Message of Solidarity to Gabriela and the 9th Women's International Solidarity Affair
By Prof. Jose Maria Sison
General Consultant
International League of People’s Struggle
August 18, 2004

I wish to express my solidarity to all participants in the 9^th Women’s International Solidarity Affair. I share with you your joy in coming together as well as your seriousness in deliberating and deciding matters, with your theme as the beacon.

It is of urgent importance for the WISAP and Gabriela to call upon all women to resist the attacks perpetrated by the US imperialists and their allies against their persons, their families and their nations and to advance various forms of struggle against imperialist war, terrorism and plunder.

The crisis of the world capitalist system is daily worsening. It unleashes the most terrible forms of exploitation and oppression against the people, especially the women and children. As a result of the utter bankruptcy of neoliberal globalization, the imperialist powers are imposing on the world the worst forms of terrorism, such as fascist repression and wars of aggression.

Coming from various countries, from North to South, you have a wide pool of knowledge and experience in struggle, which you can share for the purpose of generating initiatives for arousing, organizing and mobilizing the women and the entire people in struggles of varying scale (local, national, regional and global) against the long-running scourge of imperialism and all reaction.

I am confident that your current affair will bear abundant fruit. In this connection, may I express the hope that your success here would increase the participation of women in the International League of People’s Struggle (ILPS) and enrich the deliberations and resolutions on women’s and other issues in the Second International Assembly of ILPS in November.

May I now congratulate Gabriela for hosting the 9^th WISAP and for twenty years of hard work and struggle. Building an alliance of more than 200 women’s organizations is a great success. You have paved the way for an anti-imperialist and democratic alliance of women unprecedented in Philippine history for resoluteness and militancy.

You have a strong foundation for confronting bigger problems posed by US imperialism and its allies, for assuming greater responsibilities and carrying out more difficult tasks. You have no choice but to respond to ever-greater challenges. As the imperialists and the local reactionaries grow more greedy and violent, you must stand up and fight on your own as women and with the rest of the people.

We note that the US imperialists and their British and Dutch sidekicks are the most closely intertwined and engaged in imperialist plunder and war, involving the sources of oil and supply routes. They were behind the massacre of more than one million Indonesians in 1965 for the benefit of their oil monopoly firms. Currently, they are the closest allies in the recent oil-related wars in the Middle East, Central Asia and the former Yugoslavia.

In the Philippines, they are also the principal gangmates in exploiting the oil and gas resources of Malampaya and Camago. In this connection, they are whipping up the fear of so-called Islamic fundamentalist terrorism in oil-rich Southeast Asia. In the USD 4.5 billion Malampaya project, the US monopoly firms Texaco and Chevron own 45 per cent and the Dutch and British monopoly interests in Royal Dutch Shell own another 45 per cent. Kellogg, Root and Brown of US Vice President Cheney’s Halliburton has a huge part of the engineering contract.

In utter subservience to the imperialists, the Macapagal-Arroyo regime, under the guise of barring the provincial government of Palawan from getting a share of the token tax, has in effect declared treasonously that the Malampaya oil and gas fields are outside of Philippine territory. It has sold off 49% of the measly 10 per cent interest of the Philippine National Oil Co. in the project and is further selling off the remainder to foreign share buyers through the ING Bank. The imperialists are now able to dictate anything to the puppet government because of its bankruptcy and extreme indebtedness.

Given the facts that I have just mentioned, you can understand why the US, British and Dutch imperialists collaborate in tagging the revolutionary forces and the NDFP chief political consultant as "terrorists" and trying to pressure the National Democratic Front of the Philippines to capitulate or else suffer worse imperialist violence now being prepared by frequent and growing US military intervention. The military exercises and other acts of US military intervention are preparing the ground for the open establishment of US military bases in connection with the interests of the US oil and weapons monopolies.

Let me express firmest solidarity with Gabriela and all other patriotic forces and organizations in the Philippines in their endeavor to generate a powerful mass movement for realizing national freedom and democracy, for upholding economic sovereignty and protecting the national patrimony and ending imperialist plunder in the Philippines. I urge you to work for a mass movement to reclaim and nationalize the natural and social wealth being plundered by the foreign monopolies.

I hope that the Gabriela and all the delegations in WISAP from abroad will be able to share their respective experiences, strengths, ideas and proposed common actions. I wish you the utmost success in reaffirming the resolve of women to end the war, terrorism and plunder being carried out by US imperialists and their allies and in clarifying the ways by which the women and the rest of humanity can take effective action for national independence, democracy, social justice and all-round progress.###