Information Bureau,Communist Party of the Philippines
Press Release, April 25, 2016
The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) expresses its full support to the mounting protests of peasants in South Cotabato, North Cotabato, Bukidnon, Misamis Oriental and Cagayan Valley demanding immediate relief amid worsening drought.
“Across the country, the peasant masses are fully justified in their clamor for the Aquino regime to immediately release calamity funds and distribute emergency food supplies to the people,” said the CPP. The CPP exhorts the peasant masses across the country to continue to rise up and resolutelyadvance their struggle for genuine land reform and against various forms of feudal and semifeudal exploitation and oppression.
Over the past several days, thousands of peasants have demonstrated in various cities and town centers. Rallies were mounted by at least 3,000 people in Koronadal City, 2,000 in Cagayan de Oro, 5,000 in Malaybalay City and 3,000 in Cagayan Valley.
Several weeks ago, at least 6,000 peasant demonstrators in Kidapawan City were mowed down by police officials with automatic rifles killing at least two and wounding hundreds. Around 90 people, including children, were arrested and criminally charged. The Kidapawan massacre has roused worldwide condemnation of the Aquino regime.
The CPP said hundreds of thousands of peasant masses across the country are increasingly incensed over the ruling regime’s failure to address their demands for immediate relief amid the drought calamity and their long-standing clamor for genuine land reform and an end to landgrabbing and oppressive policies by big foreign corporations and big landlords.
“Aquino and his military officials are a bunch of morons for dismissing the peasant demonstrations in Mindanao and elsewhere as part of what they claim to be NPA propaganda in the vain hope of covering-up their failure to address the just demands of the calamity-stricken peaasant masses,” said the CPP.
“The cacique Aquino has once again exhibited extreme contempt of the peasant masses in claiming they were simply duped to join the demonstration supposedly by promises they will be given rice in the town centers,” said the CPP.
“The peasant masses who joined the demonstrations are clearly organized and highly conscious of their demands for the Aquino regime to address their immediate and longterm needs,” said the CPP. “In putting forward their demands for emergency funds and support to ride over the drought, they obviously know much more than Aquino and his minions who all have failed to address the calamity predicted more than a year ago.”
“The peasant masses are demonstrating in the cities and town centers to demand, not plead, for the calamity funds and food supply due them and to castigate the Aquino regime for its refusal to heed their clamor and for intensifying the AFP’s Oplan Bayanihan war against them,” added the CPP.
“Bigger and more widesepread peasant protests are bound to be mounted over the next several months across the country as the increasingly acute crisis of the semicolonial and semifeudal system plunges the countryside into a deeper and deeper abyss of poverty, hunger and oppression,” added the CPP.
“The peasant masses are banding together in order to raise high the banner of land reform,†said the CPP. “They are demonstrating in their thousands to amplify their demands for subsidies and emergency support fund and food supplies for calamity stricken areas, for relief from burdensome credit and microfinance loans, for free irrigation, for raising the prices of palay, copra and other peasant produce, for an end to the expansion of plantations and contract growing schemes, for an end to landgrabbing and expansion of feudal landholdings and so on,” said the CPP. ###
