Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has proven again how she would take extra miles to perpetuate her regime in power. The midnight railroading of the Human Security Act (HSA) will give further license to her regime’s fascist armed forces, paramilitary, and police to violate human rights with impunity. The Arroyo regime is so devoid of legitimacy that it has to legalize State terrorism through the HSA for its own survival.
Arroyo’s all-out war against those who despise her oppressive and repressive policies will trample the Filipino people’s civil, political and human rights. It is expected that close to a thousand victims who were killed in cold-blood through her rabid State policy would lead to an escalation of the already-bleak human rights situation, promising to surpass Ferdinand Marcos’s martial rule record.
Mrs. Arroyo and her ilk, foremost among them GRP Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita, are the architects of the vicious counterrevolutionary campaigns Oplan Bantay Laya (OBL) I and II. The OBL is the Arroyo regime’s cold-blooded campaign to “neutralize” members of the CPP-NPA-NDF. Likewise, it targets unarmed civilians and groups and individuals who are vocal critics of the fascist regime. Arroyo’s Cabinet Oversight Committee on Internal Security (COCIS) is the main perpetrator of the OBL. Rabid fascists and anti-Communists Ermita, National Security Adviser Norberto Gonzales and Maj. Gen. Jovito Palparan are part of this elite group. Their hands are stained with the blood of all the victims of Arroyo’s bogus all-out war on terror.
Arroyo and her minions, the members of the Anti-Terror Council (ATC), who justify the HSA as a tool to “protect the people,” speak with utter duplicity. At the helm of the ATC is Ermita, a veteran of Marcos’ martial law and of the Vietnam War, Justice Secretary Raul Gonzales, and Norberto Gonzales. The three are members of the COCIS and have been the architects of State terrorism under the Arroyo regime.
The National Democratic Front-Southern Mindanao calls it sheer hypocrisy for the current regime to foist the HSA like the Sword of Damocles on the Filipino people. The Arroyo regime, sowing widespread terror itself, is the people’s ultimate enemy. The Filipino people have long despised the Arroyo regime’s bogus anti-terror measures which have kowtowed to the whims of the Bush government. The regime has circumvented GRP guarantees on human rights and due process. It has also disregarded agreements in the GRP-NDFP especially the Comprehensive Agreement on Respect for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Laws (CARHRIHL).
Now, the HSA legalizes the dictatorial rule that Arroyo wants to impose on the Filipino people. Patterned after the US Patriot Act that is widely-condemned by the American people, the HSA is a tool for the US-Arroyo regime to suppress any resistance to its pro-imperialist, anti-people policies. With the HSA, Arroyo shamelessly takes pride in satisfying US President George W. Bush’s designs to promote US hegemony and justify its war of aggression that has killed thousands of citizens in Iraq, Afghanistan, and members of liberation movements all over the world.
At these times, the people must strengthen their unity and all the more exercise their rights and show their defiance against the corrupt, fascist and bogus Arroyo regime. The NDF calls on all Filipinos to be vigilant and resist Arroyo’s HSA and all forms of suppression. The time is riper to struggle for the ouster of the US-Arroyo regime.
The NDF calls on the workers, peasants and the youth, to take up arms and join our Red fighters to liberate the Filipino people from imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism. The NDF likewise calls on the NPA to intensify tactical offensives against Arroyo’s fascist machinery as punishment for the Arroyo regime’s grave abuses and crimes. #
(Sgd) RUBI DEL MUNDO
Spokesperson
National Democratic Front-Southern Mindanao
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