CPP: CPP denounces US increasing involvement in Oplan Bayanihan

Posted to the CPP Website (Dec 14): CPP denounces US increasing involvement in Oplan Bayanihan

The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) today denounced the increasing US military intervention in local counterinsurgency operations as indicated in the agreements signed yesterday by officials of the Philippine and US military. Five new terms of reference were signed by Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) chief of staff General Jessie Dellosa and US Pacific Command commander Admiral Samuel James Locklear in a series of meetings by the Philippine-US Mutual Defense Board and Security Engagement Board over the past few days.

Among others, the new agreements call for the creation of a technology and experimentation subcommittee on civil-military operations, a humanitarian and disaster response working group and the activation of a counter-terrorism working group. “The Filipino people must demand the full disclosure of these agreements which indicate further deepening US involvement in the internal affairs of the Philippines, particularly in the implementation of the AFP’s Oplan Bayanihan war of suppression,” said the CPP. “Oplan Bayanihan was designed by the AFP in accordance with the Counterinsurgency Guide of 2009 issued by the US State Department and is being implemented with the guidance of US military advisers.”

“Involvement of US military forces in counter-insurgency planning and operations in the Philippines constitutes interference in the internal affairs of the Philippines,” pointed out the CPP. “The US is using its puppet regime to carry out its war by proxy against the armed resistance and non-armed movement which are fighting for national liberation from US domination and oppression.” “Aside from providing strategic advice, US military forces have long been known to be involved in tactical operations, providing local operating troops with intelligence and logistical support and experimental armaments besides having American soldiers directly embedded in combat operations,” added the CPP.

“The Filipino people must hold the Obama government accountable for the mounting human rights abuses being committed by the Aquino regime’s armed forces, police personnel and state-attached paramilitary groups in the course of the US-directed Oplan Bayanihan,” asserted the CPP. “Behind the rhetoric of peace and human rights repeated ad nauseum by Aquino and his military officials is the fact that cases of extrajudicial killings, abductions and disappearances, illegal arrest and detention, torture and other forms of military abuses continue to increase by the day.”

“The US is using such catchprhases as ‘freedom of navigation’, ‘regional stability’ and ‘counter-terrorism’ to serve as smokescreens for its increasing military presence and interventionism in the Philippines and heightened presence in Asia,” said the CPP. “In the end, it is only the ultra-nationalist interests of the US big capitalists that are being served by the increased presence of US military forces in the Philippines and in the Asia-Pacific region.”

The CPP said that “the Aquino and Obama regimes are riding roughshod over Philippine sovereignty in collaborating to further increase the presence of US military forces, particularly the growing number of rotational US military warship and troop dockings in Philippine ports.” “The Philippines is being used by the US military as an operations base of its large flotilla of interventionist troops plying the sea routes in and around the Philippines,” said the CPP. “This year, there have been close to 80 dockings by American warships at the former US naval base at Subic, in Manila Bay as well as other ports, which practically translates to the daily presence of American forces in some part of the country.” “Add to this the military base of the Joint Special Operations Task Force-Philippines (JSOTFP) inside Camp Navarro that permanently hosts at least 700 American soldiers.”

http://www.philippinerevolution.net/statements/cpp-denounces-us-increasing-involvement-in-oplan-bayanihan