Communist Party of the Philippines: Persist in armed struggle, frustrate US war plans

Written by: Communist Party of the Philippines on 17 April 2024

The Communist Party of the Philippines (CCP) has issued an important statement calling on its New People’s Army (NPA) to continue the armed struggle against the oppression of the Filipino people. It has also called on the Filipino people to reject US plans to turn the Philippines into a base for war against its imperialist rival, China. We salute the CCP and the NPA and call on Australians to oppose Australian military ties with the US-Marcos regime – eds.

The NPA must fight more to defend oppressed Filipinos, and to stop US from dragging PH in war against China
 Marco Valbuena | Chief Information Officer | Communist Party of the Philippines
March 31, 2024

1.The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and the New People’s Army (NPA) and all revolutionary forces roundly reject Gen. Romeo Brawner call for Red fighters to abandon the armed struggle. The need to wage armed struggle is now greater than ever before amid the worsening socioeconomic conditions and oppression of the Filipino people and threats to the country’s sovereignty.

For the broad masses of peasants, workers, and other toiling people suffering from land grabbing, economic dispossession, low wages, joblessness, and other forms of gross social injustice, waging armed struggle now is ever more just and necessary. The US-Marcos regime has aggravated the situation of the people by serving the interests of foreign capitalists to the detriment of the Filipino people’s welfare and rights.

Under Marcos, the fascist reactionary armed forces has become even more aggressive and brutal in driving the peasant masses and indigenous minorities from their land to allow mining companies, plantations, real estate, energy and other infrastructure projects to expand their environmentally-destructive business operations.

Only by having the New People’s Army can the peasant masses effectively fight back against the onslaught of foreign and big business economic aggressors. In the interest of the broad toiling masses, the armed struggle can never be abandoned. To fight with arms is the only way for the oppressed to defend their life and dignity and fight for a better future.

2. In the face of increasing danger of the Philippines being dragged by the US military to its conflict with China, there is even greater need for the NPA to fight vigorously. The NPA must further intensify the armed struggle to help prevent US plans to fully utilize the country as a springboard for its acts of aggression. The US imperialists want to see an end to the NPA’s armed struggle so it can fully utilize the AFP as a pawn in its plans of aggression and hegemonic expansion.

General Brawner is a remorseless US mouthpiece when he declared in his statement that “external forces”, clearly referring to China, “undermine Philippine sovereignty and challenge our rights.” Brawner is utterly hypocritical to claim defending the country’s freedom against external forces when as chief of the armed forces, he has opened a number of Armed Forcesof the Philippines (AFP) camps to give foreign military forces from the US extraterritorial rights to station its troops and military equipment, and turn the country’s land and water as their playground.

The US military forces in the Philippines have been using the AFP and the Philippine Coast Guard to raise the temperatures of military conflict in the West Philippine Sea through joint patrols, as well as US-backed “supply missions.” These operations are succeeding in pushing back against China’s incursions into Philippine maritime territory, but are being done at the expense of allowing US and its NATO allies to position their naval forces in Philippine waters.

The US plans to turn Marcos into a new Zelensky–a shameless beggar of military and economic aid from the US and NATO. They want to portray Marcos as a defender of Philippine freedom against the “empire”, while actually turning the Philippines into a protectorate of US-led Western imperialist powers, against their imperialist rival China.

Over the next few days or weeks, the Marcos regime is set to receive a major shipment or deployment of US military equipment for use of the AFP to turn it into a more aggressive force against China. This is timed with US plans to hold the Balikatan exercises in April as cover to deploy more of its troops in the country’s outlying islands, from the northernmost tip of Batanes, to the westernmost tip of Palawan. Even now, the US has already deployed Special Operations Forces in the Kinmen Island in the Taiwan Strait, a mere five kilometers off the eastern coast of Xiamen, China.

The Filipino people reject claims of the US imperialists of being “friends, allies, and partners” of the Philippines. It is utterly repugnant at all levels for the Marcos regime to ally itself to the number one terrorist who has connived with the Zionists in Israel in raining bombs and missiles on the civilian population of Palestine in Gaza, killing more than 32,000, more than half of whom are children. The US and Israel has also been supplying bombs to the AFP to carry out the same terrorist act in the Philippine countryside. The same imperialist US is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Filipinos during the US war of occupation of the Philippines, and the subsequent plunder of the country’s economic and human resources.

All the patriotic and revolutionary forces of the Filipino people must heighten their struggle for national freedom and draw inspiration from their long history of resistance to US military intervention and war–from the anti-colonial war of the early 1900s, to the mass protests leading to the eviction of US military bases and American troops in 1991.

Presently, they must vigorously resist US schemes and resist the plans to drag the country into US war provocations against China. Such a scenario will endanger the lives of the Filipino people and further place the country’s fate in the hands of the US imperialists.

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