Davao City, a laboratory for fascist measures
The US and the Macapagal-Arroyo regime are now using Davao City as a laboratory for cooking up "terrorism" scenarios and the attendant population "control" measures to try out effective means of suppression that could be used nationwide, among them the enactment and implementation of the Anti-Terrorism Bill and the National ID System.
Since the Macapagal-Arroyo regime masterminded the series of bombings and shootings at the airport, wharf and even in mosques and other public places in the city in March and April, killing 38 people and wounding more than a hundred others, repressive measures have been imposed in Davao City in succession, purportedly to counter the bombings. On the eve of the Sasa wharf bombing, AFP intelligence chief Col. Victor Corpus was in Davao City.
Immediately after the bombings, security was tightened in the city. More police and military forces were positioned at the airport, wharf and other public places. Additional military forces were deployed in the metropolis � two Marine battalions, a Scout Ranger company, a Special Forces company, regular companies from the 701st Bde and additional forces from Bohol and Zamboanga. Stringent checkpoints were set up along all approaches to the city and in the city center itself. Frisking and warrantless searches became routinary. Worse, Macapagal-Arroyo declared a "state of lawless violence" not only in Davao City but in the whole of Regions 10 and 11 to legitimize such repressive measures.
The repression's immediate targets are the MILF and the Moro people who are both being blamed by the regime for the bombings. Soon after the declaration of a "state of lawless violence," two Moros were abducted by men with bonnets on their faces and wearing military uniforms without name patches. Three other Moros were abducted the next day. Those abducted, who were accused of being members of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, remain missing.
More than 50 Moro civilians have been arrested. Saturation drives continue in Moro communities within Davao City. Houses of persons suspected of having links with the MILF and the bombings are marked.
These are means of trying out the more "refined" application in the city of counterrevolutionary tactics now being massively and intensely perpetrated by government military forces against the people in the countryside who support the revolutionary movement � "draining the ocean to catch the fish."
Applied on a nationwide scale, the targets of these repressive measures being experimented on in Davao City are the militant democratic organizations and other people waging struggles.
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