Press Statement
24 April 2016
The NDFP in Mindanao joins all revolutionary forces and the Filipino people in celebrating today the 43rd anniversary of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines, which was founded on April 24, 1973. We take this occasion to honor and salute all revolutionary martyrs who sacrificed their lives for the people and the revolution.
Upon its establishment, the NDFP put forward a 12-point program that guided the Filipino people on the path of the new democratic revolution with a socialist perspective for the overthrow of the semi-feudal and semi-colonial system.
The NDFP recognizes the political leadership of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP). It upholds revolutionary armed struggle led by the New People’s Army as the primary form of struggle. It also upholds genuine land reform as the main content of the new democratic revolution, and, national industrialization as the leading factor towards a self-reliant economy.
In 1980, the International Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal recognized the NDFP as a legitimate representative of the Filipino people, which affirmed the revolutionary movement’s status of belligerency.
The gains of the NDF is founded on the gains of the people’s war nationwide. The number of NPA guerrilla fronts in Mindanao has increased from only 40 in 2010 to 46 by the first quarter of 2016. In more than 200 cities and municipalities in Mindanao, these guerrilla fronts, from only 1,850 barrios in 2010, presently cover 2,500 barrios, a third of which is consolidated, and many are with standing Organs of Political Power or people’s revolutionary government at barrio and, some, at municipal levels.
In 2013, the NPA nationwide numbered to a few thousand Red fighters with more or less 10,000 HPRs, most of which were confiscated from enemy forces. As of March 29, 2016, the number of NPA full time Red fighters in the island has grown to more than a hundred formations of squads, platoons and companies, none of which was decimated in any single battle.
Since early 2015 to April 2016, the NPA in Mindanao has launched at least 750 tactical offensives against the AFP, PNP, CAFGU and other paramilitary troops, consequently confiscating over a hundred high-powered rifles, which include machine guns, sub-machine guns and sniper rifles. For the same period, the enemy forces sustained casualties of over 700 KIAs and over 500 WIAs.
For 43 years, the NDFP, with its allied organizations, has supported and coordinated closely with the NPA in successfully frustrating all the successive fascist internal security and operational plans from the Marcos dictatorship until the current Oplan Bayanihan (OPB) of the US-Aquino III regime.
Under the OPB of Mr. Aquino, the NDFP has fought against and withstood the brutal attacks and campaigns of the AFP, PNP and paramilitary forces in both cities and the countryside. In Mindanao, there has been an unprecedented surge in the armed struggle despite the 60% deployment of AFP troops in the island.
The NDFP has unified the Filipino people in their struggle against the semi-feudal, semi-colonial crisis of the Philippine society.
Revolutionary mass organizations in the countryside in Mindanao have been active in waging agrarian revolution in an ever widening coverage of areas that have benefitted hundreds of thousands of peasants, agricultural workers and national minorities. Despite the intensifying onslaught of the fascist US-Aquino III regime, hundreds of thousands of peasants in Mindanao have benefitted from free distribution of land to till, reduction in the rent of land, tools, implements and farm animals, increase in the wages of farm workers, increase in the farm gate prices of agricultural products, reduction of usury, lowering of prices of farm inputs and basic commodities, and the launching of campaigns to improve cooperative production, self-reliant economy, culture and the elimination of illiteracy.
These struggles for genuine agrarian reform are reaping broad mass support for the armed struggle and consolidation of the mass base and organs of political power. In the whole of Mindanao, the mass base, which covers millions in the populace, has continued to expand, where the number of masses who are direct members of revolutionary mass organizations rose from 130,000 in 2010 to 200,000 at present.
The people in Mindanao, many of whom are organized within NDF allied organizations, have launched mass movements against the plunder of imperialist mining and expansion of agri-business plantations, militarization in the countryside and in cities, the intensification of US intervention, climate change and environmental disasters, and graft and corruption in the reactionary bureaucracy. They have also initiated campaigns to promote just and lasting peace, and the rights and welfare of peasants, workers, Lumad, Moro and the middle class.
The NDFP has also established and sustained alliances with Moro revolutionary groups that adhere to the Moro people’s genuine right to self-determination.
The NDFP has upheld its program of just and lasting peace through peace negotiations with the Government of the Philippines despite the Aquino III administration’s refusal to honor previously signed agreements. Since 2010, the US-Aquino III regime repeatedly sabotaged the peace process through co-optation, imposition of capitulation as a precondition, and infliction of brutal attacks against NDF consultants who are JASIG protected, and, in Utrecht, the Netherlands, the harassment of the NDF’s chief negotiators and consultants and the surveillance and raid of the international office.
Under the US-Aquino III regime, in Mindanao alone, the NDFP has released 61 prisoners of war (POW) as gesture of its commitment to the peace process. Currently, there are 11 POWs under the custody of the NPA in Mindanao.
The NDF’s international work has made headway in organizing Filipinos working overseas and linking arms with revolutionary and anti-imperialist forces and allies abroad. Under Aquino III’s reign, the NDFP was able to expand the membership of its allied organizations to 18, by forming Compatriots, the revolutionary mass organization of overseas Filipino workers.
Once again, the NDFP, together with the Filipino people, has courageously frustrated the US-Aquino III regime’s pipedream to defeat the revolutionary movement led by the Communist Party of the Philippines.
As the US-Aquino III regime reaches its conclusion, the NDFP is optimistic in the further advance and the bright future of the new democratic revolution with a socialist perspective.
Advance the New Democratic Revolution with a socialist perspective!
Long live the the NDFP!
Long Live the Filipino people!
(sgd)
Ka Oris
Spokesperson
NDFP-Mindanao
