Marco Valbuena | Chief Information Officer | Communist Party of the Philippines
The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) calls on all democratic organizations to expose and condemn the US-Marcos regime for its continuing terror campaign against civilians in its brutal and relentless war of suppression. Over the past few days, fascist troops of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) committed successive atrocities in rural villages in Isabela, Quezon and Masbate provinces, marked by indiscriminate firing and staging of fake encounters.
In Isabela, soldiers fired on civilians in two separate incidents, claiming these were encounters with the New People’s Army (NPA). On April 20, soldiers fired on a house in Barangay Dicam, Jones town, and apprehended two youths. On April 21, soldiers fired on a group of five Ifugao minorities fishing at Sitio Sapiot, Barangay Tappa, San Mariano, with three returning home safely but two still missing. In Masbate, the Philippine Army’s 2nd Infantry Battalion staged a fake encounter on April 23, firing their weapons and boasting of seized military equipment, causing fear and panic among local residents. A few days earlier, Isabela delos Reyes, 56, a resident of Barangay Libertad, Cawayan, was arrested and falsely presented as a member of the NPA. In Quezon, residents of Barangay Cogorin Ibaba, Santo Niño, reported that the AFP strafed nearby areas using military aircraft on April 21, causing grave distress among local communities.
These successive incidents of fake encounters and indiscriminate firing clearly form a pattern of attacks against the peasant masses in thousands of villages under undeclared martial law. In the course of waging a war to terrorize the people and suppress their resistance, the US-Marcos regime and its armed forces are committing gross violations of international humanitarian law.
These attacks against civiians are evidence of the growing desperation of the US-Marcos regime to stop the growth and revitalization of the New People’s Army (NPA), which continue to enjoy the deep and wide support from the oppressed and exploited masses. Units of the NPA, which have reorganized and redeployed to frustrate the focused military operations of the AFP, continue to expand its areas of operation, organize the people and recruit new Red fighters.
The fascist campaign of the US-Marcos regime, especially in rural areas aim to terrorize people and stop their resistance against land grabbing and plunder of natural resources by foreign big capitalists and local big businessmen favored by Marcos.
Marcos’ campaign of state terror, however, succeeds only in further rousing the people to take up arms. By subjecting people to fascist oppression, Marcos is virtually enjoining the people to join the NPA in order to defend themselves and their livelihood, fight for justice and struggle for their rights and aspirations. By its negative example, the Marcos fascist and puppet regime has become the Number One recruiter of the NPA.
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The National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) is the revolutionary united front organization of the Filipino people fighting for national freedom and for the democratic rights of the people. The NDFP seeks to develop and coordinate all progressive classes, sectors and forces in the Filipino people’s struggle to end the rule of US imperialism and its local allies of big landlords and compradors, and attain national and social liberation.