By Communist Party of the Philippines
The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) calls on all sectors to unite to hold the US government and military, Benigno Aquino III and his key security officials responsible for the carnage in Mamasapano, Maguindanao last January 25 which left almost 70 people killed, including scores of elite police troopers, Moro fighters and civilians.
The January 25 operation of the Philippine National Police (PNP) was part of the US-directed Operation Wolverine assassination operation against Zulkipli Bin Hir (Marwan) who carries a multi-million dollar bounty on his head. The US military forces in the Philippines fed intelligence information to the Aquino regime, which in turn dutifully mobilized its troops to serve the US plan.
The CPP condemns US military interventionism in the Philippines and elsewhere. Not only did the US instigate and direct the January 25 Mamasapano operation, it also deployed troops in the area of operation where residents saw at least one American soldier killed and whose corpse was immediately collected by a US helicopter.
Operation Wolverine and clandestine operations of the US make a complete mockery of Philippine national sovereignty. The Obama government has perpetuated the US war of terror that justifies interventionism, foments racism and religious prejudices, with the US employing lethal force and weapons of mass destruction against both armed and unarmed dissenters, thus causing a spiral of armed violence and counter-violence.
There is widespread hatred for the US military for grave violations of human rights and national sovereignty as it drops bombs, deploys armed troops, arms and trains pro-US groups, arms and finances pro-US governments, conducts drone surveillance, collects private electronic data, and spies on its own people.
As in similar assassination operations of the US in the past, the US military instigated the Aquino regime to conduct the Mamasapano operation in complete disregard for human rights, rules of war, and outstanding humanitarian conventions, when it targeted civilians and killed at least seven unarmed residents, including a young girl. Similarly, several civilians were killed in February 2012 when the US directed Philippine Air Force units to drop so-called “smart bombs” in Jolo, Sulu, which the Armed Forces of the Philippines then claimed to have killed Marwan.
To pursue the US plan, the Aquino regime went to the extent of usurping the police chain-of-command in order to directly order PNP Special Action Forces (SAF) units through its commander, and reportedly, through the suspended PNP chief Alan Purisima, his favorite lackey police official.
The operation required penetrating an area considered armed base areas of the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF) and the Moro Islamic Liberation Force (MILF) hostile to the PNP and AFP. The special forces unit of the PNP served as cannon fodder in an operation that would have ended in a carnage, either which way, with or without coordination with the AFP.
In exchange for US financial support, the Aquino regime is blindly serving the US war of terror by allowing the US military to maintain and expand its presence in the country, and conduct surveillance and combat operations. The US is using its vast resources to portray itself as a humanitarian force in order to conceal its interventionist operations that violate human rights and national sovereignty, and perpetuate US neocolonial dominance in the country.
