DAVAO CITY — Militant group Anakbayan said the recent attacks in Paris, France and Beirut, Lebanon are meant to “justify the launching of more imperialist wars abroad”.
Over 150 people were killed while hundreds more were wounded during the November 13, terror attacks in Paris.
On the same day, a suicide bombing in Baghdad, Iraq killed at least 18 people and wounded dozens others. Just the night before the deadly attacks, two suicide bombings left over forty dead and 200 injured in Beirut, Lebanon.
“We offer our sincerest condolences to the families of the victims and strongly condemn the terrorist attacks and mass murder of innocent civilians, gruesome incidents that have been claimed by the Islamic State (ISIS or ISIL) as its handiwork,” said Vencer Crisostomo, chairperson of Anakbayan.
“We firmly oppose the use of the Paris terror attacks to inflame Islamophobia and racial hatred against immigrants and people of color, repress democratic rights, impose more fascist measures, and justify the launching of more imperialist wars abroad,” he said.
He said “US imperialism and other powers like UK, and France as well as their junior partners like Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey are ultimately accountable for originally creating, training, arming, and supplying the Islamic State and other terrorist groups.”
“It can be recalled that in the 1980s, the US and other imperialist powers supported Osama Bin Laden in his “Holy War” against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Bin Laden established the Al Qaida which later on carried out the 9-11 attacks against his former US masters,” said Crisostomo.
“In the same way, US imperialism and other western powers funded Islamist terrorist groups like the Islamic State in order to destabilize governments, such as Syria and Iran, opposing their imperial agenda in the oil-rich Middle East. Imperialist wars have been waged in the region in order to pump up the profits of US and European oil corporations and war contractors,” he said.
The group also said that the French government under Sarkozy and Hollande has been a major player in the US-led “War on Terror” in the region.
“It is in fact credited by The Economist magazine for sending over a thousand jihadists to Syria and Iraq, which is more than any other European country has sent,” said Crisostomo.
“The Paris terror attacks and the US-led wars of aggression in the Middle East that has led to the massacre of millions of civilians, the destruction of their social infrastructure, and their displacement from their land are two sides of the same coin,” he said.
