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Arroyo Regime Refuses to Heed European Calls for Resumption of GRP-NDFP Peace Negotiations
By Prof. Jose Maria Sison
Chief Political Consultant, National Democratic Front of the Philippines
Chairperson, International League of Peoples' Struggle
8 September 2006
In the last three months, several European governments, human rights organizations and religious institutions
have approached the Negotiating Panel of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) and urged
the resumption of the formal talks in the peace negotiations between the NDFP and the Government of the
Republic of the Philippines (GRP).
On each occasion, the NDFP Negotiating Panel has agreed to the resumption of the formal talks in accordance
with The Hague Joint Declaration and upon the resolution of certain prejudicial questions and the Arroyo regime's
stopping the nationwide extrajudicial killings and abductions of unarmed legal activists.
The NDFP Negotiating Panel has also reiterated the 10-point proposal of the NDFP for a concise agreement for
an immediate just peace, instituting truce while negotiations proceed on social, economic and political reforms
in accordance with The Hague Joint Declaration.
The NDFP has further proposed that the Arroyo regime immediately stop its military and police forces and death
squads from committing extrajudicial killings and abductions and that the independent nominees of the GRP and
NDFP in the Joint Monitory Committee created by the Comprehensive Agreement on Respect for Human Rights
and International Humanitarian Law (CARHRIHL) work with the representatives of the Norwegian government
and the International Red Cross Committee to investigate the extrajudicial killings and abductions.
But the Arroyo regime has refused to heed the appeals of the aforesaid European governments, international
human rights organizations and religious institutions for the resumption of formal talks in the GRP-NDFP peace
negotiations because the regime is intent on pursuing its all-out war policy and its costly but futile campaign
to destroy the armed revolutionary movement in two years' time.
GRP officials have also frankly admitted that the Arroyo regime is pursuing an all-out policy as a matter of political
survival in order to rally the fractious rank and file of its military and police forces and to continue receiving military
and financial assistance from the US government within the framework of the Bush-directed global war of terror.
Special operations teams or death squads of the Arroyo regime continue to escalate their attacks against progressive
party list groups, trade unionists, peasant leaders, women, youth activists, church people, journalists, lawyers and
other people who are legally opposing the Arroyo regime. The special operations teams or death squads are composite
military and police units of the Military Intelligence Group under the direction of the Cabinet Oversight Committee on
Internal Security and the Anti-Terrorism Task Force. ###
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