The Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP-CC) condemns in the strongest terms possible the Duterte regime for issuing Presidential Proclamation No. 360 which arbitrarily terminates the NDFP-GRP peace negotiations.

The Filipino people are indignant over Duterte’s terror proclamation as it torpedoes and casts away the achievements of NDFP-GRP peace negotiations. Various sectors have expressed their outrage over Duterte’s complete termination of the talks and demand its resumption.

Duterte’s termination of peace talks and terror tagging of the CPP/NPA/NDF signal an escalation of fascist attacks and an intensification of its all-out war against the Filipino people and their revolutionary and democratic forces. This is part of the scheme to impose nationwide martial law or some other form of power grab to monopolize political power.

Duterte terminated peace talks amid the rising protest movement against rampant killings in his so-called war against drugs, political killings against activists, widespread death and destruction in the Marawi Siege, aerial bombings, shelling, militarization and all-out war in the countryside.

The Party condemns Duterte for red- and terror-tagging the legal democratic organizations which unjustly puts unarmed social activists in the cross-hairs of the military and police. He has dished out brazen threats to have activists arrested by the police in total disregard of civil and political rights

The Party calls on all democratic forces to brace for and resist the Duterte regime’s all-out attacks and exert all-out effort to unite the Filipino people in a broad united front and wage all forms of struggle to fight and defeat Duterte’s schemes to establish a fascist dictatorship.

Duterte/AFP/US, not CPP/NPA/NDFP, are the real terrorists

The CPP, NPA and NDFP are not terrorist organizations. They are a revolutionary force with a long record of standing against and fighting terrorism. They enjoy deep and wide support among the people, both in the cities and countryside. They wage a national democratic revolution to overthrow the oppressive, exploitative, corrupt and rotten classes now chiefly represented by the Duterte regime.

The NPA wages armed struggle in accordance with international humanitarian law. NPA fighters conduct themselves under even loftier standards which gives the highest priority to protecting the lives, rights and welfare of civilians. It targets only the ruling state’s armed forces, police, paramilitaries and other attached armed groups actively engaged in counterrevolutionary armed suppression of the people.

For more than 25 years now, the NDFP has represented the interests of the workers, peasants and other democratic sectors in peace negotiations with the GRP. It does so with the broad support of the Filipino people. As a revolutionary belligerent force, the NDFP has long subscribed to the Geneva Conventions and other international humanitarian standards. It has put forward an extensive and detailed program for socio-economic reform which aims to end widespread poverty and joblessness through genuine land reform and national industrialization.

Terrorism, on the other hand, is the systematic use of armed violence against civilians and non-armed adversaries. By this definition, it is Duterte and his fascist minions who are the real terrorist for having killed around 13,000 people in a frenzy of mass murder by police and vigilante groups in its anti-people and anti-democratic “war against drugs.” It employed excessive force and carried out indiscriminate aerial bombardment which levelled Marawi City and killed at least 1,000 civilians, according to independent reports.

Since early this year, it has waged all-out war in the countrysides dropping bombs endangering civilian communities, attacking self-organized community schools, occupying daycare centers, village halls and other civilian infrastructure forcing the evacuation of close to 50,000 people. The state security forces have carried out targeted political killings of around 100 activists. Illegal arrests, torture, filing of trumped up charges, and other grave violations of human rights continue to run rampant.

The US-Duterte regime employs fascist terror in order to suppress the people and protect the interests of the big bourgeois compradors, big landlords and bureaucrat capitalists. Its military and police force are armed, trained, advised and directed by the US imperialists, the biggest international terrorist. The ultimate aim is to perpetuate the moribund semicolonial and semifeudal system.

US-supported intensification of all-out war

With plans to acquire 27 attack helicopters, as well as new drones and other military hardware from the US, and with direct US military intervention in counter-guerrilla operations, the Duterte regime seeks to intensify all-out attacks to suppress the people’s anti-imperialist, anti-feudal and anti-fascist resistance.

Duterte has completely shut the door to peace negotiations and has fully embraced US counter-insurgency doctrine. By terror-tagging the CPP/NPA/NDFP, he shows he is now interested only in intensifying the civil war and waging all-out armed suppression. With US support, Duterte and the AFP are set on waging all-out war that combines the worst features of all past US-designed oplans (Bayanihan, Bantay Laya 1 and 2 and so on) as well as that of the US-supported siege and total destruction of Marawi.

Duterte’s terror tagging of the CPP/NPA/NDFP is linked to his aim of suppressing the strongest bulwark of resistance against his scheme to establish a fascist dictatorship in order to monopolize political power. He calculates that by doing so, he can isolate and suppress piecemeal the political opposition.

In scheming to establish a fascist dictatorship, Duterte aims to crush his political enemies, monopolize reactionary state power and privilege, arrogate all bureaucratic corruption for himself and his political ilk composed of the worst plunderers and most detested political dynasties.

He aims to suppress the growing people’s resistance and protest movement against tyranny and fascist repression as well as growing discontent over rising prices, low wages, rotten state of health, education and other social services, plans to impose new taxes, landgrabbing, expansion of plantations and land monopolies, widespread labor contractualization, plans to allow extension of working day under a compressed work week scheme, and other worsening forms of labor exploitation. Duterte vainly hopes to suppress resistance against his plan for all-out economic liberalization amid continuing domestic and international economic crisis.

Unite the people and wage all-out resistance to overthrow the US-Duterte fascist regime

The CPP Central Committee calls on the Filipino people to wage all-out resistance to overthrow the US-Duterte fascist regime and steadfastly struggle against its all-out fascist attacks and armed suppression.

Every Party member and organization must prepare to engage the Duterte regime in intense battles, accelerate and amplify efforts to organize the people and lead them in waging anti-fascist, anti-feudal and anti-imperialist struggles.

The national democratic forces must arouse, organize and mobilize the biggest number of people and help build the broadest possible united front in order to isolate, confront and oust the fascist regime.

The Party must lead the New People’s Army in intensifying the revolutionary armed struggle nationwide. The NPA must continue to wage and intensify guerrilla warfare nationwide in order to inflict powerful blows against Duterte’s fascist machinery.

By waging nationwide armed and non-armed forms of struggle, the Filipino people will surely prevail over the US-Duterte regime’s fascist schemes.