Editorial:
Support the Moro people�s struggle against intensifying attacks by the US-Arroyo regime!

Basahin ang artikulong ito sa Pilipino

This trend has a clear objective�to justify intensified US armed intervention that it plans to initiate by sending American combat troops to MILF areas in Mindanao aside from places operated in by the Abu Sayyaf bandit group. Eventually, even territories of the New People�s Army will be covered.

To provide basis for the MILF �terrorist� declaration, the US, through its terrorist cell in the Philippines, has perpetrated a series of bombings in various areas in Mindanao, with Defense Secretary Angelo Reyes as their co-conspirator. The successive bombings in the cities of Davao and Koronadal from March to May were abhorrent. More than 50 innocent civilians were killed and hundreds were wounded in these terrorist attacks.

The regime immediately pinned the blame for the bombings on the �MILF-NPA-Abu Sayyaf cabal,� using this as pretext to ransack Moro communities in Davao and Koronadal and arrest civilians. Some of them have yet to be surfaced. Under military and police direction, three Moros were also shot to death by elements of the Davao Death Squad on May 10, a few meters from a PNP detachment in Sasa, Davao City.

The pressure and threats that have been brought to bear on the MILF are also meant to force the latter to sign a �final peace agreement� that was one-sidedly prepared by the GRP, which contains nothing but the MILF�s surrender to the regime. The Arroyo regime has imposed a June 1 deadline on the MILF for surrendering its personnel supposedly responsible for the bombings and issue an outright declaration of acquiescence to the regime�s preconditions for the peace talks. Otherwise, the MILF will be declared a �terrorist� organization and the peace talks scuttled.

In truth, the AFP has been intensifying its military operations against the MILF since December 2002 to coerce it into submitting to the framework of capitulation which the Arroyo government wants or to scrap the peace talks altogether. The AFP even said at first that its renewed attacks had to do with pursuit operations against the criminal Pentagon gang. The truth eventually surfaced and the AFP admitted that its real target was the MILF. Again, the victims of this violent campaign are no other than the hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians who have been forced to evacuate to avoid AFP bombings and attacks.

On April 2, a few hours after a peace rally launched by Moro organizations to condemn terrorism and support the peace talks� resumption, US and AFP psywar operatives treacherously undertook the bombing of the Davao wharf. The bombing was used to brandish anew the arrest warrants against MILF chair Hashim Salamat and other MILF leaders. On May 17, Arroyo ordered intensified bombings in supposed �terrorist� lairs in Mindanao� meaning Moro communities (see related article on p. 2)

The MILF has not been brought to its knees and has instead intensified its revolutionary armed struggle.

ALL this shows that it is not the MILF but the US and the AFP who are the real terrorists. The MILF and the Moro people�s struggle for self-determination and against national oppression remains just and legitimate no matter if the US and the AFP include the MILF in their list of �terrorists.�

It is correct for the MILF to launch guerrilla attacks against the reactionary military to defend its victories, resist the AFP suppression campaign and advance the Moro people�s struggle.

The MILF has been holding on ably and fast to its weapons in the face of the �terrorist� tag. This and the Moro people�s all-out advance of other arenas of struggle will serve as a shield in the expected intensification of the GRP and AFP�s brutal suppression campaigns and the further escalation of US armed intervention.

21 May 2003
English Edition

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