[News] Philippine Bloodshed Sharply Rises as Duterte Pursues War on Communists, Progressives

[Anti-Imperialist News]

https://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Philippine-Bloodshed-Sharply-Rises-as-Duterte-Pursues-War-on-Communists-Progressives-20171129-0046.html 



  Philippine Bloodshed Sharply Rises as Duterte Pursues War on
  Communists, Progressives

Published 30 November 2017
------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Philippines has witnessed an increase in clashes between the 
government's armed forces and communist fighters while human rights 
monitors, progressive groups and labor organizers have faced a sharp 
increase in deadly attacks. The onslaught of repression marks a new 
stage in President Rodrigo Duterte's declared counter-revolutionary war 
that resumed following the government's unilateral termination of peace 
talks.

    *RELATED: *
    Duterte Admits 'Fascism,' Ends Peace Talks With Communists and Vows
    Crackdown on Left
    <https://www.telesurtv.net/english/analysis/Duterte-Admits-Fascism-Vows-Defeat-of-Communist-Terrorists-and-Crackdown-on-Left-20171121-0038.html>

On Tuesday night, army personnel and air force commandos attacked a 
detachment of the communist New People's Army after police spotted 
fighters in Nasugbu, Batangas, south of the capital, Manila. According 
to the military and local media reports, the attacks claimed the lives 
of 14 combatants aligned with the clandestine Communist Party of the 
Philippines.

Fatalities included a suspected secretary and a platoon leader of the 
guerrilla unit, officials claim. One of two wounded rebels who was 
captured died in hospital. Five members of the Armed Forces of the 
Philippines sustained injuries, according to the officials.

For nearly 50 years, the NPA has been waging a prolonged revolutionary 
insurgency against what it sees as successive Philippine governments 
that serve the interests of U.S. imperialism rather than poor people and 
Indigenous communities in resource-rich rural areas.

On Wednesday, Duterte said that he was actively preparing the executive 
order to designate the CPP as a terrorist group.

“I am preparing now. They are preparing an executive order declaring 
them terrorists and they will be afforded treatment of being criminals,” 
Duterte said in a speech in Sual, Pangasinan.

Duterte, who took power last year, ran on a campaign of peace with the 
communists as well as with Muslim fighters in Mindanao. However, the 
mercurial leader and confessed fentanyl abuser 
<https://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Communist-Leader-Joma-Duterte-is-No.1-Addict-in-Philippines-20170730-0035.html> 
has proved highly erratic in the course of his relations with the 
powerful Philippine communists and legal left-wing mass movements.

    *OPINION: *
    How Duterte Sabotaged the Philippines Peace Process
    <https://www.telesurtv.net/english/opinion/How-Duterte-Sabotaged-the-Philippines-Peace-Process-20171123-0032.html>

Duterte signed Proclamation 360 ending peace talks with the communists 
last week after complaining that rebel violence had continued during the 
negotiations, citing, in particular, the killing of a four-month-old 
child who was unintentionally killed during an NPA ambush on a police 
car. Following the incident, the Maoist guerillas promptly issued a 
statement expressing condolences for the child's death along with a 
pledge to take measures to account for the civilian fatality.

In a statement released over the weekend, the Party's central committee 
accused Duterte of breaking off negotiations in a bid to liquidate 
opposition to his increasingly violent policies, including the 
imposition of martial law in the southern island of Mindanao and his 
deadly police campaign that has claimed the lives of tens of thousands 
of small-scale drug-peddlers and addicts, according to human rights 
group Karapatan.

“Duterte terminated peace talks amid the rising protest movement against 
rampant killings in his so-called war against drugs, political killings 
against activists, widespread death and destruction in the Marawi Siege, 
aerial bombings, shelling, militarization and all-out war in the 
countryside,” the CPP said.

On Tuesday, members of a human rights fact-finding mission in Negros 
Oriental also came under fire from unidentified men in an attack 
that claimed the lives of Elisa Badayos, the regional coordinator for 
Karapatan, and peasant organizer Eleuterio Moises. The attack follows a 
string of mysterious killings of progressive and rural poor peoples' 
association organizers and activists following Duterte's issuance of 
Proclamation 360.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

“The attack on human rights defenders are becoming more rampant, more 
brutal, more fearless. The perpetrators know they will be dealt with 
impunity, as human rights have lost force and meaning especially under 
this regime. Fact-finding missions are a mechanism for human rights 
organizations to confirm reports of abuses, and this incident has only 
proven how fascism works to outrightly kill those who dare to question,” 
said Karapatan secretary general Cristina Palabay.

According to Karapatan, 98 politically-related extrajudicial killings 
and over a thousand illegal arrests from July 2016 to Sept. 2017, plus 
tens of thousands killed in the name of the war on drugs

Palabay added that “the space for human rights defenders is fast 
shrinking, as the Duterte regime is finding more and more ways to 
cripple defenders on the ground who voice out the real situation 
experienced by marginalized communities victimized by militarization, 
landgrabbing, and other forms of repression and oppression.”

Such attacks will only force above-ground militant organizers and 
members of the country's legal left to take up arms alongside the New 
People's Army, according to Jose Maria Sison. The exiled founding 
chairman of the CPP is currently the chief political consultant of the 
National Democratic Front of the Philippines or NDFP base in the 
Netherlands.

“The legal democratic forces and broad opposition have no choice but to 
develop the underground and encourage endangered activists to become 
fighters in the people´s army,” said Professor Sison.

The exiled revolutionary also expressed his disgust at the malice, 
shamelessness, and bloodlust of Duterte, slamming his move to outlaw the 
members and sympathizers of the CPP-NPA-NDFP as terrorists, “and even 
such legal patriotic and progressive organizations as BAYAN and its 
affiliates.”

    *JOMA SISON: *
    Duterte Is a Big Liar
    <https://www.telesurtv.net/english/opinion/Duterte-Is-a-Big-Liar-20171125-0011.html>

Accusing Duterte of serving his masters in the United States, Sison 
added that the president “expects to wipe out through arbitrary arrests, 
torture, indefinite detention and massacre of suspected revolutionaries 
and legal social activists both the armed revolutionary movement and the 
legal democratic movement, in order to set up a fascist dictatorship in 
the service of U.S. imperialism and his fellow oligarchs among the big 
compradors, landlords and corrupt bureaucrats.”

Meanwhile, a statement by the CPP Central Committee appealing to the 
Filipino people to overthrow the “U.S.-Duterte fascist regime” has 
continued to broadly circulate across social networks, both online and 
on the ground.

“Every Party member and organization must prepare to engage the Duterte 
regime in intense battles, accelerate and amplify efforts to organize 
the people and lead them in waging anti-fascist, anti-feudal and 
anti-imperialist struggles,” the statement says.

“The national democratic forces must arouse, organize and mobilize the 
biggest number of people and help build the broadest possible united 
front in order to isolate, confront and oust the fascist regime.

“The Party must lead the New People’s Army in intensifying the 
revolutionary armed struggle nationwide. The NPA must continue to wage 
and intensify guerrilla warfare nationwide in order to inflict powerful 
blows against Duterte’s fascist machinery.

“By waging nationwide armed and non-armed forms of struggle, the 
Filipino people will surely prevail over the U.S.-Duterte regime’s 
fascist schemes.”

-- 
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 
863.9977 https://freedomarchives.org/
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