‘Terrorist tag’ and ‘PP 360’: The US-Duterte regime’s avowal on its contempt of peace and prosperity for death, destruction and dictatorship
The National Democratic Front of the Philippines – Mindanao (NDFP-Mindanao) strongly condemns the US-Duterte regime for issuing Presidential Proclamation No. 360, a decree that brands the CPP-NPA-NDF as “terrorists” and completely terminates the GRP-NDFP peace negotiations. This only reveals the regime’s utter contempt for attaining just and lasting peace and its propensity towards a reign of death, destruction and tyranny.
Thus, it is only just and correct that the revolutionary movement in Mindanao and the entire nation, under the leadership of the Communist Party of the Philippines, respond through the New People’s Army by way of launching widespread and more frequent tactical offensives against the AFP, PNP and paramilitary troops that seek to ravage numerous hinterland communities in the entire island.
The people of Mindanao are enraged with the death and destruction brought about by the US-Duterte regime’s fascism. This rage is manifested in ever broadening militant protests in urban centers. Mindanaoans are disgusted with Duterte’s boasts, lies and threats, especially with the brutality of the AFP and PNP in suppressing the people’s struggle for decent livelihood, basic human rights and freedoms.
Rodrigo Duterte tags the CPP, NPA and NDF as “terrorists” to lay the ground for the extension of martial law beyond its deadline not only in Mindanao but in the entire country as well. Duterte only wants to make certain that all his detractors and dissenters are effectively silenced and suppressed, and are unable to stop the perpetuation of his dictatorial rule in the country.
In truth, however, the US-Duterte regime turns out to be the biggest terrorist in the country. Since the beginning of the year, the AFP, PNP, and its paramilitary groups, have been on a bloody encirclement and suppression military campaign, a full-scale counterrevolutionary war, not only against the NPA but against the masses in the Mindanao countryside and the Bangsamoro.
In these AFP/PNP military operations, the US-Duterte regime has unleashed the most brutal and unspeakable state-sponsored terrorism against the people: aerial bombings and cannon fire, which have in fact “flattened” numerous peasant and Lumad areas in the island. These have resulted in the evacuation and displacement of whole communities, and brought unbearable suffering and misery especially to countless women, children and the elderly.
In the past months, numerous mass leaders and activists, including media practitioners in Mindanao, have fallen victims to extra-judicial killings, which are perpetrated by state-sponsored death squads. These political summary killings are most prevalent in the provinces of Compostela Valley, Bukidnon, Surigao del Sur, Surigao del Norte and Agusan del Norte. Others, especially those who are active in advocating the issues of the Lumad, peasants, workers and other marginalized sectors, have been leveled with trumped-up cases, pursued no less by the reactionary government’s Inter-Agency Legal Action Group, and arrested.
An increasing number of activists have been murdered, arrested, tortured, have gone missing and imprisoned for crimes they have not committed. These are exacerbated with the US-Duterte regime’s open threat of arrest directed against leaders and members of legitimate progressive organizations, which have been prejudicially lumped with the armed revolutionary movement. This has virtually places their very lives in a state of mortal danger.
The US-Duterte regime became the biggest, most brutal terrorist of all when it flattened Marawi City with almost five months of non-stop aerial bombings, cannon fire, mortar and ground attacks, destroying houses and buildings owned by Marawi citizens and pulverized other major public structures. It single-handedly devastated the lives and livelihood of millions of Bangsamoro in Marawi City and in adjacent towns in Lanao del Sur.
Since the so-called “liberation” of Marawi last October, however, thousands of Maranaw evacuees have not been able to return to their homes still because, apart from being blocked by the AFP, their lands have already been offered to the big business interests of big bourgeois compradors and foreign monopoly capitalists, and to the US Armed Forces for the establishment of a new US military base. This has only earned for the US-Duterte regime the ire of the Bangsamoro, especially among Moro armed groups who have vowed to continue and strengthen its armed resistance against the reactionary government and its fascist military forces.
The ghost of the “ISIS threat” is already stale but the US-Duterte regime insists, through its propagation of fake news, that “terrorism” has spread all over Mindanao. Thus, it desperately needs to maintain its extraordinary powers in Mindanao, that is why it has not lifted martial law in the island and intends to extend it beyond its deadline. It is now using the pretext of tagging the revolutionary movement as “terrorists” to precisely justify its rising dictatorship not only in Mindanao but in the entire country as well.
In Mindanao, hundreds have already become victims of the vicious “Oplan Tokhang,” which is responsible for snuffing out only small time drug users and pushers but have ironically consciously allowed big time druglords who are chums of Duterte to remain untouched and continue with their multi-billion drug operations. In fact, until this very minute, the case of the P6.2 billion smuggled drugs case in the Bureau Customs, where Duterte’s son Paolo and son-in-law Atty. Capio are involved, has not been resolved.
The US-Duterte regime is the No. 1 cause of the violent deaths of thousands of Filipinos and the destruction of cities and countryside communities in Mindanao. Only in its first year, Rodrigo Duterte is responsible for state terrorism that far exceeds his predecessors.
For its part, nearly 50 years of revolutionary struggle has only proven the Communist Party of the Philippines, New People’s Army and the National Democratic Front as the foremost advocate and defender of the interests of exploited and oppressed Filipinos. The CPP, NPA and NDF are essentially revolutionary organizations that aim to establish a society where genuine freedom abound and totally unshackled from imperialist domination. Thus, under whatever circumstance, the CPP-NPA-NDF can never ever be “terrorists.”
Thus, the NDFP-Mindanao calls on the New People’s Army to launch more frequent and more intensified tactical offensives to frustrate AFP/PNP military operations that only brings more death, destruction and misery to the people of Mindanao. The NDFP-Mindanao also call on the people of Mindanao to unite in militant protest against the rising tyranny of the US-Duterte regime.
Duterte is greatly mistaken to ever think that the revolutionary movement as well as the various marginalized sectors in Mindanao will cower in fear in the face his boasts and threats. He also only daydreams in his objective to wipe the entire revolutionary movement by the end of 2018. National democratic revolutionary forces, together with the masses in their thousands, will, as it has shown against the 20-year Marcos dictatorship, resolutely fight against Duterte’s tyranny, which is biggest threat to the rights and freedoms that Filipino people.#
Ka Joaquin Jacinto
Spokesperson
NDFP-Mindanao