Rally for complete withdrawal of American troops in PHL set

From the Philippine News Agency (Sep 15): Rally for complete withdrawal of American troops in PHL set

The militant Bagong Alyansa Makabayan (Bayan) in Northern Mindanao would stage a protest-rally on Friday to bid for the total withdrawal of the remaining American troops in the country.

Wildon Barros, the Bayan-NMR spokesperson, said that the rally would be participated by about 2,000 protesters from the workers, farmers, women, students, professional, urban poor, and church sectors from Cagayan de Oro, Misamis Oriental and Bukidnon.

In a statement, Bayan-NMR said that President Rodrigo Duterte’s recent pronouncement gave high hope to all patriotic Kagay-anons who had been opposing the installation of military bases in the Lumbia airport here.

Under the Enhance Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA), the former commercial airport in Lumbia here was one of the airports in the country that would be utilized as a storage facility base by the American troopers.

Barros said that the presence of the American soldiers “only brought atrocities, abuses, and death to the Filipinos” and considered it an affront to the national sovereignty.

Bayan-NMR noted the US troops were stationed in Mindanao under the Joint Special Operations Task Force Philippines, even without a legislative approval from the Senate.

“This blatantly violated the Philippines’ constitutional ban on foreign military bases lacking any Senate concurrence,” Barros said.

“We are vehement with the more than a decade-running bases of the US troops. The extension of these bases would be more absurd to our national sovereignty and territorial integrity,” Bayan-NMR said.

It said even before his term, Duterte’s statements were consistent with his independent foreign policy, which stresses the need for the Philippines to chart its own course and uphold its national interest, free of any foreign dictates and intervention.

“Hence, we are hopeful that the President would take immediate actions to abrogate EDCA and stop all the installation of new US military bases, not only at Lumbia airport, but in all over the country,” Barros said in a prepared statement.

Bayan-NMR said that the Philippine government should also terminate all “lopsided military agreements such as the Mutual Defense Treaty, the Visiting Forces Agreement and the Mutual Logistics Support Agreement.”

Barros said that the Military Bases Agreement (MBA) was repealed 25 years ago, which signaled the pullout of United States forces and installations especially in Subic and Clark in Luzon in 1991.

He said that the protesters would also ask the Supreme Court to reconsider its decision that declared the EDCA constitutional and urged President Duterte to totally scrap the EDCA agreement.

http://www.pna.gov.ph/index.php?idn=2&sid=&nid=2&rid=923334