By Prof. Jose Maria Sison
NDFP Chief Political Consultant
March 8, 2018
Duterte is engaged in a wild anti-communist witchhunt under the guise of anti-terrorism. An immediate look at his list of ¨terrorists¨ will show that he is running amok in slandering people as ¨terrorists¨. There are also hundreds of John Does in the list just to intimidate a limitless number of people.
The list and the false accusations are related to the scheme of Duterte to engage in the mass murder of patriots and progressives in the country, to silence all his critics and opposition to his cruel and corrupt regime and in order to realize completely his fascist dictatorship through martial rule and the railroading of a pseudo-federal constitution. Duterte is truly the No. 1 terrorist in the Philippines.
According to sources, I am in the list. There is no basis for the charge of terrorism. Duterte and his minions are stupid and pretend to be ignorant that I have won legal cases for the removal of my name from the EU list of terrorists and for the dismissal of murder charges fabricated against me by the Arroyo regime and fed by this regime to the Dutch government.
The revolutionary movement is absolutely correct in taking as forewarning the Duterte brand of propaganda and slaughter methods used in Oplan Tokhang as early as December 2016 after he clearly backed out of his pledge to amnesty and release all political prisoners and the AFP, PNP and paramilitary forces repeatedly violated the prolonged ceasefire from late August 2016 to early February 2017.
It is often claimed that 40,000 lives have been lost in the civil war from 1969 to the present. The overwhelming majority of these lives were lost not in the course of battles but in the course of reprisals for NPA victories in battle as well as unilateral actions of repression against communities by the AFP, PNP and paramilitary forces.
In less than two years of his tyranny, Duterte has been responsible for the mass murder of 20,000 people in his war on drugs. He is hell-bent on using the AFP, PNP and the paramilitary forces to murder a far greater number of people under the pretext of anti-terrorism. This horrific scheme coincides with soaring prices of basic commodities and services, rising unemployment, lower incomes and diminution of social services in favor of higher expenditures for the military and police.
The broad united front of patriotic forces and the broad masses of the people must wage all forms of struggle to accelerate the downfall of the Duterte regime which acts as a puppet of US imperialism under Operation Pacific Eagle-Philippines but which also double-deals with China for corrupt reasons related to overpriced infrastructure projects and high interest loans.
Even the US intelligence agencies now regard Duterte as a threat to democracy and human rights, despite his duplicitous and despicable efforts to keep the over-all US hegemony in the Philippines and serve additional foreign masters. As far as the Filipino nation is concerned, the Duterte regime is a murderous and greedy scourge that must be eradicated.###