NDF: CPP Central Committee: On Duterte’s farcical terror trial against the CPP and NPA

CPP Central Committee propaganda statement posted to the National Democratic Front (NDF) Website (Mar 11): On Duterte’s farcical terror trial against the CPP and NPA

Central Committe, Communist Party of the Philippines
March 11, 2018

The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) rejects the farce of a terror trial which the fascist US-Duterte regime is preparing to stage against the CPP and the New People’s Army (NPA).

This trial is set to be a public spectacle which Duterte wants to mount in a vain effort to keep a veil of legitimacy and credibility to his rampage of violence and murder. While Duterte keeps a façade of legal processes and claims to give those accused of affiliation with the CPP their “day in court”, it is in fact already waging a brutal campaign of state terror against all revolutionaries, progressives and other forces opposed to his fascist regime.

It is also set to be a reprise of the past anti-communist witchhunts with the listing of more than 600 names accused as leaders or members of the CPP and NPA. It is a veritable hitlist of Duterte’s perceived enemies including activists, political personalities, human rights defenders, leaders and elders of minority peoples, peace negotiators and consultants of the NDFP and other progressives. The list is supposedly supported by military intelligence, which is not so bright after all, as it includes people already murdered or disappeared by the AFP, not a few double entries and John and Jane Does for all the rest they want to drag into the case.

The Party denounces the Duterte regime for brandisihing his terror tag against the CPP and NPA and using scare-mongering as a weapon of tyranny. He aims to intimidate and silence the Filipino people and make everyone submit to his ambitious dictatorial schemes of monopolizing power and perpetuating himself and his family in Malacañang. He seeks to use the Human Security Act (the so-called Anti-Terror Law) to tag socially-rooted rebellion and dissent as terrorism in order to suppress people’s resistance and struggles, justify the curtailment of civil liberties and destigmatize the impunity of state forces.

With Duterte’s reign of terror and tyranny, where even the Supreme Court is armtwisted into bowing to his demands, and everyone accused of being members of the CPP is threatened with murder, the terror trial will be anything but fair. Its outcome is a foregone conclusion.

The Party firmly declares that Duterte’s regime of blatant terror, murder and brutality has no morale or political right to accuse the Party and the NPA of terrorism. As a matter of principle, the CPP and NPA will not allow themselves to be subjected to the farcical terror trial of the US-Duterte regime. What a monstrous perversion that Duterte the Terrorist is terror tagging the CPP and NPA!

Nonetheless, the Party and the NPA will vigorously challenge, expose and oppose publicly and politically, this farcical terror trial. Duterte’s 55-page petition submitted by his Department of Justice is a poorly-crafted half-baked hodgepodge of information drawn from the internet and “military intelligence” sources apparently written by a junior officer of the AFP and then signed by the senior state prosecutor. It should be dismissed straightaway. The Party enjoins all democratic and fair-minded people in the academe and legal circles to subject this petition to close critical review.

The CPP maintains that the petition does not contain an iota of proof that the revolutionary acts of the NPA are acts of terrorism. There is a vast ocean of difference between a people waging an armed revolution and unleashing terrorist violence against the people.

As revolutionaries with a just, democratic and patriotic cause and which rely on the support of the masses, the CPP and NPA oppose terrorism in all forms. The NPA is guided by strict rules of discipline which, among others, remind Red fighters not to take even a strand of thread or needle from the masses, to speak politely, do not damage crops, not to ill-treat captives and not to take liberties with women. All these are directly opposite of Duterte’s orders: “flatten the hills”, “bomb the Lumad schools”, “shoot them in the vagina”, “cut off the heads of the NPA and get your P25,000 reward” and so on. The NPA abides by the provisions of the Comprehensive Agreement on Respect for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law (CARHRIHL) and, through the NDFP, has declared its intention of applying the Geneva war protocols.

If there is anything that causes “widespread fear and panic among the people,” it is the terrorism of the US-Duterte fascist regime. Its reign of terror and tyranny has forced more than half a million people to leave their homes to pave the way for military reservations, plantations and mining operations.

His brutal “war on drugs” has resulted in the murder of more than 13,000, mostly small users of drugs, by police and state-sponsored vigilantes. Duterte’s “all-out war” and martial law in Mindanao has resulted in close to 150 activists murdered, rural communities bombed and attacked with mortar, civilian villages occupied by soldiers in the name of “peace” requiring people daily to enter their names in military logbooks, thousands of people made to sign blank documents and forced to present themselves as surrenderees under pain of arrest, hundreds more arrested and detained as political prisoners, civil liberties suppressed, freedom of travel and commerce restricted, and food and aid blockades imposed.

There are increasing number of cases of brutality by Duterte’s fascist minions including the torture and setting on fire of two activists on December 6, 2017 by elements of the 71st IB in Maco, Compostela Valley; the massacre of eight Lumad villagers in Lake Sebu, South Cotabato on December 3, 2017 by elements of 33rd and 27th IB; the killing last March 2 of Ricardo Mayumi, leader of Ifugao Peasant Movement (IPM) in Tinoc, Ifugao; the killing of 19-year old Lumad student Obillo Bay-ao by CAFGU elements last September 5, 2017 in Talaingod, Davao del Norte; the shooting of a pregnant woman by elements of the 8th IB in Bukidnon on July 2016; the raid and mortar attack by the 20th IB against an NPA mass clinic last December 16, 2017 in Catubig, Northern Samar; and so on.

Based on the bloody criminal record of Duterte and the AFP, the Filipino people can plainly see who are the real terrorists. Duterte’s ploy is to cover-up their terrorism by flinging the terror tag against the revolutionaries and dissenters.

Such schemes, however, will not succeed as the Filipino people will not be forever intimidated and silenced. They are bound to rise up and bring an end to the Duterte regime’s brutal war, tyranny, subservience and oppression.

https://www.ndfp.org/on-dutertes-farcical-terror-trial-against-the-cpp-and-npa/