The fascist state is a certified savage. Even amidst worsening poverty and hunger among the Bikolano masses, they slam the masses with militarization and human rights violations perpetrated by the AFP-PNP-CAFGU. The severe damage and danger brought by intensified military occupation not only upon people’s lives but also their livelihood adds to the burdens of the poor, especially those in the countryside. In just over a year since Marcos Jr. began his term, not less than 227 human rights violations carried out by the 9th IDPA, PNP Region 5 and their agents have been recorded across all provinces of the region. This figure includes 32 cases of extrajudicial killings and massacre. Just within this month in fact, two consecutive massacres with six civilian victims were added to the fascist 96th IBPA and 2nd IBPA’s bloody raps in Masbate—one of the poorest provinces in the entire Philippines.

Both within and outside the bounds of law, the unremitting military and police attacks against the Bikolano masses are clearly inhumane and barbaric. The state seems to give the masses only two options—death by hunger or death by bullets. Tens of hundreds of communities in Bikol already battered by military and police violence now suffer from drawn-out operations that limit their capacity to earn their living and hamper their daily activities such as the children’s schooling. These communities are deprived of earning millions of pesos for every week they are occupied by the military. Earnings that mean the difference between life and death for ordinary Bikolano families assailed with skyrocketing prices of commodities, various payments and loans, costly production among others.

Further adding insult to the Bikolano masses’ injury is the fact that after all the threats, assaults, arrests, killings and massacres against them, the military and police have the gall to peddle their twisted propaganda that they help the people and they provide the path to peace and justice. Behind every 9th IDPA and PNP Region 5’s achievement report are families grieving for the suffering that befell their loved ones. It pains them that the military offers them free burial or meager pities for the lives that these butchers took from them. Gratuities that have no end goal but to give these mercenaries photo opportunities for their Facebook posts and in exchange of rewards that these greedy military and police claim.

What the barbaric and bloodthirsty military, police and the state itself must remember is that their indiscriminate violation of the masses most especially during a time that poverty enslaves them, makes them furl their hands into fists and pushes them to choose the path of struggle. If the state only offers them the options of dying of hunger and dying of violence, then they will aspire even more to defend their lives. They will embrace even more tightly the path of the revolution.