Left protests at US embassy to mark kickout of US bases

From InterAksyon (Sep 16): Left protests at US embassy to mark kickout of US bases



Activists face off with police before managing to slip through for a protest in front of the US embassy to mark the 25th anniversary when the Senate voted to oust American military bases from the country. (photo courtesy of Obet de Castro)

Leftist groups led by the Bagong Alyansang Makabayan protested at the US embassy in Manila to mark the 25th anniversary of the Senate’s historic rejection of a new military bases treaty and voice support for Rodrigo Duterte’s plans to pursue an independent foreign policy.

"It is only fitting that 25 years after the historic bases treaty rejection, a Philippine president has sought to implement an independent foreign policy. It's about time,” Bayan secretary general Renato Reyes Jr. said in a statement.

“The Philippines must break free from neo-colonial relations with the US. All unequal agreements should be terminated. All forms of intervention should stop. Only then can we truly develop as a nation," he said.

In 1991, 12 senators voted to reject a new bases agreement, ending more than four decades of US military presence in its former colony.

However, American troops have since returned through the 1999 Visiting Forces Agreement and have been allowed increased presence and the use of local military facilities through the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement.

Recently, Duterte, piqued over criticism of the extrajudicial killings that have accompanied his administration’s war on drugs, has lashed out at the Americans for atrocities committed when they ruled the country, and has said he wants US troops out of Mindanao.

However, his spokesmen say he intends to honor treaties and has no intentions of breaking ties with the US.

Nationalists have called on Duterte to abrogate what they call the unequal defense pacts with the US.

"If Duterte would be serious and thoroughgoing in his assertion of national sovereignty, he will solidify the support of millions of Filipinos who have long demanded genuine freedom from foreign domination,” Reyes said.

“We join Duterte in holding the US to account for atrocities committed during its colonization of the Philippines. We support his call for the withdrawal of US troops from Mindanao. However, he must go further if he truly wants to pursue an independent foreign policy," he added.

To make good his intentions to pursue an independent foreign policy, Bayan said Duterte must, among others, scrap all military agreements and end joint military exercises with the US; probe the alleged abuses of US troops, including their supposed participation in the January 2015 Mamasapano incident; assert the country’s rights in the West Philippine Sea without American intervention; and “denouncing wars of intervention led by the US.”

http://interaksyon.com/article/132491/left-protests-at-us-embassy-to-mark-kickout-of-us-bases