Eastern Visayas salutes the New People's Army, the true army of the people

Fr. Santiago "Sanny" Salas
Spokesperson in Eastern Visayas
National Democratic Front of the Philippines
March 29, 2003

On the 34th founding anniversary today of the New People s Army, the NDFP and the people of Eastern Visayas extend our warmest greetings to all the Red commanders and fighters in the region. We salute the New People s Army for its fidelity in serving the people and in the revolutionary armed struggle to attain national and social liberation. The NPA is the true army of the people. Since the Marcos dictatorship and each succeeding reactionary regime, it is carrying on a heroic and just people's war in Eastern Visayas and nationwide. The flower of one generation to another from the peasants, workers and middle classes continue to fulfill their patriotic duty to serve in the people's army.

We hail the NPA for standing tall over the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP) despite the dirtiest vilification campaign branding the people's army as a terrorist organization. If held up to the NPA's sterling record of over three decades of serving the people and earning their enduring esteem, the GRP's heaping of calumny on the NPA is the height of desperation and futility. The AFP and PNP today desperately stoop to the wildest black propaganda against the NPA because they are unable to stop its growing strength. Their own deceitfulness is an attempt to cover up that the military and police are on a losing course before a well-armed and well-supported revolutionary army of the people.

The people praise the NPA for protecting the lives and well-being of civilians and treating enemy captives well in the midst of the vicissitudes and cruelties of war. In waging the people's war, the NPA is guided by revolutionary principles and regulations as well as the international laws of war. This is in stark contrast to the GRP's counterrevolutionary campaigns like Oplan Gordian Knot, where the fascist AFP-PNP commit gross violations of human rights and international humanitarian law. The military and police institute state terrorism in the countryside by harassing, torturing and killing suspected NPA supporters. When captured or hors de combat, NPA combatants are also routinely denied their basic rights, tortured, and wrongly incarcerated or killed by the GRP's soldiers and policemen.

In the NPA, the people have an army to genuinely fight for their rights and interests. The struggle for land by the majority of Filipinos who are peasants cannot be won without the NPA. The people's army arouses, organizes and mobilizes the peasantry for the agrarian revolution and protects the gains of their struggles. Power to the people is also possible because the NPA serves as the teeth of the democratic people's government that is being built in the countryside. In the eyes of the people, the NPA is a prestigious revolutionary army because it is fighting for national freedom and democracy. This is in opposition to the AFP, whose mercenary character is now even more pronounced because of its subordination to the interventionist US military in the Balikatan series.

We wish all the Red commanders and fighters more victories in the field of battle and their manifold tasks. The NDFP and the people assure the NPA of our continuing support and affection.

Long live the New People's Army, the true army of the people!

Victory to our people's war!

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