The people will never surrender the just cause of revolution for an unjust peace

Fr. Santiago "Sanny" Salas
Spokesperson in Eastern Visayas
National Democratic Front of the Philippines
April 26, 2005

Revolution is the growing demand of the people, and their revolutionary unity is stronger than ever on the 32nd anniversary of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines last April 24. The 8th Infantry Division thus reveals its low regard for the people and their problems by crudely saying that peace and progress will come if the revolutionary movement will surrender and lay down its arms. Peace does not come from silencing revolutionary guns, but from the fulfillment of the people's demands for land, work and basic social services. Progress does not come from surrendering the revolutionary stuggle, but from liberating the country from foreign domination and upholding national and economic sovereignty . The revolutionary war is a just cause and worth fighting for because the people's nationalist and democratic demands remain unfulfilled.

The Arroyo regime is not advancing peace nor progress but the opposite: a terroristic war with US military intervention against the people, and economic backwardness by abetting imperialist �globalization�. Attaining land and work is impossible under the regime, while the foreign and local exploiters and the big bureaucrats live it up in plundering the economy. People can no longer live decently under relentless rising oil prices, electricity and water rates, and prices of basic commodities. The regime's �war on terror� also encourages the military and police to commit widespread violations of human rights and international humanitarian law. Martial law may be just around the corner, with civil liberties being trashed through a pending anti-terrorism bill and the recent implementation of a national identification system.

The biggest stumbling block to peace and progress, therefore, is not the revolutionary movement but the puppet, fascist and corrupt Arroyo regime. It is precisely because of the glaring insincerity of the reactionary government in addressing the grievances of the people and resolving the root causes of the civil war that formal peace talks between the NDFP and the Arroyo government remain in limbo.

In this context, the shallowness and deceit of the 8th Infantry Division become even clearer.

And now, it is our turn to ask the 8th Infantry Division. Did they demonstrate well their feelings for peace and progress, through the murders of legal activists and innocent civilians in the region whom they arbitrarily link with the New People's Army? Did they demonstrate well their feelings for peace and progress, in forcing the evacuation and economic dislocation of more than 600 peasants suspected as NPA sympathizers in San Jorge, Western Samar? Or how can they expect people to believe Gen. Jovito Palparan's community relations stunt �Kamay, Ngiti, Bati� to reinvent the image of an 8th ID trooper, when everybody knows from real experience that it actually means �Suntok, Kulata, Tadyak�?

While the 8th Infantry Division pretends to talk of peace and progress, it is in fact busy sowing the seeds of revolution through widespread military abuses. Human rights violations further inflame the people who are already practically starving. The people are already down and out, but the 8th Infantry Division continues to kick them mercilessly. Military abuses teach the people to become more militant in defense of their rights, and to ultimately realize that it is in grasping the gun of revolution that the enemies of the people can be defeated and overthrown. As they have sown, so shall the 8th Infantry Division and the Arroyo regime reap the whirlwind of revolution.

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