Ka Oris
Spokesperson, National Operational Command-New People’s Army
June 17, 2018
Duterte’s arbitrary postponement of the scheduled resumption of the 5th round of formal talks between the GRP and the NDFP on June 28 portends more intensified fascist attack and treacherous political maneuvers against the NPA and the whole revolutionary movement.
Such postponement came after Duterte presided over a command conference of the AFP and is in complete disregard of signed agreements that have been the result of four rounds of back-channel talks between the GRP and NDFP peace panels. Duterte is bending over to the AFP’s position of intensifying Oplan Kapayapaan for at least two to three months of full-blast military offensives to cut the NPA force in half and force the hand of the revolutionary movement by the time the GRP version of peace talks for surrender are held. With this, the US-Duterte regime has again revealed itself as a true-blue follower of the militarist US imperialist line of suppressing the people’s war through preponderant military force and devious psy-war operations, not by addressing the roots of the armed conflict.
In line with Oplan Kapayapaan’s psy-war component, OPAPP Secretary Dureza, from out of the blue and after three months of discussions, has suddenly chosen to put first supposed consultations with their own stake holders notwithstanding the fact that they had all the time to do these long before the scheduled talks. Duterte’s latest turn-around further comes with expressed threats against NDFP panel members and consultants after previous GRP commitments to restore the JASIG and guarantees to the safety of all participants in the peace talks, and untenable demands to make Manila the venue of talks.
Prior cancellations of the peace talks last year have consistently been followed by escalation of military attacks against the revolutionary forces and the people. In fact, even during the coordinated unilateral ceasefire in 2017, the AFP continued military operations under various guises of “visitations” and “relief operations”, and blatantly attacked NPA camps in Mindanao. Despite these, the NPA respected agreements entered into by the NDFP and practiced extreme restraint in defending its mass base.
With or without the peace talks, widespread military suppression campaigns against the revolutionary forces and the people have continuously been carried out in increasing brutality by state armed forces. Activists and leaders of workers, peasants, national minorities, women and even children have been summarily executed, abducted, tortured, arbitrarily arrested and coerced to participate in military psy-war operations. Whole communities have been bombed and shelled, schools burned, and village centers garrisoned.
This turn of events emphasize once more the necessity of pursuing people’s war as the more reliable way to defend our national sovereignty and achieve genuine democracy in our country against the intensifying exploitation and oppression of US imperialism, domestic feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism. It is ever more important now to strengthen the NPA forces nationwide to defend itself, the people and the gains of the revolution against the on-going and intensifying brutality of “Oplan Kapayapaan”.
The NPA National Operations Command directs all the NPA forces and calls on the whole revolutionary forces to launch widespread and more solid tactical offensives to frustrate the rampaging AFP, PNP and para-military forces that wreck destruction in the countryside in the name of imperialist multinational corporations, local big bourgeois comprador and the big landlord classes. #
