Statement
8 March 2021
The order of the war criminal Duterte to his fascist military and police to kill communists and make sure to kill them and “finish them off if they are alive,” is a loud order to disregard human rights and international humanitarian law. Incriminating himself as a war criminal reverberated in the Philippines and abroad with this declaration – further fortifying the evidence against him by international human rights organizations and the International Criminal Court (ICC).
In armed engagements, International Humanitarian Law stipulates that attacking persons who are recognized as hors de combat is prohibited. A hors de combat is:(a) anyone who is in the power of an adverse party;(b) anyone who is defenseless because of unconsciousness, shipwreck, wounds or sickness; or (c) anyone who clearly expresses an intention to surrender. To do otherwise is a war crime.
A few days after Duterte salivated on killing communists, his death squads killed nine unarmed and defenseless activists in the southern Tagalog region. Others were arrested in a coordinated operation in the same style and antiquated script applied in mass murdering poor drug suspects in many poor communities all over the Philippines. It was not an engagement with armed revolutionary forces.
This latest war crime perpetuated by Duterte’s death squads is part of the fascist regime’s war on the Filipino people, the legal mass movement and the revolutionary movement. A war being directed and funded by the United States through its Central Intelligence Agency, applying “counter-insurgency” methods like the abominable “Operation Phoenix” implemented during the Vietnam war that targeted the unarmed legal democratic movement.
However, as history has shown, the US which claims to have the most powerful army and weapons in the world, was brought to its knees in a humiliating defeat by the Vietnamese liberation movement and people.
History will surely repeat itself especially because the Filipino people and their liberation movement is fighting for their freedom, democracy, social justice, economic prosperity and genuine peace.
Reckoning will surely come, but this time the revolutionary movement will ensure a severe reckoning for the fascist tyrant Duterte, his minions and death squads in the NTF-ELCAC, and the regime’s zealots.
Revolutionary justice will be waiting in the wings.#
Ma. Lourdes Barros
NDFP International Information Office
Utrecht, The Netherlands
