Fight Back News Service is circulating the following Feb. 19 statement from Ka Teresa, Spokesperson, Malayang Kilusan ng Bagong Kababaihan – Southern Mindanao.

MAKIBAKA, the underground revolutionary organization of women, in Southern Mindanao condemns in the highest terms Rodrigo Duterte’s marching order for AFP soldiers to shoot women members of the NPA in the vagina since taking up arms renders their reproductive organs “useless.” In playing on the AFP’s (Armed Forces of the Philippines) fascist tradition of rape and male chauvinism, Duterte ignorantly assumes that he can rally his troops to commit the most heinous war crimes with impunity in his anti-people Oplan Kapayapaan.

We commend all women, organizations, civil libertarians, even women members of the AFP, who have taken offense at Duterte’s primitive and misogynistic views on human rights, especially of women, which stand on the wrong side of history and make a mockery of centuries of hard-won struggle by women not only in the country but around the world.

Malacañang can no longer sweep Duterte’s comments under the rug like it did in the past. Duterte’s recent order is yet another attack against all women, much like his promise to his fascist soldiers for the latter’s choice of bedding starlets as prize or immunity lest they rape women in their anti-terror rampage. It can never be downplayed “in context” like his detestable joke of wanting to be the first to rape an Australian religious missionary. His downright sexist treatment of women media practitioners will no longer be lumped up with his general distaste for the Philippine media who struggle to exercise freedom of speech against his tyrannical rule.

Duterte is a misogynistic tyrant not only in words but in deed. Every single day, his newly-minted TRAIN Law beats down mothers of the working class who carry the burden of making ends meet in the face of rising prices of commodities and dwindling value of already barely livable wages. In farms, corporate plantations and haciendas nationwide, women alongside men work like slaves because Duterte favors foreign investments over the institution of genuine land reform. In factories and semi-processing plants in urban centers, women alongside men continue to be victimized by corporate greed with Duterte’s adamant neoliberal policies on job contractualization.

Like any dictator, Duterte detests women and wants them to kowtow to the patriarchal authorities of the semi-feudal and semi-colonial society that condemn women as docile, unthinking secondary citizens. He wants women to never question, raise doubt or protest the inequalities that he himself is perpetrating against the masses of peasants, workers and Lumad. He demands subservience, and where there is none, he either unravels his dirty mouth to ridicule women or raises his iron-clad fist to stifle dissent, be it against the legal democratic movement or the underground movement.

But in truth, Duterte is deathly afraid of women, especially strong-willed women who see him for the mysogynistic tyrant that he is. He is most afraid of women who choose the hard road of arm struggle against the exploitative reactionary government which he now desperately endeavors to keep together with fascism and dictatorship. He knows that when the masses rise up to topple him, more than half of those will be mothers, daughters and women of all sectors.

We likewise challenge presidential daughter and Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte, as a woman and a human being, to make a stand against her father’s egregious anti-women tirades. For the sake of the sector she belongs to and human rights in general, she must denounce this retrograde order that objectifies women and uses our reproductive organ as an instrument of subordination and derision.

MAKIBAKA calls on all women to wage all forms of resistance in the national democratic struggle to bring down the US-Duterte regime, the number one enemy of all Filipino women today. We call on more women to join the ranks of men and march with the New People’s Army which imbibes the long and heroic tradition of revolutionary women who fight against the roots of our patriarchal bondage—imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism.

#Mindanao #Philippines #WomensMovement #PeoplesStruggles #makibaka #NationalDemocraticFrontMindanao #Antifascism #RodrigoDuterte #Asia

NDFP-Mindanao challenges Aquino government to heed mounting calls for junking of the VFA

Jorge “Ka Oris” Madlos, Spokesperson

National Democratic Front of the Philippines-Mindanao

13 September 2010

Following the visit of the US nuclear warships which posed greater danger for the country, the National Democratic Front of the Philippines in Mindanao reiterates the mounting call from various sectors to junk the US-RP Visiting Forces Agreement and challenges the Aquino government to heed it.

The NDFP-Mindanao urges individual legislators in the Philippine Congress who still maintain a deep sense of nationalism to make that bold step and push for the immediate abrogation of the Visiting Forces Agreement, heeding strong calls for its rejection in the light of the Joint Resolution 3 filed by Senator Miriam Santiago that Congress can abolish this lopsided and anti-people US-RP relation.

We likewise challenge members of the “civil society” who have professed nationalism to take action, now more than ever, in defense of the Filipino people's sovereign right against intensifying US imperialist interventionism. Nationalist political, religious, and progressive leaders must place themselves at variance with the Aquino government's open policy of allowing the operation in the country of US troops as well as the entry of nuclear vessels, which, even under the scrutiny of the GRP's own laws, is treasonous.

In no time, the unequal treaty will further afflict Philippine soil with its much lopsided provisions, especially now that Mr. Noynoy Aquino is rapidly being unmasked as another puppet of US imperialism, appearing to be no different from his predecessor. After spinning victory and strategically placing him to be their stalwart, Aquino's US imperialist master is now dead set to waylay Philippine sovereignty, and do so with impunity, to protect and preserve their political and economic interests in the Asia-Pacific.

Because of the VFA, presence of US troops in Philippine soil come and go at will, like the 6,000-strong US soldiers recently ferried to the country. The VFA gives consent to stationing more troops in the country, thus advancing further US intervention here and in other neighboring countries. It is public knowledge how these US troops have inflicted damage to hundreds of thousand lives of the Filipino people during the Philippine-American War, and recently creating controversial cases including the rape of a 22-year old Filipina girl, the mysterious death of Filipino interpreter Gregan Cardeno inside a U.S barracks in Marawi City, the murder of Boyongboyong Isnijal in Basilan, and inflicting damage to many civilians as a result of their direct participation in local combat operations, which was recently witnessed in Bukidnon, Compostela Valley and the Bicol Region, and wanton military exercises of U.S soldiers in different parts of Mindanao.

The VFA is an outright affront to our national sovereignty and a violation of the Government of the Republic of the Philippines' own Constitution. The VFA is no less than combat intelligence and surveillance in the local populace vital to the military and economic objectives of US. The humanitarian missions conducted, including the ones which are facilitated by USAID, are merely facades which are actually part of the military and 'communications strategy' of the US to infiltrate deeper.

Despite mounting calls and strong ground for the abrogation of this one-sided and anti-people policy since it came into effect more than a decade ago, the VFA has remained, mocking our national sovereignty and patrimony. Rather than heeding these calls, Aquino has further said that the US troops are here to stay. That Aquino is heading towards the United States for his first diplomatic trip there, Aquino is well-advised to take VFA with him and serve it back to his US imperialist masters.

The VFA has undermined the previous victories of the Filipino people in removing foreign bases in the country. The NDFP-Mindanao calls on all freedom-loving Filipinos, especially those who were once staunch anti-US military bases like Sen. Joker Arroyo, Sen. Miriam Santiago, former Sen. Jovito Salonga, and other political and religious leaders and groups, to oppose policies that promote further US intervention such as the VFA. The Filipino people should fight and defend national sovereignty and patrimony.

The NDFP-Mindanao also calls on the New People's Army to ready themselves to give combat against US soldiers and spies who directly participate in combat operations and espionage in NPA areas in defense of revolutionary forces and of the masses. We likewise call on all the Moro freedom fighters to persevere in their armed struggle for their right to self-determination, and to unite more fervently in the fight against continuing and intensifying US military intervention.

Finally, we call on all American citizens residing in the Philippines and in the United States to manifest their adherence to the respect for the sovereignty of the Filipino nation by helping create a strong lobby for the immediate abrogation of the VFA and for the United States government to pull out its troops from the country. We fear that if the US imperialist power continues to impinge on the Filipino people, this will create the way for open war that will force the revolutionary movement and the Filipino masses to fight back, and its escalation may result in the needless death of more American soldiers, similar to what happened in the Vietnam War and to the current strife in Iraq and Afghanistan.

#Philippines #NationalDemocraticFrontOfThePhilippines #NationalDemocraticFrontMindanao #VisitingForcesAgreement #NoynoyAquino #Asia

Under the Obama Regime, Mindanao could become another Afghanistan

November 13, 2009

On the occasion of US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton's two-day visit of to the Philippines, the National Democratic Front-Mindanao (NDF-Mindanao) reiterates the demand of the Filipino people for the US government to immediately pull-out the US Pacific Command's 600-strong Joint Special Operations Task Force-Philippines (JSOTFP) from Mindanao and elsewhere in the Philippines.

Should the US refuse and instead continue heightening its military intervention and escalate its participation in counter-guerrilla operations, Mindanao and the entire Philippines could become another Afghanistan, Iraq or Vietnam where its forces will be caught in a spiral of armed mass resistance.

Despite persistent denials of Philippine and US officials, there is clear proof that US soldiers have been participating in counter-guerrilla operations jointly with the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) in Mindanao and other parts of the Philippines. However, US military officials have been more forthright in bragging about the participation of American soldiers in operations against the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and the Abu Sayaff.

This year, US military elements were documented to have had an active role along with AFP regular troops in four separate operations in the town of Quezon, and the cities of Malaybalay and Valencia in Bukidnon province. American soldiers penetrated local villages in search of local guerrilla units of the New People's Army (NPA). Since 2002, American troops have also been sighted in other parts of Mindanao, as well as in Samar, Panay, Bicol, Southern Tagalog and Central Luzon.

The NDF-Mindanao would like to warn Ms. Clinton that in participating in local counter-guerilla operations, US forces are bound to suffer a bigger number of casualties. Last September, at least two American soldiers were killed when ambushed in Indanan, Sulu by local armed groups. Earlier this year, an American soldier was wounded in Bicol when the AFP unit he was embedded in was ambushed by NPA Red fighters.

Highlighting Ms. Clinton’s  visit, the NPA has launched series of tactical offensives and sanctions across Mindanao as one way of underscoring the demand of the Filipino people and their revolutionary forces for the Obama government to immediately withdraw all its forces from the country and to end its interventionist policy.

The NDF-Mindanao denounces the publicity gimmick of Ms. Clinton in her plan to have her picture taken with the victims of recent supertyphoons that left thousands homeless and more impoverished then before. This is hypocrisy of the highest sort!

It is a historical fact that US logging and mining companies and big agribusiness corporations have been the biggest plunderers of Philippine natural resources and pollutants of the environment. The destruction that they have caused and continue to cause is the single-biggest cause of landslides, flooding and ecological imbalance. They are among the biggest landgrabbers that have displaced millions of peasants and indigenous peoples in Mindanao and the entire country.

The US government is overlooking the responsibility of US monopoly corporations over the destruction of the Philippine environment. If Ms. Clinton and the Obama government were any sincere in the Filipino people's plight over the continued environmental degradation, they would compel logging and mining concessions and big agribusiness corporations, especially those which are directly-owned or are in partnership with US-based companies, to immediately stop their operations.

Instead, the US brazenly took advantage of the calamities by deploying American troops for so-called humanitarian operations which only serve to mask US imperialism's military interventionism.

Jorge “Ka Oris” Madlos

Spokesperson

National Democratic Front — Mindanao

November 13, 2009

#Philippines #AntiwarMovement #Afghanistan #NationalDemocraticFrontMindanao #MoroIslamicLiberationFront #Asia