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href="https://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Philippine-Bloodshed-Sharply-Rises-as-Duterte-Pursues-War-on-Communists-Progressives-20171129-0046.html">https://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Philippine-Bloodshed-Sharply-Rises-as-Duterte-Pursues-War-on-Communists-Progressives-20171129-0046.html</a></font>
<h1 id="reader-title">Philippine Bloodshed Sharply Rises as
Duterte Pursues War on Communists, Progressives</h1>
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<div class="capdate" itemprop="datePublished">Published 30
November 2017 </div>
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<p>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.</p>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>RELATED: </strong><br>
<a
href="https://www.telesurtv.net/english/analysis/Duterte-Admits-Fascism-Vows-Defeat-of-Communist-Terrorists-and-Crackdown-on-Left-20171121-0038.html">Duterte
Admits 'Fascism,' Ends Peace Talks With Communists
and Vows Crackdown on Left</a></p>
</blockquote>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>On Wednesday, Duterte said that he was actively
preparing the executive order to designate the CPP as a
terrorist group.</p>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>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 <a
href="https://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Communist-Leader-Joma-Duterte-is-No.1-Addict-in-Philippines-20170730-0035.html">fentanyl
abuser</a> has proved highly erratic in the course of
his relations with the powerful Philippine communists
and legal left-wing mass movements.</p>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>OPINION: </strong><br>
<a
href="https://www.telesurtv.net/english/opinion/How-Duterte-Sabotaged-the-Philippines-Peace-Process-20171123-0032.html">How
Duterte Sabotaged the Philippines Peace Process</a></p>
</blockquote>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<hr>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>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</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>JOMA SISON: </strong><br>
<a
href="https://www.telesurtv.net/english/opinion/Duterte-Is-a-Big-Liar-20171125-0011.html">Duterte
Is a Big Liar</a></p>
</blockquote>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
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