On the sham independence day of the Philippines, Compatriots-NDFP, the revolutionary organization of overseas Filipinos, reiterates its call for all patriotic and peace-loving Filipinos to reject US imperialist rule in the Philippines and across the world. On this occassion, we vow to intensify our fight against the US-Marcos Jr. Regime, which only buttresses foreign domination over our people and land.
The Philippines won its independence from Spanish colonialism on June 12, 1898 through the sacrifice of countless revolutionaries. That victory, however, was stolen by the United States through military conquest and occupation after the Spanish-American War. Decades of economic, political, cultural, and military domination laid the foundations of a parasitic relationship that remains to this day.
Today, under the regime of Ferdinand Marcos Jr., this neocolonial relationship has deepened to unprecedented levels. The Marcos government has surrendered Philippine sovereignty in service of Washington’s strategic objectives in the Asia-Pacific. Through the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA), the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA), the Mutual Defense Treaty, and a growing web of military arrangements with US allies, the Philippines is being integrated into the US war machine and its preparations for confrontation with China.
Now, eighty years after the the so called “independence”, US imperialism is advancing a new phase of domination through the so-called Pax Silica project. Presented as an “economic security” and technology partnership, Pax Silica seeks to establish a vast US-directed economic zone and supply-chain network centered on artificial intelligence, semiconductors, critical minerals, and strategic technologies. In reality, it is an imperialist project designed to secure American control over resources, labor, and strategic industries amid intensifying rivalry between the US and China.
Pax Silica offers no path toward genuine national industrialization. Instead, it seeks to further lock the Philippines into a dependent role as a source of cheap labor, extracted resources, outsourced services, and strategic infrastructure for foreign corporations, as we are already seeing in the plans being drawn up for the Luzon Economic Corridor—a flagship project under the Pax Silica. It is another mechanism through which US monopoly capitalists can profit from Filipino labor and natural wealth while preventing the development of an independent national economy. Marcos Jr. made this all too clear by handing over 1,600 hectares to the US for free as part of the project.
Filipinos overseas have a particular responsibility in this struggle. Millions of us live and work throughout North America, Europe, the Middle East, Asia, Oceania, and beyond. We witness firsthand the global operations of imperialism and the landlessness, exploitation, and poverty within the Philippines that drives forced migration, displacement, and inequality.
Many of us work and reside in the very countries that are militarizing and plundering our motherland. We must organize Filipinos wherever we are to ignite a patriotic movement of the diaspora opposed to imperialist domination of our country. We also join hand-in-hand with other exploited and oppressed people, especially the workinng class in different countries under US imperialist rule and domination. The fight against US imperialism is our internationalist duty.
We call on overseas Filipinos to expose escalating US intervention in the Philippines, oppose militarization and foreign military agreements, build solidarity with anti-imperialist and working-class movements worldwide, and strengthen organizations committed to genuine national liberation and democracy. We also call on those who are able to return to the Philippines to contribute their skills, experience, and commitment to the revolutionary aims of the Filipino people. Ultimately, we enjoin our fellow compatriots to directly support and join our very own modern day Katipunan—the New People’s Army—and take on the vital role of building a national democratic society towards socialism. It is only through people’s war that the Filipino people will defeat imperialist war and subjugation.
More than a century since Bonifacio and the Katipunan’s unfinished revolution, the central task remains unchanged: to advance the National Democratic Revolution until full emancipation. Let us arouse, organize, and mobilize in every country where Filipinos live. Let us support and join the people’s Red Fighters in liberating communities in the countryside. Let us stand with all peoples resisting US imperialism and oppression.
Advance the struggle for genuine national liberation!
Long live the National Democratic Front of the Philippines!
Down with US Imperiaism!
