Fight Back News Service is circulating the following June 19 press statement from the Communist Party of the Philippines.

Aquino regime allowing FBI spy operations, US renditions

By CPP Information Bureau

The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) today condemned the Aquino regime and the Philippine National Police for allowing the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and other intelligence agencies of the United States government to operate in the Philippines and use the PNP's Camp Crame as a base for its intelligence operations and facility for the rendition of several foreign nationals.

In a letter last April to the Commission on Human Rights, the Department of Justice, the Karapatan Alliance for the Advancement of People's Rights and other legal and human rights organizations, political prisoner Alan Jazmines and his co-detainees revealed that agents of the FBI and other intelligence agencies of the US have been allowed to interrogate political prisoners detained at the PNP Custodial Center at Camp Crame.

The FBI maintains an office inside the detention center itself and a unit in a nearby condominium.

Jazmines is a consultant of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) in peace negotiations with the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GPH). In violation of immunity agreements between the NDFP and the GPH, he was arrested on February 2011 on trumped-up charges and has been detained since with several other NDFP peace consultants at Camp Crame. They are among scores of political prisoners and several hundred others detained in various jails and military camps nationwide.

In their letter, Jazmines et al narrated the conditions of political prisoners at Camp Crame and exposed that at least three Indonesian nationals who were arrested in Malaysia and Indonesia have been renditioned and detained at the prison facility at the behest of the US government. They have been given false Filipino identities to "legalize" their incarceration. The US government has similarly arrested and imprisoned foreign nationals at the infamous Guantanamo Bay prison facility of the US military in Cuba.

"The intelligence operations of the FBI within the sovereign territory of the Philippines are being undertaken underhandedly and without the Filipino people's full knowledge," said the CPP. "The absence of a formal treaty allowing such operations makes such spy operations and renditions illegal even from the point of view of the laws of the reactionary Philippine government."

"In allowing the FBI and other US intelligence and law enforcement agencies to operate clandestinely inside the Philippines, the Aquino regime in effect, allows the US to make full use of the Philippines to pursue its ultra-national interests and make the country a target of states and other entities being attacked by the US in pursuit of its hegemonism in the Asia-Pacific region," said the CPP.

"The ongoing operations of the FBI in the Philippines dovetails with the planned setup of a satellite office of the New York Police Department (NYPD) within the national headquarters of the Philippine National Police," added the CPP.

"All these form part of the heightening interventionism of the US government, its military, police and intelligence agencies inside the Philippines," said the CPP.

"Under the Aquino regime, the US government has been provided more breadth for its espionage and counter-guerrilla operations in the Philippines in coordination with the PNP and the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP)."