Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) today called on all revolutionary forces to defend the Filipino people’s civil and political rights and punish the perpetrators of fascist crimes perpetrated by the state armed forces and police organization in the course of implementing Aquino’s Oplan Bayanihan war of suppression.

“The CPP joins the Filipino people in marking International Human Rights Day today by putting into the spotlight the continued deterioration of the human rights situation in the Philippines marked by the increasing brutality and impunity of the state’s armed forces and state-attached armed groups in suppressing the people’s democratic rights,” said the CPP. “The abuses perpetrated by the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and the Philippine National Police (PNP) are made worse by the stepped-up human rights rhetoric of the Aquino regime and its military and security officials that seeks to conceal the relentless attacks by state armed forces,” added the CPP.

“The superficiality of Aquino’s endless human rights and peace rhetoric is underscored by the fact that not a single military or security official has been held accountable for the thousands of cases of extrajudicial killings, forced disappearances, torture, illegal arrest and detention, beatings, strafings and other abuses perpetrated by military and police forces,” pointed out the CPP. “Gen. Jovito Palparan, whom the AFP has considered a hero and model for his decade-long campaign of brutality under the Arroyo regime and who directly masterminded abductions and oversaw the torture of activists and those he suspected of involvement in democratic resistance, remains free and under the protection of his military peers,” said the CPP.

“Not once have we heard Aquino denounce his fascist crimes. His legacy of brutality continues to the present.” “Extrajudicial killings continue to be carried out by death squads attached to the AFP. The campaign to silence opposition against mining operations in Mindanao and elsewhere has been particularly brutal,” said the CPP. “Widespread abuses are committed especially by so-called Peace and Development Teams deployed by the military in peasant communities active in democratic mass struggles such as land reform and campaigns against the entry of foreign mining companies.”

“The human rights situation under the Aquino regime has been further punctuated by such cases as the massacre of botanist Leonardo Co and members of his research team in Kananga, Leyte in 2010, the killing of anti-mining advocate Fr. Pops Tentorio in 2011, Dutch missionary Willem Geertman in July, the Laguna massacre of young peasant hunters, the massacre of the Mancera family in Camarines Norte, the recent massacre of the Capeon family in Davao Oriental, the beheading of village official Ely Oguis last October in Albay and the killing of the elderly Valenzuela couple in Isabela last November.”

“The CPP calls on the Filipino people to heighten their defense of human rights. They can raise their level of vigilance and resist all sorts of abuses commited by the military, especially in the course of the Oplan Bayanihan war of suppression that aims to put entire communities under military control said the CPP. “They must vigorously oppose the military’s effort to embed themselves within communities, propagate anti-social vices, abuse women, traumatize children, steal farm animals, trample on crops, beat up residents, violate their homes, use schools, daycare centers and other public infratructure as barracks, impose martial law, control food supplies and commerce and impose other forms of abuses in the course of militarizing communities.”

“In the face of the continued and increasingly brutal attacks of the Aquino regime against the people, the CPP has directed the New People’s Army (NPA) to further step up its tactical offensives against the AFP, the PNP and other AFP-attached armed organizations. The perpetrators of military and police brutalities and abuses should be held accountable for their crimes against the people. The Filipino people demand justice,” said the CPP.

Communist Party of the Philippines December 10, 2012