The upcoming homecoming of Angelo dela Cruz is a victory of the Filipino people

Gregorio "Ka Roger" Rosal
Spokesperson
Communist Party of the Philippines
July 20, 2004

The expected release and homecoming of Filipino hostage Angelo dela Cruz is a victory of the Filipino people.

For the past two weeks, the Filipino people fervently and earnestly expressed and manifested their demand for the Arroyo government to withdraw its military contingent in Iraq in order to ensure the safe release of dela Cruz from his Iraqi captors.

The Arroyo government was initially adamant against any proposal to send home its troops in Iraq, disregarding the threat to the life of hostage dela Cruz, whose captors demanded in exchange the pull-out of the Philippine troops. For many days, Arroyo dilly-dallied on the question, concerned foremost with assuring her imperialist masters of her government's continued support to the US occupation of Iraq.

Without the real imminent threat to the very life of her three-week old regime of doubtful mandate, Arroyo would have prefered to sacrifice the life of Angelo dela Cruz. For the Arroyo government, a mere overseas Filipino worker's life was as expendable as the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis already killed or harmed by the US invasion and occupation of Iraq that her government obsequiously supports.

To no avail, Arroyo tried other means including feelers for negotiations and a $6-million bribe offer to dela Cruz' Iraqi captors to let go of their hostage even without the pull-out of the troops.

In the face of widespread demand and swelling protests throughout the country, Arroyo desperately instituted a clamp-down on mass media and a mailed-fist policy against demonstrations to silence the resounding people's clamor. She employed brutal and unmitigated force to disperse the Plaza Miranda demonstration of support for dela Cruz and demand for the pull-out of the mercenary troops.

But all these failed to stop the gathering storm of a massive people's protest bound to gain enough breadth and intensity to topple her wobbly rule. Compelled at the brink to pull out the Filipino mercenary troops, it was actually her own skin and not so much the life of Filipino hostage Angelo dela Cruz that she was trying to save.

The Arroyo camp shamelessly plans to pretend in the fortcoming State of the Nation address that it was the President who saved the life of Angelo dela Cruz. Nothing is further from the truth. In the first place, it is Arroyo's all-out support to the US invasion and occupation of Iraq that endangered the life of dela Cruz and continues to endanger the lives of Filipino workers in Iraq. And more than anything else, it is the vigorous, militant and massive manifestation by the Filipino people's demand to withdraw the Philippine contingent in Iraq that actually saved the life of the hostage.

The immediate pull-out of the Philippine military contingent in Iraq has been the demand of an overwhelming majority of Filipinos. US-sponsored spins to make it appear that public opinion is split in the middle have not altered this fact.

The local US puppets who keep lying through their teeth as a conscious habit conjure a doom's day scenario of "soured US-RP relations," repeating the worn-out lie about so-called "special relations" between US imperialism and the neocolonial Philippine government. These sycophants are ever hoping that they could hoodwink the Filipino people with promises of more "aid" or blackmail them with threats of "cutbacks" in order to dissuade the widespread opposition to the Arroyo regime's blind support to the US "war against terror."

The massive and pervasive demand to pull-out of Iraq is grounded solidly on the view that the US invasion and occupation of Iraq is unjust, immoral and illegal, and is disapproved by the Filipino people. There is also the widespread view that by supporting the US invasion and occupation of Iraq, the security and welfare of Filipino overseas contract workers in the Middle East are endangered.

It is totally dishonest and arrogant for the US and its local sychopants to claim that the pull-out of Filipino troops in Iraq "would send the wrong signal to terrorists." In the first place, it is the relentless greed and rampage in Iraq carried out with impunity by the world's number one terrorist that has clearly taught the Iraqi people to carry out fierce resistance through all means possible. The Iraqi people are up against a foreign invader who has arrogantly violated their national sovereignty and territory and mercilessly killed tens of thousands of Iraqis, harmed hundreds of thousands more, destroyed Iraqi properties and wrecked the economic and social infrastructure of Iraq.

The Filipino people's struggle in the past two weeks to pull out the Philippine troops and save the life of Angelo dela Cruz has highlighted the struggle to put an end to the blind and all-out support of the Arroyo regime to the US' unjust invasion and occupation of Iraq.

The repatriation of Angelo dela Cruz is an initial victory against the Arroyo regime's support to US' hypocritical "war against terrorism" in Iraq. It will be celebrated not only by his family and the Filipino people, but by the Iraqi people as well with whom we share the common aspiration to put an end to US hegemonic overlordship, plunder and oppression of sovereign nations and peoples.

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