The National Democratic Front-Negros expresses its utmost outrage and condemnation over the recent statements of reactionary government officials regarding the resumption of peace talks between the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP) and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP). Loyal to their act as saboteurs of peace, Department of National Defense (DND) secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr. and National Security Adviser (NSA) Eduardo Oban Jr. openly rejected the people’s calls to address the armed conflict that has spanned for over 5 decades. The two, and the US-Marcos II regime they represent, are simply put, warmongers and imperialist toadies emboldened by the financial and military support by the fascist Trump administration.
These statements were delivered after the 79th IB’s brutal massacre in Barangay Salamanca, Toboso, Negros Occidental, which involved summary executions of hors de combat Red fighters and 9 civilians. Teodoro is quick to label the NPA as ‘terrorists and criminals’, but in reality it is the AFP who is consistent in violating human rights and International Humanitarian Law (IHL), including the killing of minors, indiscriminate firing, fabricating of evidence, and massacres of the defenseless, among others.
Teodoro, Oban, and most especially the AFP and the US-Marcos II regime have no moral high ground to parade themselves as peacekeepers. It can be recalled that the 79th IB were quicker to contaminate the ‘encounter site’ with fake evidence and maneuvering their propaganda machinery to favor the narrative towards them after their heinous crime in Toboso.
This has occurred one too many times in the island, becoming increasingly aggressive since the US-Duterte regime’s Oplan Sauron in 2018 and 2019, the AFP’s blueprint in their succeeding massacres in crimes, including the Jacolbe massacre in 2022 in Canlaon City, the Fausto massacre in 2023 in Himamaylan City, and the recent Toboso massacre that killed 19, including minors Jemina Gumadlas, 15, and Dexter Patajo, 17, journalist RJ Ledesma, UP students Alyssa Alano and Maureen Santuyo, farm worker organizer Errol Wendel, and American activists Lyle Prijoles and Kai Sorem.
The protracted people’s war waged by the NPA under the absolute leadership of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) is a just war. It is the manifestation of the people’s collective sentiment to dismantle the rotten semicolonial and semifeudal system that has exploited and oppressed them for centuries. The chronic systemic violence that has denied farmers of their land, workers of their living wage, and the people of their basic human rights and welfare—accentuated by the gruesome militaristic approach of the reactionary against their demands—is the very reason why armed struggle continues to persist.
The NPA is the mass organizations of the peasantry and the proletariat that has armed itself to defend the masses against the wanton violence of the state and its mercenaries in the AFP and PNP. Meanwhile, the NDF is the most consolidated alliance of mass organizations that support the armed struggle and the National Democratic Revolution.
While the root causes of the conflict—landlessness, joblessness, poverty, hunger—continue to not only be unaddressed but also worsened by imperialist wars and sabre rattling, land monopoly and rampant bureaucrat corruption, then the masses will continue to have a reason to fight. The protracted people’s war is what emancipates them from these choke holds, and ultimately, it is the war that brings forth their aspirations for a just and lasting peace.
It is no secret that the likes of Teodoro and Oban do not support the peace talks. Meaningful socioeconomic reforms aimed to benefit the people and proposed by the NDFP during peace negotiations remain at an impasse As representatives of the landholding elite and big compradors, they refuse the revolutionary movement’s demand for genuine land reform and national industrialization, a concept foreign to the ruling class who have no interest in giving up their economic power. They would rather invest their resources in maintaining their exploitative power through sheer violence using the state armed machinery to silence and kill farmers, workers, intellectuals, patriotic businessmen and other sectors, who wish for a better society. This only reaffirms the correctness of the armed revolution as the exploited masses’ weapon to achieve national democracy and liberation.
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