Forty-five years since the bloody massacre of Sag-od, revolutionary forces in Eastern Visayas unite with the Filipino people in remembering one of the worst atrocities of the Marcos Sr dictatorship. His son Marcos Jr coming into power and junking all the cases against their family cannot whitewash their criminal records of corruption, abuse of power and fascist rule.

We will forever remember the 45 men, women and children of Sag-od, Las Navas, Northern Samar, who were tortured and murdered in cold-blood by paramilitary forces. These paramiltary forces were not only guards for Marcos crony Enrile’s logging company, they were fascist troops for the US-Marcos Sr regime’s campaign of suppression against the revolutionary movement in the countryside.

Marcos Jr continues this tradition of massacres with the Toboso 19 in Negros, three Red fighters in Carigara, Leyte, three Red fighters as well in Jaro, Leyte, the Catbalogan 10, among others. Hundreds of barangays in Eastern Visayas continue to suffer under local military rule disguised as “civil-military operations.” We note how last year, the 8th Infantry Division had the nerve to conduct a performative ceremony in Sag-od to commemorate the massacre which at best insulted the memory of the victims.

Not even the Supreme Court’s recent acquittal of Imelda Marcos over seven counts of graft or the other cases they previously junked, can erase the Marcos-Romualdez dynasty’s world-famous brand of corruption. Their descendants in Ferdinand Marcos Jr and Martin Romualdez have made sure to preserve this trademark in the form of the trillion-peso flood control scandal.

As a puppet of US imperialism and traitor to the people, Marcos Jr eclipses even his father. Through various “agreements” and decrees, such as the Pax Silica initiative and Executive Order 122, the US-Marcos regime plans to bring destructive mining, land conversion, and plunder of Philippine resources to unprecedented heights.

This shadow of worse environmental destruction hangs over Eastern Visayas. Romualdez stands to gain through his company Marcventures Holdings Inc which owns mining contracts for bauxite in Samar and magnetite sand in Leyte. The US meanwhile covets the rare earths that can be extracted from bauxite, to produce weapons of mass destruction such as the Tomahawk missile which US and Philippine military forces fired from Tacloban last May. Marcos’ priority development projects in the region such as the Samar Unity Roads and foreign-owned renewable energy plants all serve this grand scheme.

The people of Eastern Visayas and the entire country must always remember Sag-od. They must always keep in mind that such monstrous brutality is the result of a semicolonial and semifeudal society and that it will always happen again for as long as the same ruling class, selfish masterminds of plunder and corruption, remain in power.

True justice against plunderers and murderers cannot be attained simple pleading, or by mere change of the ruling regime. Sag-od is a constant reminder that decisive change must be attained through organized, armed resistance, and engulf the country in the liberating flames of people’s war.

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