CPP/NDF: Martial Law continues under the US-Aquino regime

Posted to the CPP Website (Sep 21): Martial Law continues under the US-Aquino regime

Cesar Renerio
Spokesperson
NDFP North Central Mindanao Chapter

Today is the 41st year since the declaration of martial law, marking the 14-year dark period of our nation’s history under the fascist US-Marcos dictatorship. We also call to mind the heroic anti-dictatorship struggle of the Filipino people, who offered many lives and endured countless hardships, that culminated with the overthrow the infamous dictator in a people’s EDSA uprising in 1986. The heroes of the anti-dictatorship struggle, including those nameless and faceless martyrs from the ranks of the oppressed and exploited classes, are memoriaized in the hearts and minds of each Filipino carrying on the torch of resistance against the undeclared martial law of the incumbent US-Aquino regime.

Oplan Bayanihan is the US-Aquino regime’s counterrevolutionary program with an ambitious aim of totally quelling the people’s revolutionary struggle by the end of his term. Under Oplan Bayanihan, the AFP, paramilitary forces and the PNP are constantly strengthened in order to repress the people. Intelligence, psy-war and massive military combat operations in the countryside are being intensified. In urban areas, the presence of armed police and military forces, armed security guards and SCAA is maintained; demolition teams violently tear down entire urban poor communities; and authorities chase poor vendors outside marketplaces or on sidewalks. Even peaceful rallies and demonstrations expressing the people’s legitimate grievances and issues are countered with police brutality.

Martial law was declared because the ruling classes found it difficult to rule the old way and thus resorted to naked fascism to supress the escalating people’s resistance in the ‘70s. But history has witnessed that the Marcos ruling clique and all other regimes that followed failed dismally in suppressing the revolution’s continuous advance.

Amidst the ever intensifying armed struggle in the countryside and mass movements in the cities, as well as the Moro people’s resolute struggle for self-determination, the ruling classes increasingly tighten their grip on fascism as their main weapon against the people. Even without naming it martial law, the power of the reactionary armed forces essentially remains as the ruling classes’ bastion in defending the ruling system and remaining in power.

Since martial law until now, the fascist machinery of state terrorism remains intact. This is shown by the sheer power of the fascist military—generals are cuddled, modernization of equipment is ensured, and their department receives a far greater portion of the yearly budget than those alloted to social services for the people.

Fascism comes with matching widespread human rights violations: military abuses, forced mass evacuations and dislocation, trumped-up charges, arrests, killings and others.

In Cagayan de Oro City, the AFP implements the Bayanihan Alert for Peace and Development (BAPD), deploying armed BAPD teams in six densely-populated barangays where the city’s poor and typhoon Sendong victims are concentrated. An undisguised fascist maneuver of this kind has never happened during the whole course of martial law. The mere presence of armed BAPD teams in communities terrorize citizens who are subjected to surveillance, and made vulnerable to legal suits, arrests or killings on plain suspicion or trumped-up criminal accusation.

The regime also adheres to its militarist formula in dealing with the MNLF-Misuari faction’s adventurist undertakings without regard to adverse consequences. Its utter insensitivity burdened the hapless residents to pay for the great social cost of its military solution in terms of lives, properties and the dislocation of 114,000 ordinary citizens in Zamboanga City.

No amount of deodorizing can ever conceal the reeking stench of fascism. Oplan Bayanihan’s psy-war component is sugarcoated with ‘peace and development’ to deceive the people. Its counterrevolutionary aims to intimidate and silence the people who have been steeled in the struggle against martial law is not peace, much less development. Far from bringing development, the 4Ps dole-outs of the regime are a mockery to the dignity of the poor while the rotten bureaucrats involved in the pork barrel scandal plunder and squander billions of pesos of the people’s hard-earned money, provoking the ire of Filipino taxpayers.

While the family of the dictator Marcos is now back in power, justice remains elusive for the 10,000 victims of human rights violations under the fascist regime. More than a year has passed since the the approval of Martial Law Human Rights Victims Recognition and Compensation Act, a law establishing a historical imprint of the dictatorship’s barbarity. Until now, the victories won by the victims and their families remain in paper. The US-Aquino regime pays no serious attention to giving the victims their long overdue compensation. The victims and their families must resolutely demand for their compensation, and closely guard the funds taken from the Marcoses’ plundered money. Famished crocodiles in Aquino’s cabinet brandishing human rights always lie in anticipation of booty. The irony of it all is that, the flock of Etta Rosales herself of the Commission on Human Rights is viciously masterminding the delisting of legitimate victims from the list of claimants.

Aquino does not need to declare martial law anymore. It exists today, de-facto. To suppress the people’s struggle, military rule has always been the general policy of the reactionary state. While the nation continues to be deeply mired in crisis, the US-Aquino regime’s counterrevolutionary violence will stoke the fires of guerrilla warfare, which will bring the people’s war to the strategic stalemate and onward to complete victory.

http://www.philippinerevolution.net/statements/20130921_martial-law-continues-under-the-us-aquino-regime