21 April 2023

Dear comrades of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP)

The MLPD strongly protests against the arrest, torture and murder of the high-ranking CPP leaders Benito Tiamzon (71, Ka Laan) and Wilma Austria-Tiamzon (70, Ka Bagong-tao) as well as eight other comrades by the Philippine military.

Our condolences go to all relatives, friends and comrades of the CPP and its Central Committee. Please convey to them the solidarity greetings of all members of the MLPD, its youth association Rebel and the children’s organization Red Foxes.

They fought all their lives for freedom, peace and socialism. They were leaders of the working class and the people’s masses of the Philippines; they were loved and deeply trusted. Arrested and freed through struggle several times, they never lost their revolutionary optimism:

“Happiness is in the revolution. The revolution is not a burden, not an obligation I perform with a heavy heart. I could not think of any other life,” Tiamzon said.

The two were captured alive in Samar province on August 21, 2022. They were brutally tortured. Witnesses reported that they “saw how the faces and bodies of the victims were smashed, apparently beaten with hard objects.” We reject the government’s lies that the Tiamzons were killed in a firefight off the coast of Catbalogan on August 22, 2022. “In truth, the already lifeless bodies of the Tiamzons and their group were dumped on a motorboat filled with explosives, and tugged from Catbalogan midway towards Taranganan island before it was detonated,” the CPP clarifies. The anti-communist state terror under Duterte continues uninterrupted under the new President Marcos Jr. He works closely with the U.S., which presents itself as the guardian of democracy and freedom, but in reality is the heart of the international counterrevolution. The MLPD demands that the German government immediately cease all cooperation with the Philippine regime.

Tiamzon was the chairman of the CPP Executive Committee at the time of the crime, while Austria was the secretary general. Both were members of the negotiating committee of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines during the peace negotiations under President Duterte from 2016 to 2017.

Before being appointed to the party’s central organs, both led the building of revolutionary movements in different regions. Since the 1970s, they have been active in an organized way in the struggle for national and social liberation.

For three decades, Benito Tiamzon led the daily work of the Philippine Revolution as Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Central Committee. Wilma Austria worked as the General Secretary of the Central Committee. At the Second Party Congress in 2016, both were re-elected to the Central Committee and to the central organs of the party.

The MLPD will keep their memory in honor.

Justice for the Tiamzons and the Catbalogan 10!

Revolutionaries are not terrorists!

Don’t give anti-communism a chance!

Forward to the international socialist revolution!

Gabi Fechtner, Party Chairwoman of the MLPD
Monika Gärtner-Engel, Responsible person for internationalism for the MLPD
Peter Weispfenning, Member of the Central Committee of the MLPD