Editorial:
Struggle against the wanton destruction of Philippine forests and the environment!

Basahin ang artikulong ito sa Pilipino

A great majority of the victims of the recent flash flood and landslides are not being reached by the limited relief work being undertaken by the Arroyo regime. Only a measly few among the hundreds of thousands of victims have received token assistance in the form of clothing, noodles and canned goods. Despite hyped-up publicity accompanying its relief operations, the Arroyo regime has, in fact, provided minuscule funding to help in the people's rehabilitation. This is made worse by bureaucratic irresponsibility and bickering within the reactionary government.

But beyond its failure to provide for the needs of the calamity victims, the reactionary Arroyo regime's bigger crime lies in its continued promotion of the wanton plunder and destruction of Philippine forests and the environment by giant logging and mining companies owned by big bourgeois compradors, big bureaucrats and foreign big capitalists.

Amid heightened public anger against massive deforestation, Arroyo declared on December 4 the total suspension of logging operations, only to "clarify" this three days later with "an order to allow private plantations to continue harvesting and cutting logs".

With much hype, she appointed Gen. Victor Corpus, former chief of the Intelligence Service of the AFP, to head an anti-illegal logging task force and to "oversee" nationwide reforestation. Corpus' appointment, however, has more to do with "counterinsurgency" than concern for the forests. In the early 1990s, Corpus initiated "Task Force Greening Panay" which served only as a component for military counterinsurgency operations and landgrabbing activities.

The reactionary Arroyo regime has no intentions of seriously addressing the biggest causes of the massive denudation of forests and the destruction of the environment: reckless and large-scale logging and mining operations. In fact, it is earnestly shoring up the timber and mining industries by enticing foreign capitalists and big bourgeois investors with liberalized policies on the operations, ownership and commercial undertakings of logging and mining companies.

The Arroyo regime is giving these plunderers all the freedom to ravage further the Philippine environment.

Furthermore, the Arroyo regime is going all-out in the implementation of the 1995 Philippine Mining Act. In 1997, foreign mining companies, mostly Australian and Canadian applied for mining concessions covering around 9.2 million hectares.

The Mining Act encourages the further wanton depletion of forest land by giving permission to big mining companies to clear wide swaths of forest areas to construct mining roads and meet their other needs. These companies are exempted from environmental impact assessments. Foreigners are allowed 100% ownership of mining companies and allowed 100% repatriation of their profits.

They use the bureaucracy and employ the military to actively promote their interests. These criminals do not have the slightest regard for the Filipino people's national patrimony. With government's nod, big comprador-capitalists, bureaucrat capitalists, smuggling syndicates and top military commanders have collaborated with US and Japanese imperialists in the unbridled depletion of our forests.

Bureaucrat capitalists indirectly pocket huge amounts from logging by taking bribes from big timber companies, and directly from the operations of their own logging companies. Local and national politicians are invariably involved in logging. A large part of the wealth of politicians and warlords come from logging.

Logging operations, government-licensed and otherwise, along with drug trafficking, illegal gambling and other syndicated crimes have been the most lucrative source of ill-gotten wealth among the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and the Philippine National Police (PNP) top brass as well as Malaca�ang insiders.

The military and police are also utilized to clear the way for the operations of logging and mining companies. They trample on the people's political, economic and cultural rights in an effort to suppress resistance.

Oftentimes, in collaboration with environment officials, army and police forces pretend to confiscate illegally cut logs just to provide legal cover for their transport until these are finally delivered to their illegal buyers.

The worsening environmental crisis is part and parcel of the deepening chronic crisis of the ruling semicolonial and semifeudal system. It is the peasant masses, fisherfolk and minority peoples in the countryside and hinterlands who bear the brunt of the environmental crisis.

The destruction of the Philippine environment and natural resources will continue to worsen with the further aggravation of the crisis of the semicolonial and semifeudal system. Local industrial and agricultural production continue to falter as the reactionary state continues to rely on foreign capital infusion to spur production. There is widespread destruction of local productive forces as the crisis of the world capitalist system recoils on the local economy.

The backwardness of the semicolonial and semifeudal economy is again being brought to the fore as the local exploiting classes of big bourgeois compradors and big landlords resort to the wholesale destruction of the remaining frontiers of the Philippines' national patrimony. Such desperation is leading to the out and out liberalization of policies with regard to operations of logging and mining companies; and to the outright plunder of the few remaining forest and mineral resources.

In the face of the Arroyo regime's policies to bolster logging and mining operations and its total disregard for the environment, the Communist Party of the Philippines and the entire revolutionary movement reiterate their commitment to struggle against the rape of the Filipino people's national patrimony.

The most crucial element in the struggle against the wanton destruction of the environment is the people's collective struggle and their resolute resistance to logging and mining operations that imperil their environment, their livelihood and their lives.

The CPP and all revolutionary forces will undertake efforts to raise the people's understanding of the history of plunder and rape of the Philippine forests carried out by foreign big companies and local big compradors as well as the culpability of the Arroyo regime in perpetuating this systematic ravaging of our environment. The CPP will intensify efforts to organize the people and help them in their struggles against the reactionary state's sham reforestation program as well as against the renewed campaign to allow mining operations.

Wherever it can, the New People's Army will prevent the entry of logging companies, or compel them to strictly abide by the laws of the people's revolutionary government to ensure the interests of the masses in the locality and the judicious use of forest resources. As in the past, it will carry out efforts to punish or penalize entities that trample on the people's interests, destroy the environment and violate the laws of the people's democratic government.

21 December 2004
English Edition

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