanity before the International Criminal Court. This regime has not been honestly responsive to the complaints of human right violations and has allowed these to be violated with impunity and without letup. A new law of state terrorism has been adopted by the Duterte regime to realize a full blown fascist dictatorship.

The main line of attack of the report against the CPP, NPA and NDFP is that they are responsible for the “cost of 60,000 lives and destruction of billions of public infrastructure” in the civil war that has been going on between the revolutionary movement of the people and the reactionary government of big compradors, landlord and bureaucrat capitalists.

In fact, more than 90 percent of the lives lost in the civil war have been snuffed out by the reactionary armed forces and police in campaigns of military suppression waged against the civilian population in areas suspected of being under the people’s democratic government, especially after successful tactical offensives by the people’s army.

The people’s army is carrying out guerrilla warfare and is not destroying any public infrastructure. What is destructive to public interest and economic development is the pork barrel corruption involved in the overpricing of real or imaginary infrastructure projects by the office of the president and his political stooges in Congress.

Since the time of Marcos, the Duterte regime has been the most destructive to economic development because of its extreme corruption, military overspending, cheap sale of natural resources to foreign companies and the mounting foreign debt due to growing trade and budgetary deficits. Superprofits have been taken away from the country through the extreme exploitation of workers and through land seizures from poor peasants and indigenous peoples by logging, mining, plantation and real estate companies.

Duterte has terminated the GRP-NDFP peace negotiations despite the landmark Comprehensive Agreement on Respect for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law and the substantial advance in the drafting of the Comprehensive Agreement on Social and Economic Reforms, featuring mainly a program of genuine land reform and national industrialization that would have been financed by income expected from the development of oil and gas resources in the West Philippine Sea (with estimated value of at least USD 26 trillion) if not for Duterte’s sell-out of Philippine sovereign rights to China.

But the traitorous, tyrannical, genocidal and corrupt Duterte has been hell-bent on gunning for a fascist dictatorship, on getting US military assistance under the Operation Pacific Eagle-Philippines (beyond the human rights oversight of the US Congress), on laying aside the sovereign rights of the Filipino people over the exclusive economic zone in the West Philippine Sea and on obtaining graft-laden loans from China at high interest for overpriced infrastructure projects worth USD 24 billion. Thus, he has terminated the GRP-NDFP peace negotiations since 2017 by scapegoating the CPP, NPA and NDFP.

In its report, the Duterte regime boasts of being capable of destroying the revolutionary movement of the Filipino people but is anyway asking for the support from the international community for a scheme of state terrorism and fascist dictatorship, a brutal scheme that is now so notorious and well exposed to the people of the world. In fact, the regime is far more incapable of destroying the armed revolutionary movement than any previous reactionary regime.

Duterte has bankrupted the Philippine economy and his own government. His regime has aggravated the crisis of the semicolonial and semifeudal ruling system. It imposes the most intolerable forms of oppression and exploitation on the people. Thus, it has incited the people to join the armed revolution at a time when the revolutionary forces are far stronger nationwide than during the Marcos fascist dictatorship which Duterte emulates in his futile drive to destroy the revolutionary movement.

#Philippines #InJusticeSystem #OppressedNationalities #Asia #PeoplesStruggles #JoseMariaSison #PoliticalRepression #Antifascism #RodrigoDuterte #JunkTerrorBill

Houston, TX – On July 8, activists with Malaya-Texas and Bayan, U.S.-based Filipino organizations, held events across the state of Texas against the repressive legislation enacted in the Philippines – the Republic Act 1147, also called Anti-Terrorism Act of 2020.

In Houston, activists publicly spoke against the measure and handed out flyers condemning Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte’s July 3 signing of the law. The organizers, along with allies of the Philippine struggle for social and national liberation, including from the Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO), then dropped a banner from Montrose bridge over US Highway 59, which read “Junk Philippine terror law.”

Malaya’s flyer stated the organization’s reasons for opposing the law. “What is now the ‘Anti-Terrorism Law’ (ATL) is the latest advancement of Duterte’s brutal security policy,” their statement said. “This new law grants the Philippine government unchecked power to define terrorism and extrajudicially punish its citizenry. Under the ATL, Philippine law enforcement is authorized to execute unwarranted arrests, a strategy intended to brutalize and silence political opposition.”

The Malaya statement also demanded that the “U.S. representatives in Texas champion and pass the Philippine Human Rights Act (PHRA) and release an official condemnation of the Anti-Terror Law,” and that they work to “halt all United States weapons and military equipment sales to the Philippines which are used against Filipino people.”

#HoustonTX #Philippines #Texas #JunkTerrorBill

The U.S.-backed government of Philippines and its President Duterte is putting in place the legal framework to carry out a wave of repression against activists in the popular movements who are fighting for social and national liberation. Freedom Road Socialist Organization condemns the recently signed Republic Act 1147, also called Anti-Terrorism Act of 2020, for what it is: an attempt to criminalize trade unionists, environmentalists, women’s groups, student organizations or anyone else who wants to challenge the cruel rule of Duterte.

Duterte is using an old trick – a slight of hand utilized for years by South Africa’s white minority rulers and then perfected by Israel and the U.S. – calling those who fight for liberation ‘terrorists’, while the real terrorists, the repressive governments, jail and torture at will. This so-called anti-terrorism measure is designed to curb democratic rights, while allowing Duterte’s repressive regime to act with impunity.

President Duterte’s move to expand state terrorism comes as the regime finds itself engulfed by growing social and economic crises. It is beset by a powerful national democratic movement that challenges the domination of feudalism, bureaucrat capitalism, and imperialism. In particular, the communist-led New People’s Army is growing in strength with every passing day.

State terrorism in the Philippines is made in the USA. U.S. dollars, troops, the CIA, and even U.S. police departments facilitate repression on a massive scale.

Progressive Filipinos are organizing protests against this terror law and we encourage everyone to join them.

Stop the repression! U.S. out of the Philippines!

#UnitedStates #PoorPeoplesMovements #InJusticeSystem #Labor #OppressedNationalities #Philippines #US #Asia #PeoplesStruggles #FreedomRoadSocialistOrganizationFRSO #PoliticalRepression #Antifascism #DonaldTrump #OustDuterte #JunkTerrorBill