NDFP National Democratic Front of the Philippines
Press Statement
18 September 2015
18 September 2015
On the commemoration of the 43rd year since the declaration
of Martial Law on Sept. 21, 1972, the NDFP-Mindanao and all revolutionary forces and
masses honor and remember all those who have fought against and died during the Marcos
fascist dictatorship, and salute those who have survived through its harrowing years yet
continue to fight until today.
We remember the thousands of victims of state terror in all
its unspeakable forms –
massacres, enforced disappearances, rape, torture, illegal
arrests, maiming, arson, forcible evacuations, closing down of schools and other forms of
curtailment of democratic rights –perpetrated by mercenary AFP, Phil. Constabulary and
paramilitary units.
We remember the indomitable struggle of the Filipino people against Martial
Law, which took the form of the broad anti-fascist movement on one hand and the armed revolution
on the other.
After the EDSA uprising of 1986, however, the succeeding
regimes, even including that of Cory’s, did not live up to the aspiration of the Filipino
people but instead continued and even intensified Marcos’s bloody legacy of state terrorism.
Today, under Benigno Aquino III’s Oplan Bayanihan, an intensified terror campaign rages in Mindanao .
The following are but a few proof of this in the island.
On Sept. 1 in Sitio Han-ayan, Brgy. Diatagon, Surigao del
Sur, ALCADEV Exec. Dir. Emerito Samarca, MAPASU Chairman Dionel Campos and Lumad leader
Juvello Sinzo were brutally murdered by the combined elements of the 35th IB, 75th IB,
SFB and the AFP-backed “Magahat/Bagani” bandit group. Samarca, who devoted his life
in the service of the Lumads, was hog-tied and his throat slit. The same armed groups also
burned the community cooperative and several houses, and caused the evacuation of
more than 3,200 from five municipalities of Surigao del Sur and Prosperidad, Agusan
del Sur.
On Aug. 18 in Sitio Mando, Brgy. Mendis, Pangantucan,
Bukidnon, members of a Manobo-Talaandig family consisting of a 70 year-old blind man, two children and two
young adults were massacred by AFP forces. The surviving 13-year old
child pleaded mercy for their lives in vain. Hundreds of Ata-Manobo evacuees are still in Davao City North Cotabato . The return
of the evacuees is only possible if and when these mercenary forces altogether stop their combat operations. Their
schools and homes are used as camps by AFP soldiers. This is also the case for Lumads in Loreto,
La Paz
frequently by AFP and bandit forces.
Since the Mamasapano incident last January, the AFP
incessantly terrorized Moro
communities in provinces in Central
Mindanao and hundreds of thousands have already been displaced with no hope of adequate support and
rehabilitation.
Since Aquino III took over Malacañang in mid-2010 until the
3rd quarter of 2015, victims of state-sponsored extra-judicial killings now add up to more
than 282 in the entire country, 57 of whom are Lumad people in Mindanao .
Murdering Lumad leaders and their advocates like Mr. Emok Samarca and Fr. Pops Tentorio is intended to
terrorize national minority communities and their support groups, thereby subduing any
form of resistance against foreign and local big business that aim to exploit their
mineral-rich ancestral lands, deplete the country’s natural resources, destroy the environment and
displace the Lumad and Moro from their lands.
The reactionary government held so-called “Peace Caravans”
in Loreto, Agusan del Sur; Ngan, Compostela Valley ; Talaingod, Davao
del
Under the Aquino III regime alone, there have been over 1000
persons who fell victim to illegal arrests, 26 to enforced disappearances, 110 to
torture, and millions to terrorizing whole communities during combat and COPD operations and
forcible evacuations. This military terror campaign, implemented through Oplan
Bayanihan, is patterned after the US Counter Insurgency Guide and follows after Martial Law’s
template of brazen human rights violations.
When asked about the Lumad killings in
Mindanao, Aquino III replied that
“there is no campaign to kill anyone”. However, OPB, with
its staggering record of human rights abuses in the past five years, is in truth Aquino
III’s brutal strategy and campaign to suppress those who oppose the interests of the ruling
classes and its US imperialist boss.
The US-Aquino III regime, as with Marcos before, wields the
AFP, PNP, CAFGU and bandit groups as the state’s terror machinery, making sure that, apart
from protecting the interests of US monopoly capitalists, the surging people’s democratic
revolution, led by the Communist Party of the Philippines and carried out in the
main by the New People’s Army, is crushed before its term ends.
EastMinCom CO Maj. Gen.
Aurelio Baladad said that “to defeat the revolutionary movement, it has to be defeated here in
eastern Mindanao”. No wonder the AFP deployed more than 60% of its combat-effective forces to
Mindanao, majority of which are deployed in Southern, North Central and Northeastern
Mindanao. However, it has miserably failed in its intent to crush the revolutionary
movement in the country according to OPB’s six-year timetable.
When Martial Law was declared, it only pushed more and more
people to take the
revolutionary path and caused thousands to rise in struggle
against the rotten semi-feudal and semi-colonial system. Similarly, the ruthlessness of
Aquino III’s OPB terror campaign today has attained this effect by creating the condition for
broader support for the people’s militant movement against social injustice and by ever
strengthening the resolve of many to take the path of the armed revolution to smash the
reactionary, fascist state.
Thus, on the occasion of commemorating the 43rd year of the
declaration of Martial Law, the best way to honor the martyrs and all its victims of state
fascism is to stand united in the face of Marcosian policies under the US-Aquino III regime and
further strengthen the people’s militant movement against state fascism and imperialist
impositions.#
(sgd) Ka Oris
Spokesperson
NDFP-MIndanao
http://www.philippinerevolution.net/statements/20150920_the-raging-us-aquino-iii-regime-s-oplan-bayanihan-terror-campaign-in-mindanao-reminds-us-of-the-dark-days-of-martial-law
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