LAND AND JUSTICE FOR THE PEASANTS AND FARM WORKERS OF HACIENDA LUISITA

Issued by the Office of the Chairperson

International League of Peoples’ Struggle

16 November2009

Today, the working people of the world are launching various forms of
protest actions to mark the International Day of Action against Trade
Union Repression. This provides a meaningful context for commemorating
and protesting the massacre of striking peasants and farm workers in
Hacienda Luisita in Tarlac province in the Philippines in 2004. The
working people of Hacienda Luisita exemplify the plight and struggle of
the working people of semicolonial and semifeudal countries, who still
comprise the majority of the world’s population.

Hacienda Luisita is the vast 6,000-hectare tract of land in Central
Luzon owned by the wealthy and powerful Cojuangco family to which former
Pres. Corazon “Cory” Aquino belonged . It stands as a bulwark of feudal
and semi-feudal exploitation and oppression within the context of the
world capitalist system. It demonstrates how the big comprador-landlords
exploit the working people and wield state power to oppress them. It
exposes as a sham the so-called “comprehensive agrarian reform program”
that the Aquino ruling clique had launched since the 1980s.

Earlier the Cojuangco family bought Hacienda Luisita from the Spanish
Tabacalera corporation with a loan from the government in the 1950s..
The loan was granted with the provision that a major portion of the land
(2000 hectares) would be distributed later on to the peasants, within
the frame of the government’s “land reform” program.

The Cojuangco family not only failed to distribute the designated
portion of the land, it maneuvered to keep it and used violence to
suppress those who demanded land reform. In 1985, a trial court ruled
that the lands be distributed to the peasants, but 1986 saw the ascent
to the presidency of Aquino. The Aquino regime crafted an agrarian
reform program which was riddled with so many exemptions, including one
called the Stock Distribution Option (SDO) that was used to exempt
Luisita from land distribution.

In this context, we can fully appreciate the significance of the strike
launched by Luisita peasants and farm workers in November 2004. They
were protesting the P9.50 take-home pay per day at the hacienda – a
result of the Stock Distribution Option scheme hatched by the Cojuangcos
and the landlord class to gain legal exemption from the fake agrarian
reform program being implemented by the government. They were also
protesting the dismissal of 300 workers from the hacienda’s sugar
refinery, an act intended to bust the local union which was then
becoming militant.

Before and during their strike, the peasants and farm workers of Luisita
– with the active support of patriotic and progressive mass
organizations and alliances throughout the country, and with the help of
alternative media – won the attention and sympathy of the working people
of the country and the world. Many among the urban petty-bourgeoisie in
the Philippines were shocked to learn about concrete forms of feudal
exploitation and oppression that were persisting in the countryside. The
working people of the Philippines and the world applauded and encouraged
the working people of Luisita .

The Cojuangcos, the big comprador-landlord classes, and the reactionary
state were all shamed by the justness of the calls of the Luisita
peasants and farm workers. They reacted swiftly and viciously to the
strike. Patricia Sto. Tomas, then-labor secretary of the US-backed
regime of Mrs. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, issued an Assumption of
Jurisdiction order on the issue, ordering the strikers to go back to
work and authorizing the deployment of military and police forces to
dismantle the strike. Gen. Hermogenes Esperon, Jr., who was widely
believed to have been promoted to his post for helping Mrs. Arroyo cheat
in the 2004 elections, was the military’s chief of staff.

The military and police forces went to the hacienda, bringing tanks,
tear gas, and high-powered rifles. The Luisita peasants and farm workers
stood their ground. With their unity and militance, they repelled
various attempts at breaking the strike. Thousands upon thousands of
workers, peasants and farm workers, together with their women folk,
locked arms and pushed away with their bodies the military and police
who were armed with shields. After reaching the ground, canisters of
tear gas thrown by the military were immediately covered with soil. A
farmer, speaking to the military, summed up their spirit: “Since you are
already killing us, we might as well die fighting.” These could only
have aroused fear and panic in the hearts of the oppressors..

In the afternoon of November 16, 2004,after the strikers promised in a
negotiation with military and police officials to lay down the pieces of
wood they were holding for defending themselves and to defend the strike
with just their bodies, the military and police forces opened fire. A
few minutes of gunfire left Jhaivie Basilio, Adriano Caballero, Jhune
David, Jesus Laza, Juancho Sanchez, Jaime Pastidio and Jessie Valdez
fatally wounded. Some of them could have been kept alive, but hospitals
in Cojuangco-dominated Tarlac refused to admit patients from the
hacienda. Calling for land to the tillers, they died fighting for the
just cause of the peasants and farm workers of Luisita and the country.

The owners of the hacienda, the reactionary government and the bourgeois
mass media tried to spread the canard that it was the Luisita farmers
and farm workers who started the violence and that it was fighters of
the New People’s Army,.who started the shooting. Their propaganda could
not stand up to the truth of the audio-visual evidence taken by
progressive filmmakers who covered the strike. The bursts of gunfire
came from the ranks of the military and the police. Subsequently, death
squads of the military went on a spree killing strike leaders and
supporters, including a bishop and a city councilor.

While the touters of the reactionary justice system in the Philippines
often cite the adage that “justice delayed is justice denied,” justice
has clearly been delayed and has been denied to the peasants and farm
workers of Hacienda Luisita. Five years after the massacre, no one has
been punished for the crime. There are many victims, but none of the
criminal perpetrators is imprisoned. Investigation of the cases has been
proceeding at snail pace, and the only significant development is that
de facto president Arroyo, her labor secretary Sto. Tomas and the
military butcher Esperon have been removed from the list of those
charged. The ones remaining on the sham charge sheet are the police and
military officers who tested positive in paraffin tests. But they are
scot free and biding their time.

The power of the labor secretary to issue Assumption of Jurisdiction
(AJ) orders remains in place – despite the graphic demonstration by what
happened in Luisita of its lethal consequences for working people. After
the massacre, the labor secretary issued AJ orders for numerous
workplaces in Central Luzon, thus facilitating the militarization of
that region. Since it was approved as part of the Labor Code in 1989,
the AJ has been used as license to suppress workers’ actions in
workplaces throughout the country. It is being imposed even before a
strike is initiated – when collective bargaining negotiations end in
deadlock or when notices of strike are filed before the government.

Pressured by the strike and the widespread condemnation of the massacre
locally and internationally, the Presidential Agrarian Reform Council
(PARC), in December 2005, revoked the Stock Distribution Option (SDO)
scheme being implemented in the hacienda and placed the lands previously
under the SDO into the “compulsory coverage” scheme of the government’s
agrarian reform program. The Hacienda Luisita management, losing no
time, filed for a Temporary Restraining Order in January 2006 against
the resolution. In June 2006, the Supreme Court issued a TRO and ordered
the PARC and the Department of Agrarian Reform to implement the
revocation of the SDO.

Seeing the opportunity in this deadlock, and knowing that waiting for
government intervention will get them nowhere, the peasants and farm
workers of the hacienda took the initiative and launched their
“kampanyang bungkal” or campaign to till, which called on all working
people of the hacienda to plant crops that are necessary for everyday
nourishment, such as rice and vegetables, and can be sold for added
income, such as fruits. With the participation of more than a thousand
families, the hacienda land, which used to showcase sugarcane, now
boasts of golden fields of rice. The campaign caused an improvement in
the lives and livelihood of the working people of Luisita.

The Cojuangco family, however, has not given up on the fight to own the
Luisita lands. Last December 2008, emboldened by the passage of a law
extending the government’s anti-peasant agrarian reform program – which
still contained the SDO as one of the (non-)distribution schemes – the
Hacienda Luisita management issued a memorandum to the peasants tilling
the 2,000-hectare portion of the hacienda which ordered them to stop
using the lands for whatever purpose. After a public clamor directed at
Sen. Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III – a member of the Cojuangco family
who’s running in the 2010 presidential elections – the Hacienda Luisita
management was forced to backtrack.

Now, the Hacienda Luisita management is carrying out what it calls an
“enlistment” of peasants who would become the “beneficiaries” of
agrarian reform in the hacienda – as if it were the authorized body to
implement agrarian reform in that area and as if it were authorized to
do so despite the TRO. It is complaining of “illegal tillers”
encroaching upon the hacienda, who are actually the working people of
Luisita. It is also undertaking land-use conversion schemes in various
parts of the land. The creation of a vast highway that passes through
the hacienda is being seen as an opportunity to increase the value of
hacienda land and an opening to commercial uses of portions of the
hacienda.

Five years after the massacre, the struggle of the Luisita peasants and
farm workers for justice, including the junking of the Assumption of
Jurisdiction power of the labor secretary, and land continues. They
deserve the full support of the working people of the Philippines and
the whole world. We hope that our International Day of Action against
Trade Union Repression and the fifth anniversary of the Hacienda Luisita
massacre will be an occasion for working people everywhere to discuss
and raise the issues of trade union repression in their work places and
countries. We should not allow trade union repression to weaken our
ranks and spirit. It should goad us to fight back and gain strength
through struggle.

We have to continue and intensify our struggle not just against trade
union repression but also against the forms of feudal and semi-feudal
exploitation which are aligned with the world capitalist system. Let us
keep in mind that monopoly capitalist control of global agriculture and
the food system has now created a global famine afflicting over a
billion people for the first time in world history.

The struggle of the Luisita peasants and farm workers is instructive. It
is only through the militant struggle of working people that they can
gain strength and aim for their national and social liberation. We may
win victories in our struggle for reforms within the present world
capitalist system but these will continue to be at risk until we, the
people of the world, are strong enough to overthrow the exploiters and
oppressors.

Phillipines: Revolution will put an end to backwardness and poverty

Gloria Arroyo’s vision of the Philippines becoming a First World country by 2020 is a huge delusion. Arroyo deceives the Filipino people by repeatedly telling them that their century-old poverty will be coming to an end in a few years’ time through her efforts and the measures she has taken. No one, of course, actually believes her when she insinuates that she has to stay in power in order to save the Philippines and deliver on her promise of prosperity.
The intensified crisis of the country’s semifeudal economy and the blows inflicted by the current crisis of the world capitalist system have worsened economic backwardness in the Philippines. The same assessment has been made by the imperialist financial agencies.
So long as the Philippine economy remains a mere supplier of cheap raw materials and cheap labor for the imperialists, so long as it remains tied to exporting semi-manufactured goods, and so long as superprofits are extracted from it in exchange for a tiny amount of excess capital invested, the country will forever be condemned to backwardness and will remain agrarian and unindustrialized. It will also be constantly in the throes of permanent crisis and will never prosper under this rotten system.
The Philippine economy and Philippine society on the whole have been at a standstill since US imperialism imposed colonial and neocolonial rule, plunder and oppression. The implementation since the 1980s of the imperialist policies of “neoliberal globalization” and the concomitant policies of liberalization, deregulation, labor flexibilization, privatization and denationalization have worsened this already dismal situation.
The solution to the Filipino people’s poverty and misery does not lie in Arroyo’s empty promises. The US-Arroyo regime is in fact responsible for the continued backwardness of Philippine economy and society. This regime has not done a thing to develop the economy, industry, agriculture and the Filipino people’s quality of life. It has in fact blocked national industrialization, land reform and programs and bills for the people’s betterment.
It is the most rabid implementor of imperialist “globalization” policies that have further condemned the Filipino people to poverty. Imperialist “globalization” destroys productive forces, depletes the country’s natural resources and deprives the poor of the most basic social services.
Revolution will put an end to the country’s backwardness and rottenness. Through the new democratic revolution, we can overthrow the existing semicolonial and semifeudal social order and achieve national liberation, democracy, justice, peace and the prosperity that has been denied the country and the Filipino people for more than a century. Only through revolution can economic development be attained and the people’s quality of life uplifted.
The socialist revolution that will lead to the establishment of a far more developed political and socio-economic system that will mainly benefit the working class and the toiling masses will be advanced as soon as the national democratic revolution is completed.
In advancing the Philippine revolution, we must wage allout resistance against the ruling US-Arroyo regime and all other puppet and reactionary regimes that prop up the ruling system until the entire rotten system is overthrown.

Phillipines: New Peoples Army statement – PNP Hit by Successive NPA Tactical Offensives

Spokesperson
Merardo Arce Command
Southern Mindanao Regional Operational Command
New People’s Army
May 31, 2009
The Philippine National Police contingent in Compostela Valley Province again suffered a heavy blow after two successive New People’s Army tactical offensives last week. Yet again, this showcases the tactical initiative held by the people’s army against the intruding forces of the GRP armed forces and police units.
On May 26, 2009, Red fighters of the NPA’s Rhyme Petalcorin Command of Guerilla Front 27 ambushed an enemy column composed of troops of the PNP 1102nd Provincial Mobile Group and Special Action Force and some Cafgu elements conducting patrol operations in Barangay Mainit, Nabunturan, Compostela Valley Province. Seven enemy combatants were killed in action. The 1001st Brigade-10th Infantry Division of the Philippine Army ordered an aerial bombing the following day, causing fear to farmers and their families.
On the evening of May 29, 2009, a platoon of the 3rd Pulang Bagani Company-NPA disarmed another 1102nd Provincial Mobile Group-PNP squad assigned as a security force of the APEX Mining Corporation in Barangay Masara, Maco, Comval. Swiftly seized were five high-powered rifles consisting of four (4) M16 armalites and one (1) M14 rifle after being surprised by the raiding NPA unit that entered the company compound. Since the target PNP unit did not make any armed resistance, they did not have any casualty.
The mining firm which is owned by the London-based Crew Minerals Corporation was punished for the continuing environmental destruction its operation has caused. One such devastation was the landslide in Barangay Masara last year that caused deaths and displacement in two barangays. Also, the 1102nd PMG-PNP in Comval forms part of the Investment Defense Force (IDF) — the Arroyo regime’s armed component that directly protects the interests of large mining companies and big agribusiness, and violates the inherent rights of poor peasants and lumads to their livelihood and ancestral lands.
In both combat operations initiated by squads and platoons of the Merardo Arce Command-NPA, the NPA did not have any casualty.
As the army battalions and special operations forces of the 10th ID-AFP go berserk in Southern Mindanao in a fascist rampage under the aegis of Oplan Bantay Laya 2, the people’s army are ever ready to intensify tactical offensives in conjunction with an expanding and deepening mass base.
(Sgd) Rigoberto F. Sanchez
Merardo Arce Command
Southern Mindanao Regional Operations Command
New People’s Army

Excellent conditions for revolutionary upsurge in the face of the worsening global capitalist crisis

Communist Party of the Philippines
October 15, 2008

The world capitalist system is undergoing a deepening recession that can only result in the massive destruction of productive forces and further concentration of capital in the hands of a few. This global economic malaise is now causing production slowdowns, massive job losses, worsening impoverishment and intensified exploitation and oppression of the proletariat and ordinary people in the capitalist centers, with even worse consequences for peoples in the Third World.

The bursting of the biggest financial bubble in history and the severest financial crisis since the Great Depression have already caused the collapse and subsumption of many of the largest banks and financial institutions, the sweeping credit crunch, the continuing meltdown of stock markets and near paralyzation of other financial markets.

The financial crisis has become so acute that, aside from several hundred billions already thrown in, the US government has allocated $700 billion and is planning to pour in more funds in a vain attempt to salvage the “toxic assets” of finance giants and buttress the battered capitalist financial system in the US and abroad. More than a trillion dollars is being poured in by the US and other imperialist governments and big finance capitalists to salvage more collapsing banks and financial markets in other capitalist countries.

These measures have, however, only been met with doubt and skepticism over their effectivity in stemming the financial crisis. After a few gasps of apparent resuscitation, financial markets have only continued to plunge. All these massive diversions of taxes and funds to rescue losing finance giants from their own greed have only angered the impoverished masses much divested of social assistance and made more miserable in the face of deprivation and worsening economic hardships.

The current crisis besetting the global capitalist system reaffirms the correctness of the Marxist-Leninist critique of the moribund capitalist system and the need to overthrow it through revolutionary struggle and supplant it with a socialist order.

The rotten capitalist system has become even more absurd and unproductive as the imperialists are engaged in ever greater financial speculation and accumulation of surplus finance capital than in production. Meanwhile, accelerating overproduction of surplus capital leads to cyclical overproduction in the real economy with piles of unsold inventories of houses, cars, computers, food items and other commodities, followed by production slowdowns, underconsumption and stagnation. The result is massive destruction of productive forces and billions of people around the world condemned to unemployment, poverty, hunger and utter desperation.

At the root of the current financial crisis is the concentration and accumulation of capital which has resulted in the ballooning of finance capital detached from production in the real economy. The amount of surplus capital employed in financial speculation has grown several times bigger than productive capital. The current financial crisis, in particular, was triggered by the accumulation by big finance capitalists of trillions of dollars of overblown assets and superprofits from the housing and subprime derivatives bubble.

As a result of the unproductive accumulation of finance capital, industrial production has turned recessive and presently continues to contract. Joblessness in the US is at a five-year high, with the number of unemployed expected to swell by another million by year’s end. This is on top of the 9.5 million already unemployed in the US. Underemployment is soaring to even higher record levels. The consumption crisis, following the burst of the housing bubble, has become protracted and has made a turn for the worse. Previous irrational capitalist overproduction has turned to disastrous stagnation and underconsumption.

In the face of the worsening crisis of the capitalist system, it is the miserably pauperized working class and ordinary people who suffer the most. More than a trillion dollars have been used to salvage losing finance capitalists in the imperialist countries and provide their losing executives with tens of billions in “golden parachutes.” On the other hand, the mass of their working class and ordinary people whose tax payments provided these funds, are left with practically nothing.

The imperialists have been forcing trade and investment liberalization and denationalization policies on their semicolonies as a means of further exporting their surplus capital, dumping their surplus products, plundering natural resources and taking advantage of the cheap labor and raw materials in their semicolonies. This has resulted in the large-scale destruction of productive forces, and mass unemployment, poverty and hunger in these countries. The spread of the global crisis of capitalism and the intensification of the exploitation and oppression of the working class and oppressed people are worsening even further the chronic crisis in the semicolonies and impoverished nations.

As its “solution” to the threat of the worsening global capitalist crisis on the flimsy semicolonial and semifeudal economy, the puppet Arroyo regime is further opening up the national economy to foreign investments, plunder of the natural resources, lopsided neocolonial trade, increased deficit government spending, more public and foreign borrowings, and even more intensified taxation of the people. The US and its puppet regime are pushing more policies and measures geared towards the removal of whatever remaining protection there is for the national patrimony and the interests of the toiling masses and the people. The policies include the long-standing scheme to change the constitution of the reactionary government to prolong the reign of the ruling regime.

These policies and measures aim to further open up the economy and resources of the country to the ravages of the imperialists and their big comprador and big bureaucrat accomplices. Instead of alleviating the crisis, the resulting production downfalls, increased unemployment, intensified inflation, reduced consumption and heightened poverty and hunger will only worsen the economic crisis and heighten the people’s sufferings.

The current crisis of the global capitalist system provides excellent conditions for revolutionary upsurge as the working class and other oppressed and exploited people all over the world who have been pushed to the wall have no other recourse but to further intensify their revolutionary struggles and advance their interests.

The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and the entire international proletarian revolutionary movement anticipate the reinvigoration and resurgence of the Marxist-Leninist- Maoist movement and the heightening of working class and people’s revolutionary struggles the world over.

The worsening socio-economic crisis in the Philippines is pushing millions of workers, peasants and other democratic sectors to wage people’s struggles and advance and support people’s war. The CPP calls on all revolutionary mass forces to take advantage of the current situation to step up recruitment, consolidate their ranks and intensify their struggles.

In the midst of the worsening crisis of the present system, the New People’s Army (NPA) will further intensify revolutionary armed struggle, launch more tactical offensives against the fascist armed forces, deal heavy blows on the US-Arroyo regime for its pro-imperialist, anti-democratic and antipeople policies and punish it for inflicting great harm and misery upon the people.

Response to the anti-peasant CARP: Agrarian revolution!

The US-Arroyo regime’s move to extend the implementation of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) for another five years is violative of the class interest of the peasant masses who have long been desirous of genuine land reform. The US-Arroyo regime has no other objective but to continue deceiving and oppressing the peasantry and keep on pocketing huge funds meant for CARP. In previous years, fund allocations for CARP served as one of the biggest milch cows of bureaucrat capitalists.

Like all the previous land reform programs of the reactionary state, CARP is bogus and has no real relation to agrarian reform. The fake land reform program merely served to further intensify land monopoly in the country, and allow foreigners to own land pursuant to imperialist “globalization” policies. Claims by the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) that 80% of agricultural lands have been distributed to the farmers is a big lie. The vast majority of peasants remain landless or land-starved and continue to be victims of feudal and semifeudal exploitation.

To evade the genuine distribution of land to the tillers, landlords devised numerous schemes in CARP’s name, including the division of vast tracts of land into small parcels and so-called land redistribution to bogus beneficiaries through the Voluntary Land Transfer/Direct Payment Scheme, Leaseback/Buy- back Scheme, Crop Conversion/Land Conversion Scheme, Contract-growing Scheme, Joint Venture Scheme, Cooperative Scheme, Corporative Scheme, Stock Distribution Option Scheme and related schemes.

CARP worsened the rampant land grabbing of farmers’ lands in different parts of the country. Concentration of lands in the hands of old and new landlords intensified, swelling the number of landless farmers. Landlords now control over 80% of the 13 million hectares of agricultural lands in the country, while more than 80% of peasants in the country do not have their own land to till.

Malacañang and its cabal only utilized CARP to enrich themselves. A big portion of over a hundred billion pesos allocated for CARP since 1988 merely went to the thieves in Malacañang and its so-called chief implementors.

Moreover, Arroyo and her cohorts feasted on the P27-billion fund sourced from the Marcoses’ ill-gotten wealth sequestered in 2004. The sequestered funds were intended for CARP as mandated by law. The insatiable Arroyo camp is now eyeing with gusto the more than P100 billion budget for CARP’s five-year extension.

The cry to end CARP is attendant to the farmers’ clamor for genuine land reform. It is advocated by all revolutionary forces and democratic sectors of society.

As contribution to the democratic struggles for genuine land reform, progressive solons in Congress are pushing for the passage into law of the Genuine Agrarian Reform Program (GARP). The bill is expected to meet with stiff opposition by the Arroyo regime in connivance with the big landlords who dominate Congress.

Agrarian revolution is the revolutionary movement’s key solution to widespread landlessness and land starvation in the country. Learning from the rich history of peasant struggles in the Philippines, genuine land reform will only be realized through agrarian revolution. Agrarian revolution aims to liberate the peasant masses from feudal and semifeudal exploitation and oppression.

Agrarian revolution is the principal feature of the national democratic struggle currently being waged by the armed revolutionary forces across the archipelago. Through this, the peasant majority are enjoined to take part as the main revolutionary force and in the formation of the basic alliance of the proletariat and peasantry.

In guerrilla zones and fronts across the archipelago, the revolutionary peasant masses implement various levels of the revolutionary land reform program. The minimum program being implemented on a wide scale involves the gradual reduction of land rent, the elimination of usury, wage increases for agricultural workers, attainment of just farmgate prices for agricultural products, improvement of different forms and levels of cooperation and various socio-economic, educational and cultural programs for the benefit and welfare of the peasant majority.

In areas where the armed revolutionary forces are relatively strong and the enemy forces are weak, certain components of the maximum program for land reform are already being implemented. In these areas, farmers are given rights to till for free lands that have been confiscated from despotic landlords and land grabbers, or idle or abandoned lands. This they do under the direct supervision of their agricultural cooperatives and organs of political power. This program proves to be effective and exceedingly gainful for the beneficiaries. There will be more of these cases as the revolutionary movement expands and advances and total victory becomes imminent.

As a result of advancing genuine land reform and the victories achieved therein, millions of peasants are joining revolutionary organizations and becoming active participants in revolutionary struggles. Thousands of the more advanced elements from their ranks are taking up arms and joining the people’s army. With the revolutionary movement’s continuous advance, agrarian revolution will spread like wildfire, gradually defeating feudal and semifeudal power in the countryside and fuelling the advance of people’s war across the land.

Barefaced Lies Fail to Erase the Legitimacy of New People’s Army Tactical Offensive (A Statement on the Death of 4 Phil. Army Soldiers)

Rigoberto F. Sanchez
Spokesperson
Merardo Arce Command
Southern Mindanao Regional Operational Command
New People’s Army
June 19, 2008

 

The 10th Infantry Division-Eastern Mindanao Command of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) has again concocted a barefaced lie and presented it as a very untenable excuse in regard to the death of four 73rd Infantry Battalion soldiers in Sitio Lower Bintuin, Brgy. Fatima, Paquibato, Davao City last June 14, 2008. But for its clear dubiousness, nobody is biting.

 

The narrative about their 4 casualties being “unarmed” and doing “community service” when ambushed by a unit of the 1st Pulang Bagani Company of the New People’s Army is a fabricated story that only shows the AFP’s deceit. Many, including people from the mass media, are quick in questioning how in the world has the AFP – in the thick of massive and sustained ground and aerial combat operations to defeat the revolutionary forces by 2010, and in an area which they very well know was inside a guerrilla zone – suddenly become unarmed?

 

Since when has 73rd IB-AFP combat and intelligence operations – with the 73rd IB-AFP long leading the charge against Ka Parago, the 1st PBC and the Guerrilla Front 52 been considered as “community service”? And last time we checked, the Geneva Convention and its Protocols that set the Rules of War still provided that combat units of warring parties, except for their medical personnel and chaplains and those who are considered hor’s de combat, are legitimate military targets. Again, their patent ignorance of International Humanitarian Law is revealed. They are so quick in fabricating lies when their troops are hit by NPA tactical offensives but celebrate in silence when they are able to kill unarmed civilians and non-combatants, as in the case of Danilo Pitao, Ka Parago’s brother.

 

The following are the basic facts denied and hidden by the 10th Infantry Division-AFP:

 

 

1. The four 73rd IB-AFP men were armed. Two of them who were wounded, able to run but died later were armed. The other two who died on the spot were armed with short firearms (one .45 caliber handgun and one 9mm pistol) and an apple-type hand grenade which were seized after the ambush. 

    

2. The 73rd IB-AFP is conducting Oplan Bantay Laya II military offensive operations against the NPA in its area of responsibility.

 

Having a cheek for lies and deception is trademark of the AFP. But no matter how hell-bent they are in twisting the truth, two obvious facts stand out: First, that they are disgraced and publicly embarrassed by this successful tactical offensive in the outskirts of Davao City by an NPA unit which they claim to be supposedly “weakened and on the run”; and second, that the US-directed Oplan Bantay Laya II counter-revolutiona ry campaign of Gloria Arroyo is one big frustration for the AFP.

 

 

(Sgd) Rigoberto F. Sanchez
Spokesperson
Merardo Arce Command
Southern Mindanao Regional Operations Command
New People’s Army

Heighten the struggle to end the people’s sufferings under the US-Arroyo regime

Communist Party of the Philippines
June 16, 2008

 

The Filipino people have long been suffering under a regime of intransigent puppetry, deceptions, corruption, anti-people socio-economic policies and repression.

 

The people’s conditions have critically worsened especially in the recent years under the Arroyo regime. Its mendicant neoliberal, deregulatory and other pro-imperialist “globalization” policies and sellout of national and people’s interests in collusion with big foreign, comprador and bureaucratic plunderers have resulted in the current series of rapid and sharp increases in the prices of fuel, power, food and other basic commodities and the ensuing increase in government tax collections.

 

Oil prices in particular have risen more than 250% since the start of the regime in 2001. Since the start of the year, these have risen 15 times, escalating to weekly hikes at record levels the past few weeks. Rice prices have more than doubled in Metro Manila (and more than tripled in other areas like Mindanao) since the start of the regime, with the most rapid and steepest hikes during the past three months. Inflation of basic commodity prices are presently at a record high since 2001.

 

The ruling regime has done nothing to alleviate the plight of the people amid the upwardly spiralling prices. Worse, it has stubbornly continued to block the demand of workers for a P125 legislated increase in the daily minimum wage. It rejects price controls and obstinately defends the oil price deregulation policy. It refuses to remove the 12% Value Added Tax (VAT), especially on oil and electricity, that imposes a tremendous burden on the people.

 

The Arroyo regime is even now taking advantage of the people’s plight and deceiving them by showcasing “subsidies” for “lifeline” power users, farmers and students as cover for Arroyo and her ilks’ self-indulgence with the increased VAT collections. Just as they did with the previous “subsidies” like the Ginintuang Masagang Ani, the bulk of these new and bigger “subsidies” worth tens of billions of pesos will only be used to line the pockets of Gloria Arroyo and her clique and grease their electoral and political malevolence. Malacañang has yet to account for scores of billions of unaccounted juggled public funds.

 

As head of the reactionary puppet regime, Gloria Arroyo is criminally culpable for collusion with foreign oil monopolies and big bourgeois comprador and bureaucrat capitalists and for the escalation of the prices of fuel, power, food and other basic commodities and services. The US-Arroyo regime is principally responsible for the worsening backwardness and destruction of the country’s industry and agriculture, massive unemployment and underemployment and the intensifying and unprecedented poverty and hunger of the mass of the Filipino people.

 

It is criminally culpable for stealing billions of pesos from public funds. Arroyo and her cohorts have engaged in pocketing and splurging billions even as they deprive the people of much-needed support for education, health, low-cost housing and other urgently needed social services.

 

The Arroyo regime has wrought even worse cruelty and brutalities upon the people with its relentless “all-out war,” extrajudicial killings, abductions, illegal arrests and detention, torture, ruthless bombings, mass destruction and evacuations of communities and widespread repression and terrorism.

 

The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) champions the unity and struggle of the Filipino people against the US-Arroyo regime’s sellout of national and people’s interests and plunderous collusion with big foreign companies, comprador capitalists and bureaucrats. The CPP supports the people’s demand for the scrapping of the Oil Industry Deregulation Law and other deregulation laws, for the nationalization of the oil industry and other basic and strategic industries, for the imposition of state control on the prices of fuel and food and other basic commodities and services, and for the guaranteed delivery of much-needed public social services.

 

Amid the rapidly worsening socio-economic and political crisis of the ruling regime and system, the CPP encourages the people to go to the streets and other public venues to express their outrage and wage their struggles. Rallies, marches, protest concerts, public video showings and other cultural presentations, fora and community meetings, alternative classes, school and office walkouts, factory protests, transport strikes, noise barrages, boycotts and other forms of collective protest action are bound to spiral towards a generalized and nationwide protest movement as the Arroyo regime remains intransigent and continues to ignore the people’s legitimate and just demands.

 

In the face of intensifying fascist repression by the regime and its armed forces, security forces and police, activists have to work hard, exercise creativity and redouble their efforts in agitating, organizing and mobilizing the people in factories, communities, schools and all other places of their work and residence. They must immerse themselves among the people, address their day-to-day problems at the grassroots, link these with the basic problems and key issues facing the whole country, and raise the level of the people’s determination and militancy in struggle. With the people’s help, they must learn how to deal with enemy spies and efforts of government forces to intimidate, harass and suppress them and the people and to overcome the regime and its armed forces and police’s fascist counter-organizing and counter-rally measures.

 

For its part, the New People’s Army (NPA) under the guidance and command of the CPP is accelerating its recruitment and training of new Red fighters and commanders and acquisition of arms in order to carry out more tactical offensives against the armed forces of the puppet reactionary state. The revolutionary masses are expanding the revolutionary mass organizations, building their local organs of political power, stepping up agrarian and other mass struggles in guerrilla bases, fronts and zones and other areas, and participating actively in the armed struggle.

 

The CPP calls on the Filipino people to rise and intensify the revolutionary struggle and all other forms of struggle to bring down the rotten reactionary puppet ruling regime and the entire underlying semicolonial and semifeudal system. From the rubbles of the rotten system, the people’s revolution will build a people’s democratic government and a revolutionary system to finally achieve genuine national freedom and democracy and continuing socio-economic progress in the country