The vitality and energy of the Filipino youth is wasted if used for senseless sacrifices such as the
protection of the interest of few oligarchs and the ruling class.

In the series of tactical offensives launched by the NPA to punish the AFP and PNP last March 29, March 31 and April 2 in Bauko and Tadian, Mt. Province , it is saddening that most of those wounded and killed are young and new officers of the PNP and Philippine Army. Spouting orders from behind their positions, senior high-ranking officials send out these young police and military officers to military operations without a care for their doom. The police force has been reduced to nothing but as an underling of the AFP, at their beck and call. What does this say for the future of the youth enlisting into the service of the reactionary armed force and the national police? Without any other choice, they have to carry out the cowardly command of their superiors to man the battlefronts, who cower behind their desks shielded by their bureaucratic positions.

Medalya ng Kagitingan were conferred to those killed and wounded police officers in the recent firefights with the NPA. But is there an honor in dying to protect this system that works only to the advantage of the ruling class of big landlords and bourgeois compradors while further plunging the people into poverty? Do we call it honor serving corrupt superiors who are lapdogs of oligarchs? To blindly obey orders is not the practice of discipline, it only suppresses critical thinking and reinforces feudal oppression. Medals and salutations mean nothing when the ancestral land and culture that represent our identity as national minority Igorots is exploited and reduced to barren ashes by the same monsters we serve. And woudn’t these medals and salutations mean we have excelled in the exploitation and oppression of our own people?

The worsening socio-economic situation is pushing the youth to seek easy employment. As the Filipino youth fall victims to the US-Duterte regime’s neoliberal policies and labor export, we are being deceived by the raise in monthly salary and combat pay in the police and armed forces. We, the Cordillera youth must realize that by recruiting scores of us into their ranks, they are turning us against our own tribes and people. The massive recruitment of Igorot youth into the AFP and PNP is their counter-revolutionary tactic in dividing the Igorot people, in inflicting violence and crushing the revolutionary people’s movement that truly espouses the interest of the national minority for self-determination and democracy.

The concentration of the fascist troops in our communities and their relentless combat operations cause nothing but upheavals. The police and military who are deceptively called to “to serve and protect” are actually the perpetrators of gross human rights violations on the village people. The energetic Igorot youth should denounce and never aspire to take up the mercenary and fascist tradition of the AFP-PNP institutions and their paramilitary goons in perpetrating oppression on our tribes and of the Filipino people.

The national minority youth should devout their energy, intellect and time towards advancing the people’s struggle for the respect of their collective rights to ancestral land and self-determination. The people of Cordillera are faced with the threat of losing their lands and livelihood to large scale mining and dam constructions. Draw lessons from the fact that even with the presence of multiple high-capacity dams in the region, the ordinary Igorot still pays high monthly electric bills. The minerals mined from our mountains fall into the hands of foreign corporations and their imperialist masters and we are left with scraps.

The youth of Cordillera should continue on the historical and vital role in the national minority’s struggle in defending our ancestral domains from imperialist plunder and putting an end to national oppression, up to the revolutionary armed struggle. Let us draw pride and inspiration from the historical fact that it was the Igorot youth that opened the revolutionary fronts in the Cordillera, continuing our forefathers’ fight against the attempts of foreign colonialists to control our ancestral lands. Our rich mountains and resources should be championed for national industrialization and for the benefit of all the Filipino people. The energetic youth is the bloodline of our society and it is only in the national democratic revolution that their potentials are realized and developed to serve the purpose of achieving genuine freedom and democracy until a socialist society is built.

The Kabataang Makabayan – Demokratiko a Tignayan Dagiti Agtutubo iti Cordillera (KM-DATAKO) in Mt. Province calls on the youth of Cordillera to dedicate their life in genuinely serving the oppressed national minority and Filipino masses!

Lead the national democratic revolution! Join the New Peoples Army!