Advance the Moro people's struggle for genuine self-determination!
By JORGE "Ka Oris" MADLOS
Spokesperson
National Democratic Front of the Philippines-Mindanao
The National Democratic Front of the Philippines – Mindanao joins our brethren Moro and the rest of the Filipino people in remembering the mass execution on 18 March 1968 of young Moro and non-Moro military recruits trained for then dictator Ferdinand Marcos' mad ambition to invade the island of Sabah, Malaysia, known today as the infamous Jabidah massacre.
This slaughter of Moro soldier-trainees who were led to believe that obedience to the whim of a dictator amounted to "nationalism" was the precursor of the Moro people's revolutionary struggle that sparked the creation of its revolutionary armed force, the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) and, later, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).
In commemorating this tragedy, the NDFP-Mindanao reiterates its commitment to the Bangsamoro struggle for their right to genuine self-determination. This struggle has prompted the Moro people to wage a revolutionary war against all previous and current reactionary regimes.
The Marcos regime desperately swept evidence implicating officials from upper echelons under the rug through a 'cover-up,' allowing the main perpetrators of this grisly crime against Moro sons to go unpunished. Today, the 'massacre' of the Moro people continues with the outright denial of their sovereign right to self-determination.
After Marcos, the reactionary regimes that followed flayed the Moro people, particularly in Mindanao, with successive military campaigns of genocidal proportions. The Estrada regime, aided by the US imperialist, in 2000 launched one of the most vicious attacks against the MILF and the Moro people with Oplan Makabayan, destroying entire Moro villages in both Central and Southern Mindanao.
Under the guise of 'counter-terrorism,' the US-Arroyo regime orchestrated vile attacks, from 2001 to 2010, against the Moro people and their revolutionary forces through Oplan Bantay Laya. Today, Benigno Aquino III has launched a new military campaign tagged as Oplan Bayanihan, a US Counter Insurgency-inspired military campaign that hides behind the facade of 'peace and development.'
It is positive that the peace talks between the MILF and the GPH (Government of the Philippines), the latest formal meeting of which ran from February 9 to10, is making headway. With guarded optimism, however, the MILF must learn from past lessons and resist being drawn into capitulating to the GPH.
The MILF and the entire Moro people must now more than ever remain steadfast to their revolutionary struggle alongside the people's struggles for national liberation and democracy against long-standing monarchical and fascist regimes in the Middle East and North Africa, particularly in Libya, Egypt, Bahrain and Yemen.
Thus, in continuing the fight for justice for the victims of the Jabidah massacre, we call on the MILF to work with unrelenting resolve toward uniting the Moro people to a more vigorous revolutionary struggle for the right to self determination. Continue to resist machinations and deceptions of the reactionary government and its US imperialist master to have the MILF revolutionary forces and the Moro people to bow to its dictates and end up capitulating to it.
We also urge the non-Lumad and non-Moro population in Mindanao and the whole Filipino people to better understand and support our Moro brethren in their just struggle, and refuse being misled by both sectarian and chauvinist mindset that run prejudicial to the Bangsamoro cause.