By CJ KUIZON | Davao Today
Davao City — The Promotion of Church Peoples’ Response (PCPR) is calling on US President elect Barack Obama to pull out all American troops in the country and stop US funding for the government’s all-out war in Mindanao.
Pastor Jurie Jaime, secretary-general of PCPR-Davao, urged the next US President to stop pledging millions of US dollars in aid to the Philippine military that has yet to answer for the brutal killings, enforced disappearances and illegal arrests of hundreds of activists.
“Will the next US President stop pledging millions of US dollars to the Philippine military, whose offensives are displacing around 500,000 people in Mindanao?” Jaime asked in a statement.
He said the presence of American soldiers in the country for the Balikatan is part of the US agenda to protect and expand its interests in oil, mining and other activities here.
Leftist party list groups Bayan Muna and Gabriela said they hope that Obama’s win would signal the demise of US policy of military intervention. “The pull-out of US troops should happen not just in Iraq but in other countries, including the Philippines, where US military personnel have permanent or temporary presence,” Gabriela said in a statement.
Bayan Muna said in another statement they would be happy if Obama’s call for change would include a review of US policy on the Philippines and an end to the oppressive and unequal economic and political agreements.
PCPR said they will continue to challenge the Philippine Supreme Court to declare the Visiting Forces Agreement and RP-US Mutual Defense Treaty unconstitutional.
The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) also released a statement criticising Obama’s support for the continued presence of American soldiers in the Philippines through the Balikatan exercises.
Earlier, in the Democratic primaries, Obama had referred to the Balikatan as a “model of cooperation,” and the core of US-Philippine military activities. Obama also promised to back the upgrading and enhancing the (Philippine) military’s equipment and training.
The CPP said Obama ignored the “terrorist” atrocities and bloody human rights record of the Arroyo administration. The CPP also said Obama is blind to the violations committed by US soldiers in the Philippines.
“Obama’s stand showed him to be no different from President Bush,” the CPP statement said. US President George W. Bush had regarded the Philippines “the second front of the international war on terror.”
According to the CPP, the US program of military intervention in the Philippines and other countries is not a “Republican” policy but rather an “imperialist” one. It started since the turn of the 20th century and has been followed and carried out by all US presidents.
“Obama was not entirely against the Bush-initiated war of terror,” the CPP said. “Even as he called for the decisive withdrawal of American troops in Iraq, a move that made him popular, Obama assured that adequate US military presence will still remain there to ensure that the “puppet” Iraqi government will carry out “US dictates,”” the CPP said.
CPP also warned that Obama is no different from other popular US Presidents like John F. Kennedy, who launched the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961; Lyndon B. Johnson, who stepped up the Vietnam war in the 1960s; and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who resorted to World War II to help the US economy bounce back from the Great Depression. (CJ Kuizon, with a report from Grace Uddin/ davaotoday.com)
