British Columbia Committee for Human Rights in the Philippines
Paper for “What is a just and lasting peace?” community forum organized by ILPS participating organizations in Vancouver
19 October 2005

On behalf of the British Columbia Committee for Human Rights in the Philippines, I would like to thank the Vancouver-based participating organizations of the International League of Peoples’ Struggle for deciding to put together this forum and inviting our organization to speak on the question of a just and lasting peace in the Philippines.

The people’s agenda of a just and lasting peace is increasingly becoming an important question as U.S. imperialism steps up its wars of aggression and peddles ideas of peace being one of surrender to capitalist ideals and U.S. hegemony.

In stark contrast to U.S. imperialism’s picture of peace, the Filipino people’s understanding of genuine peace is a peace based on justice (in all fields, i.e. economic, political, social, cultural) and a peace wherein the majority of the Filipino people can contribute to help in the building of a free and liberated country and people.

Indeed, it can be said that the Filipino people’s struggle for a just and lasting peace was first waged almost 500 years ago when Spain took the Philippines as its colony. After 300 years of Spanish colonial rule, the Filipino people were able to rid themselves of their Spanish rulers in the 1896 Philippine Revolution. This victory was short-lived though with the invasion of the U.S. at the turn of the century. Since this time, the Filipino people have never abandoned their aspirations for a free and independent Philippines.

In more recent times, the Filipino people’s struggle for a just and lasting peace has become more defined in the last 30 years with the re-establishment of the Communist Party of the Philippines in 1969. Since the Communist Party of the Philippines set out its program for a national democratic revolution and established the New People’s Army, the Philippines has been in a state of civil war.

On one side, you have the revolutionary forces and masses of the Communist Party of the Philippines, New People’s Army, and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) engaged in waging a national democratic revolution. All three organizations act as distinct weapons in the Filipino people’s struggle for national and social liberation. The Communist Party of the Philippines leads the national democratic revolution and cultivates the alliance between workers and peasants. The New People’s Army is the main instrument for fighting and overthrowing the U.S.-dominated ruling system. The NDFP coordinates all progressive classes, sectors and forces in the Filipino people's struggle to end the political rule of US imperialism and its local allies in the Philippines, and attain genuine national liberation and democracy through revolutionary armed struggle.

On the other side, you have the Government of the Republic of the Philippines who has in the past century represented the ruling class in the Philippines and whose interest lies in maintaining and reaping the benefits of the current political and economic crises of the country.

Out of this civil war, the Filipino people’s definition of a just and lasting peace has been sharpened by their practice of waging revolution and in the peace process started in 1992 with negotiations between the NDFP and the GRP.

In order to gain a better understanding of the Filipino people’s struggle for a just and lasting peace, we first must understand the roots of the 30-year civil war which lie in the semi-feudal and semi-colonial nature of Philippine society.

Economic realities

The Philippine economy is in constant crisis. It is a semi-feudal country. Feudalism was first introduced to the Philippines on a large scale by Spain who set up a system of landlords who owned large tracts of land on which peasants tilled. This highly exploitative and oppressive social system was tweaked by U.S. imperialism and colonial rule at the turn of the 20th century to suit the U.S. imperialist needs for a colonial country from which it can extract resources.

Now, the Philippine economy is underdeveloped, basically agrarian and backward. Agrarian, because the majority of the Filipino people are peasants who toil the land of their landlords. Land ownership is heavily concentrated with less than 1/3 of landowners owning more than 80 percent of all agricultural land. Backward, because, despite possessing rich natural resources, there is little industrial development in the Philippines. For example, after extraction, most of the country’s minerals do not go beyond the primary state of processing and are exported as raw materials. Underdeveloped, because the Philippines offers the world capitalist system a place from which it can extract cheap natural resources and exploit cheap labour.

It is precisely because of this chronic economic crisis and forced underdevelopment that the number of Filipinos in Canada has grown drastically in the past 30 years. With little opportunities for livelihood and a government bent on extracting foreign dollars from migrant workers, millions of Filipinos must go abroad to work and live in order to send money back home to their families.

Under this economic system, the majority of the people suffer. In the provinces and villages, there is widespread landlessness and poverty. In the cities, there is rampant unemployment and for those that do have work, wages are way too low to sustain families. The people do not have a decent livelihood and receive no social services to help them survive.

Political Realities

Not surprisingly, the Filipino government does little to change this situation. Its members come from large land-owning and business class families and are thus, interested in maintaining the status quo in the country. While the country maintains its semi-feudal character, the ruling system is semi-colonial.

The U.S. granted the Philippines nominal independence in 1945, formally ending four decades of direct colonial rule over the archipelago and ushering in a new era of semi-colonial rule wherein the U.S. still exercises strategic control over the Philippines in the economic, political, financial, security and other fields.

This semi-colonial relationship is undeniable when one looks at the lack of hesitation on the part of the U.S. to violate the territorial integrity and constitution of the Philippines by sending in U.S. troops in its ‘so-called borderless war on terror’. After September 11th 2001, the U.S. declared the Philippines the second front in its ‘war on terror’. Presently, there are 5,000 U.S. troops in the country supposedly for the purposes of training the Philippine military in combating terrorism.

Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has been all-too complicit in catering to the U.S.’ needs and interests in the Philippines. Arroyo is currently in the political struggle of her life. She is clinging on to her ill-gotten presidency replete with corruption, anti-people policies and harsh human rights violations and state repression parallel to and even worse than that of former dictator Ferdinand Marcos. Arroyo has earned the people’s ire and they are organizing across all sectors of the population to bring about her ouster.

In reaction, the Arroyo regime has become even more servile to the US and more ruthless in the face of the people’s developing broad united front. There is a trend towards an unbridled rule of open terror, without any proclamation of martial law.

Arroyo has launched her own version of Bush’s war on terror, declaring open season on any critics of her administration from legal mass leaders and organizations to the revolutionary forces with who the Government of the Republic of the Philippines is in peace negotiations with.

The Need for a Just and Lasting Peace in the Philippines

The need for a just and lasting peace is evident. In a country with widespread landlessness and virtually no industrial development for the people, the revolutionary movement in the Philippines puts forward that the requirement for a just and lasting is a genuine land reform and national industrialization. Genuine land reform because this would answer the democratic demand of the majority of the people who are mainly peasants; and national industrialization because this would spearhead the development of an industrial and self-reliant economy under the leadership of the Filipino working class.

Revolutionary forces in the Philippines have been engaged in this struggle primarily through armed struggle and the development of bases of political power.
The revolutionary movement also encourages the proliferation of progressive national democratic legal organizations to arouse, organize and mobilize the broad masses of the Filipino people in the struggle for a just and lasting peace. In a third arena, revolutionary forces, through the NDFP, are presently engaged in diplomatic channels through peace negotiations with the Government of the Republic of the Philippines.

The NDFP considers the GRP-NDFP peace negotiations worthwhile and useful only if these can become the way for asserting the national sovereignty and empowering the workers and peasants who comprise ninety per cent of the Filipino people.

Since 1992 the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP) and NDFP have forged 12 agreements. The preliminary stage of 1992-1995 yielded serious agreements that paved the way for the stage of formal talks from 1995 to the present.

The Hague Joint Declaration was mutually approved by the GRP and NDFP negotiating panels in 1992. It proclaims the need for peace negotiations in order to address the roots of the armed conflict and arrive at reforms for laying the stable foundation for a just and lasting peace.

It declares the mutually acceptable principles of national sovereignty, democracy and social justice as the guiding principles for the negotiations. It sets the substantive agenda, to include respect for human rights and international humanitarian law, social and economic reforms, political and constitutional reforms. Unlike other peace negotiations, the final comprehensive agreement would deal with the end of hostilities and disposition of forces.

Despite these steps forward, the peace negotiations are currently in peril.

As identified by the NDFP’s peace negotiating panel’s chief political consultant, Professor Jose Maria Sison, there are now two major obstacles blocking the resumption of the GRP-NDFP peace negotiations:

1. The "terrorist" listing. The GRP agreed with the US government in November 2001 to put the CPP/NPA and the NDFP chief political consultant, Prof. Sison, on the “terrorist” list in a bid to pressure the NDFP to capitulate by signing the so-called final peace agreement. It is a malicious act, which seeks to blackmail and pressure the NDFP to capitulate. Also, the ‘terrorist’ listing violates a previous agreements signed by the two parties including the principles of national sovereignty and non-capitulation and safety and immunities for all those involved in peace negotiations.

Worst of all, it has repeatedly dueted with the US on the line that the NDFP must capitulate in order to have the names of revolutionary forces removed from the list.

2. The demand for capitulation. The GRP has been trying to push for the NDFP to capitulate and give up its struggle by both pressuring the NDFP into a ceasefire and trying to fast-track the negotiations into a so-called final peace agreement without dealing with addressing the root causes of the armed conflict through the negotiations on social, economic and political reforms.

The NDFP has repeated its position that as soon as the GRP complies with previous agreements, it is prepared to discuss the resumption of formal meetings of the negotiating panels.

Despite this Arroyo’s administration refusal to take seriously the building of a just and lasting peace in the Philippines, the people’s struggle to achieve a just and lasting peace continues.

Instead of being demoralized by Arroyo’s refusal to pursue peace, the people recognize that this is part of her desperate attempt to remain in power by taking a strong-handed approach in trying to force the NDFP’s capitulation.

The Need for Solidarity

Given the current situation in the Philippines and the country’s strategic role in U.S. imperialist designs, the need to build genuine solidarity with the Filipino people’s struggle for a just and lasting peace is extremely important.

The community of overseas Filipinos in Canada recognizes this importance. Right now, the community is participating in the Filipino people’s struggle to oust the corrupt, fascist and illegitimate President Arroyo. They have also been active in educating, organizing and mobilizing overseas Filipinos in Canada around issues that impact their daily lives like immigration, racism, and occupational segregation as a means of contributing to the Filipino people’s struggle for national democracy.

Progressive and peace-loving Canadians can also play an important role in supporting the Filipino people’s struggle for a just and lasting peace. As part of BCCHRP’s campaigns to be in solidarity with the Filipino people, we are calling on the Canadian government to suspend its normal relations with the Philippine government as the current Arroyo regime has proven to be anti-people and outright fascist. We are also urging the Canadian government to take an active and positive role in helping to call the GRP back to the negotiating table with the NDFP and removing Professor Jose Maria Sison form its list of “foreign terrorists”.

The Filipino people’s struggle for a just and lasting peace will certainly be tested in the near future with the intensifying political and economic crisis in the Philippines and the world. However, we have a reason to be truly optimistic about the proven ability of the Filipino people to relentless fight for their national and social liberation.

As the crisis of U.S. imperialism worsens and lashes out more violently, more and more people the world over are engaging in militant struggles. In these militant struggles we can be assured we can find common ground and unity from which we can forge and forward the people’s perspective of a just and lasting peace.