Fronte Popolare (Italy)
At 2 am local time, while traveling on a bus in Aritao, Nueva Vizcaya, in the Philippines, the comrade Randy Felix P. Malayao was murdered by an killer of Duterte’s criminal regime. The hit man climbed aboard the bus during a break, surprised him in his sleep and killed him with a gun.
Kidnapped and heavily tortured under the regime of Gloria M. Arroyo, he spent more than four years in prison in the provinces of Cagayan and Isabela, before being acquitted of all charges and released. Not being accused in any judicial proceedings, in recent months he moved freely around the country to support initiatives related to the promotion of peace.
An activist of the student movement, then a journalist, Randy was a courageous militant of the revolutionary cause, a defender of the oppressed Filipino classes, a sincere internationalist. During the peace talks between the Democratic National Front of the Philippines (NDFP) and the government of Manila, abruptly interrupted by the Duterte regime, he had been part of the NDFP high level delegation as a representative of the Cagayan Valley and was one of the spokesmen for the the NDFP negotiating group in Europe.
His assassination strikes us not only on a political level and for the seriousness of the crime perpetrated against all those who, like us and in every part of the world, embrace the struggle for justice and human dignity and fight for it, but also on a human level.
We met Randy in June 2017, on the occasion of the First Congress of our organization during which he represented the NDFP. We were able to truly appreciate his serenity, his dedication, his love for the Filipino people and the generous depth of the convictions that animated him.
We strongly denounce the murderous regime of Duterte, servant of US imperialism, which today killed Randy, but which for months has been systematically organizing the assassination of political activists, union and community leaders. The whole world must become aware of the criminal nature of the ruling clique in Manila, its corruption, the systematic violence it practices against its own people to perpetuate its brutal exploitation and bloody oppression as a guarantee of the interests of the bureaucratic caste and of landowners who starve the country while serving their protectors in Washington.
With sympathy we are close to Randy’s family and to his fellow fighters in the pain and in the anger for the frightful crime that took us away this comrade, a man whose example we can only hope to be able to imitate. At this time of mourning, we renew our firm commitment to solidarity alongside the revolutionary struggle for the liberation and transformation of the Filipino society.
Salvatore Quasimodo wrote, paying tribute to the martyrs of our Resistance: “Here we count them one by one tenderly / calling them by young names / for all time. / Their blood is still fresh, silent / its fruit”.
To those names, to their memory, we ideally join today that of our comrade Randy Malayao. In his name, in their name, our struggle must continue until victory.
Justice for Randy Malayao!
Freedom for the Filipino people!
Down with the criminal regime of Duterte!
Out the US imperialism from the Philippines and from every country!
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