PRESS RELEASE
Information Bureau
Communist Party of the Philippines

CPP denounces "terrorist" tag on MILF
May 8, 2003

The Communist Party of the Philippines today denounced US Ambassador Francis Ricciardone and Defense Secretary Angelo Reyes for suggesting that the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) be included in the "terrorist listing" of the United States.

"Ricciardone's has once again come out with another of his unabashed interventionist utterances and schemes, and the chief US puppet in the AFP is drooling for it," said Gregorio "Ka Roger" Rosal, spokesman of the CPP. Rosal also took note of the fact that many, including in the senate, raised vehement clamor against this.

"The US had long been wanting to categorically also declare the MILF as 'terrorist', in order to justify the further deployment of US troops in Mindanao," Rosal added, "but it is as if the US and its puppet government in the Philippines had not been treating the MILF so in the first place."

Rosal said that pinning the "terrorist" tag on MILF by the US and Philippine government tantamounts to nothing else but the further exacerbation of the Bangsamoro war in Mindanao.

"Upon US prodding, the Arroyo government had even before already intensified its military campaigns of suppression in violation of GRP-MILF ceasefire agreements in order to scuttle the peace talks and lay the ground for the deployment of US troops in wider areas of Mindanao," Rosal said.

Rosal also said that the NDF-MILF alliance had long been public. "The AFP's current fiction that the NPA and MILF are in league with the Abu Sayyaf only reveals their desperation in wanting to tarnish the integrity of both the CPP-NPA-NDF and the MILF-BMIAF." Rosal was reacting to military claims of a so-called NPA-MILF-MNLF-ASG alliance.

"What actually exists and what has been exposed over and over again is the utterly despicable AFP-Abu Sayyaf alliance," Rosal added. "In fact, the recently released book by former Abu Sayyaf hostage Gracia Burnham, In the Presence of My Enemies, has revealed numerous solid evidences of this, including the huge cuts from ramsom payments that the Abu Sayyaf had been sharing with top AFP generals and the food and other supplies that the AFP had been sending to Abu Sayyaf forces.

"It is absolutely correct for the MILF to carry-out guerrilla attacks against government forces in order to defend its gains and recover lost ground, resist the AFP campaign of suppression and carry forward the Moro people's struggle for self-determination," Rosal said.

Rosal said that "categorizing the MILF as 'terrorist' would not affect one bit the legitimacy of the struggle for self-determination against oppression of the Moro people by US imperialism and its puppet Manila government."

Rosal cited the experience of the Communist Party of the Philippines and the New People's Army which were included in the US FTO (Foreign Terrorist Organizations) list since August 2002 saying that "despite the 'terrorist' tag on the CPP-NPA-NDF, its mass base and popular support continue to grow."

"On the contrary, the US and the Arroyo governments have clearly exhibited by their own brutal wars that it is they who are the real terrorists," Rosal added. "With US goading, AFP campaigns of suppression in Mindanao and elsewhere has become more and more brutal".

Rosal cited as "heinous examples of AFP brutality and terrorism" the Kananga Mass Torture and Massacre in Leyte where 9 civilians and hors de combat where killed by the 803rd Army Brigade last April 16, and the killing of human rights activists Eden Marcellana and Eddie Gumanoy in Mindoro by the 204th Army Brigade last April 21.###

Reference:
Anne Buenaventura
Media Officer
Cellphone Number: +63910-240-3553



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