The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) today released the following statement:
The reactionary Arroyo regime and the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) are shedding crocodile tears over the widespread destruction of forests which has resulted in several landslides and floods in Quezon, Aurora, Nueva Ecija and elsewhere and causing hundreds of death and great hardships for hundreds of thousands of people.
It is obscuring the role of the reactionary government and the military in issuing permits to logging concessionaires, causing the displacement of settlers and minority peoples to pave the way for logging operations, serving as security forces to the biggest logging and timber companies and allowing the legal and illegal export of lumber.
It pins the blame on small carabao loggers, who in the first place, are victims of landgrabbing operations by giant logging firms and have been forced to abandon farming and seek employment in these firms. It accuses the New People's Army (NPA) of colluding with logging companies, when in fact, the NPA, together with the masses in the countryside and mountainous areas, have been fighting large-scale logging since 1969.
In opposing the wanton destruction of forests, the NPA and the revolutionary forces inflict the biggest blows against giant logging concessionaires and timber companies, as well as mining companies owned by foreign capitalists and big bourgeois compradors and their big bureaucrat partners. These companies have caused widespread deforestation since the start of American colonial rule in the early 1900s.
They produce large quantities of lumber for export, primarily targeting the Japanese and American markets. Under martial law, deforestation was carried out with impunity, encouraged by the Marcos dictatorship. Since the 1990s, logging activities have been stimulated by the policy of liberalization, advocated by none other then Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.
For the past 35 years, the CPP, the NPA and other revolutionary forces have stood clearly against the widespread destruction of the environment perpetuated by foreign capitalists and local big capitalists in collusion with the reactionary regime. In certain areas in Northern Luzon and Mindanao, through the efforts of the NPA and the masses, forests have been preserved.
The NPA has fought fiercely against military campaigns to force the evacuation of people from the hinterlands in order to clear the way for logging companies and other plunderers of the environment. It has carried out punitive actions against AFP units that serve as security forces of logging companies. Wherever it can, the NPA has disallowed big logging companies to operate within the guerrilla zones. The NPA has disabled destructive logging equipment owned by these giant logging concessionaires.
It has carried out land reform campaigns to encourage small carabao loggers employed by logging companies to resume agricultural production or other forms of livelihood.
Thus, by blaming the NPA for the deforestation in the Sierra Madre, the Arroyo regime is desperately trying to obscure the role of the reactionary government, its liberalization policy, its corrupt and graft-ridden environmental agencies and all its laws that encourage large-scale and indiscriminate logging and the export of lumber.
Among the sources of bureaucratic corruption, the bidding for logging permits is one of the biggest. That is why--with the probable exception of the housing portfolio--appointments to head the DENR and its regional offices are among the most coveted by political hangers-on of the reactionary administration.
The Arroyo regime will never be able to put a stop to rampant deforestation as long as it continues to uphold and ardently defend the policy of liberalization which gives foreign big companies and their local partners all the freedom to plunder our forests and natural resources and exploit and oppress the Filipino people. The government continues to allow "legal" deforestation by granting Timber License Agreements allowing big capitalists to carry out logging activities in millions of hectares of forests. It has employed the military and other armed groups to secure the operations of such big logging companies. The revolutionary movement is determined to defend the Philippine forests and natural environment against wanton destruction by foreign capitalists and local big bourgeois compradors. Wherever and whenever it is possible, it will continue to impose the authority of the people's democratic government against large-scale logging.
