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On this 52nd anniversary of the New People’s Army (NPA), let us give the highest greetings to the NPA operational commands, the Red commanders, the Red fighters and the People’s Militia. For over the past five decades, they have valiantly self-sacrificed and served the Filipino people well by pressing forward the national-democratic revolution primarily by advancing the people’s war! They are cherished very much and acknowledged well by the workers, peasants, fisherfolks, urban poor, national minorities, the women and the youth, and other exploited and oppressed sectors as their trustworthy army and defenders, educators, organizers, health workers and hardworking servants who always attend to the needs of the basic masses.

As we celebrate the 52nd anniversary of the NPA, let us salute to the utmost degree the NPA and the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) in their continuing efforts to guide and inspire the broad peasant masses and their democratic organizations in waging the agrarian struggle in order to reduce land rent, raise wages, lower interest rates, seek fair farmgate prices, increase food production and implement other agrarian reforms such as the free distribution of land to the tillers. Under the leadership of the CPP, NPA units carry on the mass base building by expanding and strengthening various revolutionary mass organizations of peasants, women, youth, children, and the democratic sectors of the intelligentsia and national minorities, all of which are serving as the foundations for the establishment of the people’s democratic organs of political power at various levels. The basic masses fully support the NPA in the defense of their political power and in the establishment of several health committees that are ceaselessly mobilized in the public health campaign to prevent the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic and help treat those infected.

This 52nd anniversary of the NPA is a great moment of joy as we commend to the highest degree all NPA commands in launching successfully various tactical offensives nationwide against the terrorist attacks of autocrat Duterte’s pro-U.S. imperialist and anti-Filipino AFP-PNP commanders. The launching of continuing and heightening successful NPA tactical offensives clearly demonstrate that the Joint AFP-PNP Campaign Plan Kapanatagan (JCP-Kapanatagan) by means of focused military operations (FMOs), the National Task Force — End the Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) and the terrorism of the fascist Duterte regime can and will never defeat the NPA and the people’s war. The NPA will continue to advance the people’s war until autocrat Duterte’s and his fascist AFP-PNP commanders’ terrorism shall end completely; and the root causes of the armed conflict shall eventually be resolved nationwide for the Filipino people to finally achieve national liberation, genuine people’s democracy and a bright socialist future.

Over the past five decades, the Philippine allied revolutionary organizations under the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) have expounded and continue to elucidate that the root causes of the armed conflict are no other than U.S. imperialism, domestic feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism. These three basic problems have been maintained and are being preserved by the ruling classes of big landlords and big comprador bourgeoisie who themselves make up the big bureaucrat capitalists, serving as puppets and dictated by their U.S. imperialist masters, and have positioned themselves inside the entire reactionary government which they fully control in order to defend, expand and consolidate their economic, political and military power at the expense of the exploited and oppressed Filipino people who comprise majority of the national population, especially those of the workers, semi-proletariat and urban poor, peasants, fisherfolks and national minorities. These three basic problems are the primary reasons why the Philippines remains as a semicolonial and semifeudal society that has never been independent and has a backward agricultural and non-industrial economy, that is continually maintained by the reactionary government of the U.S. imperialist puppets, exploiters and oppressors of the Filipino people, and defended by pro-U.S. imperialist and terrorist AFP-PNP commanders. And because of these three basic problems and the terroristic rule of the big landlords, big comprador bourgeoisie and big bureaucrat capitalists under the tyrant U.S.-Duterte Regime (USDR), the Filipino masses have suffered and continue to agonize in various inequities due to the problems of landlessness, poverty, high prices of basic commodities, unemployment, low wages to the contractually employed workers, inequalities, the absence of free social services for education and health, and the nonexistence of Philippine sovereignty and people’s democracy.

Consequently, the lethal war on drugs, tyrant Duterte’s farfetched reasons to justify the Marawi siege, the NTF-ELCAC, the Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF) and the Anti-Terrorism Law (ATL) have aggravated and persist to exacerbate the three basic problems and the continuing agonies of the Filipino people. In fact, these have served and continue to function as de facto martial law instruments of autocrat Duterte and his pro-U.S. imperialist and fascist AFP-PNP commanders to put the drug syndicate under their direct control; ceaselessly hurl upon the Filipino masses acts of terrorism, dictatorship, crimes of murder, suppression of people’s basic freedoms and democratic rights, bankruptcy, economic and environmental plunder and the betrayal of Philippine sovereignty; make lawful their limitless corruption of billions of the people’s money; increase budget for the reactionary AFP-PNP forces and Duterte’s terrorism against the Filipino people in the guise of ending the CPP-NPA; get more huge foreign loans from imperialist banks and from the Chinese imperialist government to fund tyrant Duterte’s anti-people projects and completely open up the Philippines to imperialist impositions and domination. What has been and is prevailing up to now in Duterte’s counterrevolutionary government is a facade of democracy that smokescreens widespread state terrorism and solely favors autocrat Duterte and his minions of big landlords, big comprador bourgeoisie, big bureaucrat capitalists, as well as his pro-U.S. imperialist and terrorist AFP and PNP commanders like the ilk of National Defense Secretary Gen. Delfin Lorenzana, AFP Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Cirilito Sobejana, NTF-ELCAC head Lt. Gen. Antonio Parlade, National Police chief Gen. Debold Sinas, DILG Secretary retired Gen. Eduardo Afio, National Security Adviser retired Gen. Hermogenes Esperon Jr., and Presidential Adviser on the peace process retired Gen. Carlito Galvez Jr., plus 77 other retired military and police officers whom autocrat Duterte has positioned as members of his Cabinet and as heads of other major government agencies. Thus in reality, tyrant Duterte and his fascist military and police generals, making use of NTF-ELCAC and the ATL as cover-up and alibi of their state terrorism and Duterte’s military junta, have practically militarized the whole government and continue to dominate the civilian bureaucracy of the autocrat Duterte regime.

Tyrant Duterte and his terrorist AFP-PNP commanders have fully employed the lethal war on drugs, the Marawi siege, the JCPKapanatagan’s FMOs supported by the Retooled Community Support Program (RCSP) and the Enhanced-Comprehensive Local Integration Program (E-CLIP), the NTF-ELCAC’s P19 billion Barangay Development Program (DBP), the IATF and the ATL to perpetuate countless and cruelest offenses against the Filipino people. They have unleashed brutally and continue to commit GENOCIDE, CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY and WAR CRIMES that have victimized hundreds of thousands of Filipino masses in just the past four-and-a-half years of autocrat Duterte in power. Their crimes of GENOCIDE include the bombardments of the Moro people like what happened to Marawi City, the aerial bombings as well as machinegun strafings and cannon shellings of the communities and territories of national minorities in many parts of the country but most especially the Lumad communities in Mindanao. Their CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY comprise widespread and systematic attacks against civilian population through hamletting as a result of their widespread RCSP, forcible transfer or evacuation of the populace; deprivation of physical liberty and economic blockade of communities suspected of supporting the NPA guerrillas; cases of rape by fascist AFP-PNP forces; forced disappearances of peasant, women and youth leaders. The WAR CRIMES committed by the tyrant Duterte regime include political vilification, threats, harassment, intimidation, adduction, red-tagging and extra-judicial killing of civilians, activists and human rights defenders suspected as “communists” or NPA guerrillas; baseless search warrants, illegal arrest and detention; massacres, murders and killings of suspects who are reported by fascist AFP-PNP as resisting arrest; planting of explosives and guns as fake evidence; countless “fake NPA surrenderers” by picking out civilians and fabricating them as NPA surrenderers; destruction and looting of properties of civilians in peasant communities; pillage and directing intentionally military attacks against civilians suspected as NPA supporters and massacre of unarmed civilians. Another war crimes committed by the tyrant Duterte are the killing of NDFP and CPP personalities who are unarmed, hors de combat and retired Party leader which are all violations of the international humanitarian law and CARHRIHL; and arrest and detention of NDFP consultants which is a violation of the JASIG.

Autocrat Duterte and his pro-U.S. imperialist AFP-PNP commanders must be tried and punished by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for their serious crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. Taken from the Philippine Revolution Web Center (PRWC) and Ang Bayan, the bi-monthly publication of the CPP, the partial data of human rights violations (HRVs) committed by tyrant Duterte and his pro-U.S. imperialist AFP-PNP top commanders in just the past four-and-a-half years of the autocrat USDR show that there are a total of 1,020,013 human rights victims in the following HRVs perpetuated from June 2016 to December 3, 2020, as follows: 337 political and extra-judicial killing; 11 murder in violation of the rights of hors de combat; 11 abduction and enforced disappearance; 428 frustrated killing; 90,964 threat, harassment and intimidation; 369,688 victims of aerial bombing; 487,47 evacuation and displacement; 42,823 victims of illegal occupation; 165 destruction of property; 124 illegal search and seizure; 150 torture; 46 physical assault and injury; 3,168 demolition; 15,947 food and economic blockade; 195 coercion; and 8,581 curfew and Covid-19 militarist restrictions.

Counted in the above total of 337 victims of political and extra-judicial killing were 61 lawyers murdered under killer Duterte’s regime. Not included in the aforementioned partial data were the 34 activists massacred in various parts of the country from December 15, 2020 to February 5, 2021. Also not included in the above list of violation of the rights of hors de combat was the brutal killing of retired and unarmed CPP leader Comrade Antonio “Ka Susing” Cabanatan, 74 and his wife Comrade Florenda “Ka Osang”, 65 whose bodies were found in Barangay Botong, Oton, Iloilo on December 26, 2020. Similarly not listed above were the victims of more than 30,000 Filipino masses murdered by tyrant Duterte’s Oplan Tokhang in his fake war on drugs. Also not counted in the aforesaid data were the victims of more than 350,000 displaced Maranaos from 115,000 families during Duterte’s bombardment of Marawi City that totally destroyed 11,000 houses of 27,000 families.

We pray, therefore, that you, the rank-and-file men and women as well as junior officers in the AFP-PNP, respect and defend the human rights of the exploited and oppressed Filipino masses, the democratic and civil rights of social activists and human rights defenders, and the sovereign rights of the Philippines in order that our nation would become truly independent and democratic. Please remember that your salaries do not at all come from tyrant Duterte but from the taxes of the Filipino people. Hence, you must become genuine protectors of the Filipino people. It is your fundamental right and duty to disobey the orders of your fascist and pro-U.S. imperialist AFP-PNP top commanders who inflict terrorism and suffering on the Filipino people.

In a DZHR radio interview last March 22, the great tall-tale liar and pro-U.S. imperialist Lt. Gen. Parlade, the NTF-ELCAC spokesperson, repeated his incredulous fabrications that more than 14,000 NPA combatants have already surrendered and only about 1,500 NPA regulars are left behind with no fighting capacity to win battles. He continued shamelessly and maliciously to blurt out other lies like NPA recruitment has declined because of the government programs (referring to the corruption-based E-CLIP, RCSP and BDP that have created imaginarily countless fake NPA surrenderers and the 822 freed barangays). Then he falsely claimed further that kidnapping and forcible recruitment of national minorities is now the only activity of the remaining NPA to increase their number. Really, this great anti-Filipino and perjurer Lt. Gen. Parlade, his tyrant master Duterte and his co-fascist and pro-U.S. imperialist AFP-PNP commanders have never learned lessons from the U.S.-Marcos Dictatorship that propelled the NPA and the armed struggle to grow from small to big and expand from Tarlac to all the regions of the country, and now very much active in more than 110 guerrilla fronts in the rural areas of 17 regions and in 73 out of the 81 provinces. And because the armed revolution, led by the CPP and carried on by the self-reliant NPA units and the People’s Militia, has grown and expanded nationwide, it is very impossible for tyrant Duterte and their NTF-ELCAC to suppress and end the people’s war.

Autocrat Duterte ought to recognize that his crimes of rampant terrorism, corruption, treason, tyranny, butchery, plunder and mass intimidation have led the Filipino people to gnash their teeth daily in amassed anger that would finally lead to Duterte’s downfall. Certainly, the Filipino youth and the intelligentsia in urban centers are enflamed to join the NPA in order to advance the people’s war to higher stages. Thus, on this 52nd anniversary of the NPA, the exploited and oppressed masses are calling the Filipino youth and the intelligentsia to go to the countryside in order to accelerate the armed struggle by means of launching frequent tactical offensives, advancing the agrarian revolution and the mass base building through raising the level of the people’s mass organizations and the local organs of political power that constitute the people’s democratic government, aimed at overthrowing the reactionary state in due time in the strategic offensive stage.

At the same time, it is appropriate to expand and strengthen the oust tyrant Duterte movement for a powerful convergence of all forces. One way to do this is for all Filipinos, including all Christians from the Catholic and Protestant Churches, to join and support the 1Sambayan not only to prepare for the 2022 national elections but also and especially to reenact the 1986 EDSA people’s uprising. For it is only by ousting Duterte and his terrorist minions can a patriotic and democratic government be duly elected and established which would implement the already signed and approved agreements between the GRP and the NDFP such as JASIG and CARHRIHL, and support fully the resumption of the national peace talks for the resolution of the root causes of the armed conflict in order to finalize CASER for the signature and approval of both the GRP and the NDFP Negotiating Panels and their respective principals, and continue the national peace negotiations to draft and finalize agreements on political and constitutional reforms, and finally on the end of hostilities between the AFP-PNP and the NPA and the disposition of these forces. ###