STATE REPRESSION AND PEOPLE’S RESISTANCE

By the Revolutionary Council of Trade Unions
Anti-imperialist, Anti-capitalist Meeting
4-7 May 2006
Athens, Greece

On February 24, 2006, Philippine President Gloria M. Arroyo issued Proclamation 1017 declaring a "state of national emergency". The reason given was that there was a conspiracy between communists and disgruntled military forces to grab power through a coup d’etat. She ordered the arrest of a general and a number of military officers. Congressman Crispin Beltran, a veteran labor leader and a popular leader of the Left, was arrested. The offices of two daily newspapers critical of the Manila regime were raided and a number of their journalists charged in court. Five other progressive congressmen identified with the Left have been charged with rebellion.
Arroyo was forced to lift the "state of national emergency" two weeks later because of widespread protest actions in the Philippines and abroad. But Congressman Beltran remains in jail. The five progressive congressmen are still confined to the premises of the Philippine parliament and are threatened with arrest if they leave those premises. Political killings of progressive activists continue.
The political situation in the Philippines remains very volatile. "Free market" globalization has wreaked havoc on the backward Philippine economy and worsened the sufferings of the masses especially the toiling people. As a result, social unrest is widespread. The people have marched in the streets against the pro-imperialist policies of the present reactionary government.
The Arroyo government has responded to the people’s resistance by resorting to fascist repression. The regime has trained its guns against the forces of the Left, especially those it perceives as allied with the revolutionary forces led by the Communist Party of the Philippines.
When George Bush launched his so-called "war on terror" after 9/11, the puppet regime in the Philippines was among the first to ride on the "anti-terrorist" bandwagon. Gloria M. Arroyo has used this anti-terrorist bogey to suppress the opposition to her reactionary rule. Since then, human rights violations have risen to new heights.
The number of human rights violations in 2005 was the highest ever recorded since the US-backed Marcos fascist dictatorship. The human rights organization KARAPATAN documented 874 cases of human rights violations with 99,011 individual victims from January to November 30, 2005. The violations affected 14,302 families in 288 communities.
There were 179 victims of politically motivated killings compared with 63 victims in 2004. This number does not include 52 victims who survived assassination attempts. There were 46 victims of abductions/forced disappearances in 2005 (151 reported by KARAPATAN since Arroyo became president).

Leaders and Members of the Progressive Movement are the Main Targets

Progressive Left parties fielded candidates in the 2004 national elections. Bayan Muna (People First), Anakpawis (Toiling Masses) and Gabriela Women’s Party won six (6) seats despite the attempts by National Security Adviser Norberto Gonzales to get them removed from the partylist system.
The reactionary regime of Gloria M. Arroyo tried everything to discredit these progressive parties. It used hysterical anti-communist propaganda, harassment and terrorism by the military and police, and rampant cheating by election officials. Two Bayan Muna local party headquarters were set on fire by soldiers. Many activists were arrested or killed.
Among those killed were lawyers, a doctor, journalists, human rights activists and church workers. They were leaders, members or known supporters of legal Left parties and people’s organizations.
Sixty six of those killed and 37 disappeared were workers and peasants, tagged by the state as relatives, sympathizers or supporters of the New People’s Army or the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. Two pregnant women were among those who were summarily killed by state forces.
Journalists exposing military and police abuses, graft and corruption by high officials of the Manila government and involvement of government officials with criminal syndicates are also targets. The National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP) reported that seven (7) journalists or media practitioners were killed last year.
Human rights workers, including staffers of KARAPATAN, documenting military and police violations of human rights have also been targeted, as well as church workers, lawyers and elected local officials who support progressive people’s organizations. Among the 179 victims are at least seven human rights workers, three (3) church workers, seven human rights lawyers and three (3) elected local government officials. In almost all instances, the military misrepresents the victims or their organizations as "terrorists", communists, rebel sympathizers or "enemies of the state" to justify the violent attacks.
Prof. Jose Maria Sison who has been living in exile in the Netherlands since 1987 has been the target of character assassination and persecution by the US and Dutch government.
Sison was the founding chairman when the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) was reestablished in 1968. At present, he serves as the Chief Political Consultant of the negotiating panel of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) in its peace talks with the Manila government. He suffered almost 14 years in jail during Martial Law and was freed in 1986 after the people’s 14-year struggle against the dictatorship of former President Ferdinand Marcos ended with a people’s uprising. He was forced to live in exile in The Netherlands when his passport was cancelled while on an international speaking engagement in 1987.
The Manila government has conspired with the US and Dutch governments to put Prof. Sison on the so-called "terrorist list" of the US and European Union. He is being pressured to leave the Netherlands. There is a growing threat to extradite him to the US or to the Philippines to be tried for criminal offenses. This is clearly an attempt of the US government and the Philippine reactionary regime to pressure the revolutionary forces led by the Communist Party of the Philippines to surrender.
The so-called "war on terror" has been used by imperialist governments and puppet regimes throughout the world to demonize national liberation movements fighting imperialism and its local puppets. Draconian laws modeled after the US PATRIOT ACT are being passed by reactionary governments which can be used to suppress even legitimate forms of dissent such as workers’ strikes and peaceful demonstrations. Following its long tradition of puppetry to US imperialism, the Philippine congress recently passed its own version of the "Anti-Terrorist Law" to be used against the revolutionary forces in the Philippines.

Climate of Impunity

State forces carry out the assassinations brazenly, sometimes near or close to military or police detachments, with no police investigations carried out, and no perpetrators arrested or brought to justice. In fact, the suspected perpetrators are even promoted. The blatant silence and inaction by police authorities and the regime in the face of the numerous unsolved cases of political assassinations is creating a climate of impunity.
General Jovito Palaparan is a case in point. He gained notoriety as the "butcher of Mindoro" in April 2003 after the torture and summary executions of Eden Marcellana, a human rights activist, and Eddie Gumanoy, a peasant leader. During his stint as head of the 204th Infantry Brigade of the Philippine Army in Oriental Mindoro from 2001 to 2003, KARAPATAN recorded 27 activists and ordinary civilians killed including a five-year old boy.
Palparan was promoted to Brig. General by President Arroyo and awarded the Presidential Citation for Valor in May 2003 over the strong objections by people’s organizations and some senators and congressmen for violations of human rights.
The modus operandi of Palparan is setting up death squads that commit brazen assassinations and forcible abduction of victims, wearing helmets or ski-masks and riding motorcycles or unmarked vans, and sometimes killing or abducting the victims in their own homes in the presence of their spouses and children. Not only are these tactics reminiscent of the Marcos years, but also of the time in 1986-88 when leaders of people’s organizations, human rights lawyers and candidates of Partido ng Bayan, the left political party established after martial law, were being killed by motorcycle-riding military agents in civilian clothes.
It is obvious that the political killings and disappearances of activists have the approval of Pres. Arroyo. And these are planned and implemented through National Security Adviser Norberto Gonzales and Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita, a former general who was also behind the killings of progressive Left activists in the past.
There are very strong indications that Arroyo is planning to impose martial law to prolong her stay in power and silence her political opponents. She has issued several Executive Orders (EO) that lay the groundwork for dictatorship. Using a law from the Marcos fascist dictatorship (Batas Pambansa 880), Arroyo has adopted the policy of so-called "calibrated preemptive response" against street rallies and demonstrations that is aimed at suppressing protest actions and curtailing the freedom of assembly. She has pushed Congress into passing an anti-terrorism bill harsher than the Homeland Security Act of George Bush, and to adopt into law her executive order (EO 420) on the National Identification System. Her issuance of Proclamation 1017 declaring a "state of national emergency" is apparently an act of "testing the waters" for the future declaration of one-man rule.

Growing Resistance by the People

The intensifying political repression has engendered growing resistance against the current reactionary regime of Gloria M. Arroyo.
A broad mass movement has formed seeking her ouster from office. A wide range of issues against her has brought together a broad opposition to her autocratic rule. The broad opposition charges her with cheating in the last presidential elections. Her husband and son have been implicated in many corruption scandals. Her pro-imperialist economic policies have ruined the economy and worsened the sufferings of the people. Her slavish adoption of George Bush so-called "war on terror" has resulted in the worst forms of human rights violations since the time of the Marcos fascist dictatorship.
The broad mass movement is growing including a wide range of forces from former presidents, church leaders, people’s organizations, retired and active military and police officers, business groups, lawyers’ organizations, etc. They are launching regular mass protest actions and calling for Mrs. Arroyo to step down from the presidency.
The use of open terror and repression by the state has not intimidated the people. It has only strengthened their resolve even more to seek the ouster of the much-hated reactionary Arroyo regime. The coming days or months will tell if Arroyo will survive the strong opposition to her extremely unpopular rule.