Towards a Just and Lasting Peace Conference Secretariat
International League of Peoples’ Struggles – Participating Organizations
in Canada
SPEAKERS' PAPERS
WAR AGAINST WARS: THE CAUSE OF JUST PEACE AND OUR STRUGGLES AGAINST WARS OF COUNTER-REVOLUTION AND AGGRESSION
By Elmer Labog, Chairperson, Kilusang Mayo Uno (May First Movement)
A poet from the Philippines once wrote:
“Ang awit ng digma ay awit ng pag-ibig
Walang di nagnais ng buhay na tahimik
Bawat taong nanandata ay taong nagmahal
Buhay ay alay para sa higit na buhay.
The song of war is a song of passion,
Warriors dream only of peace,
We take up arms because we love,
We give our lives for a better life... ”
Consider this. There are six hundred seven (607) victims of extrajudicial killings from January 2001 to May 30th, 2006, seventy five (75) of them for the first half of this year alone. Twenty-five (25) people are missing. Many of these killings occurred in Southern Tagalog, Central Luzon, the Bicol Region, and Southern Mindanao, sites considered to be priority areas of Operation Bantay Laya (OBL), an internal security plan of the government. Under this military campaign, the Armed Forces of the Philippines and its hired goons target the leaders and members of progressive organizations, among them, party list groups such as Bayan Muna, Anakpawis, and Gabriela, and mass organizations such as Bayan, Kilusang Mayo Uno, and Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas.
You may ask: when the killings become weekly, and funerals have become ritual ceremonies for our organizations, why do we persist in our struggle? The answer is simple and yet complex.
We must persist. There is no other way. And yet, the cause of just peace against wars of counter-revolution and aggression, of which I speak to you today, is complex. I have, therefore, divided my talk into three sections: First, I shall expound on the government’s strategy of counter-revolution and aggression as manifested by the extrajudicial killings and other anti-people acts. Second, I shall explain “creeping Martial Law’ and the repressive apparatuses of the state in the context of the “global war on terror.” Third, I shall describe the nature and vision of our struggles in the context of international solidarity movements that collectively work against wars of aggression.
Strategies of Counter-Revolution and Aggression: The Philippine Experience
Three things characterize the Philippine government’s strategy of counter-revolution and aggression. First, unabated, unlawful violence against its perceived “enemies of the state.” Second, a trope of deceit that dates back to the turn of the 20th century. Third, the panic by which fascism operates in Philippine society.
Allow me to speak to you first from my experience as a labor leader and chair of Kilusang Mayo Uno or May First Movement.
When the enemies of the workers fail to prevail through reason, repressive state apparatuses such as the DOLE, the police, and the military, resort to violence. An example is the case of Nestle. Until today, management refuses to recognize the workers’ rights to retirement pay. Another example is the case of Philippine Airlines. Court decisions recognized the CBA moratorium as valid and legal. These examples are not isolated because in other instances, a strike moratorium would be dangled when a crisis escalates.
Disturbingly, these acts of aggression by corporations are bolstered by two institutions: lawmakers serving the interests of big business; and the police and military. At the House of Representatives, the proposed New Labor Code aims to strengthen anti-union and anti-strike provisions in the country’s labor regulations. This is in the wake of a newly enacted law (RA 9178) which exempts small enterprises from having to observe the minimum wage law. This effectively excludes over one-third of all wage and salary workers from the coverage of the minimum wage.
In addition, the proposed Anti-Terrorism Law pending in Congress forbids even legitimate protest actions such as workers’ pickets, strikes and political rallies . Such acts are punishable by lifetime imprisonment or fines of 10 million pesos (or around US$187,000). On 6 August 2005, the President announced that: “We will wage war against criminals, terrorists, drug addicts, kidnappers, smugglers and those who terrorize factories that provide jobs." This is a thinly veiled reference to militant workers. Such statements attempt to delegitimize workers’ concerted actions and intimidate workers into “falling in line” with the repressive policies of big business and the state.
Taking the cue from the President, employers’ groups called for a 10-year strike ban, thus violating workers’ rights guaranteed by the constitution and international conventions. These employers are bolstered by the military, which, under the orders of the Department of Labor and Employment, has been responsible for harassment, brutality, and murder. Among the long list of examples are the following:
1.) Nestle Cabuyao – On June 23-24, 2003, the picketline was violently dispersed. Fifty (50) strikers and supporters were injured; five (5) sustained head wounds. In September 2005, Nestle Union President Diosdado Fortuno was killed.
2.) Sulpicio Lines - On March 12, 2004, the Labor Secretary issued an Assumption of Jurisdiction (AJ) order. On March 15, the strike was attacked by gun-pointing elements of the SWAT (Special Weapons and Tactics Team), PNP and Maritime Industry Authority (MARINA).
3.) TRITRAN - On August 21, 2004, during the strike dispersal at Buendia Avenue, six (6) people sustained gunshot wounds and over fifty (50) drivers, conductors, and workers were injured.
4.) JAC Liner – On October 30, 2002, protestors manning the picket line along Edsa were dispersed, and the workers truncheoned by the Quezon City police. On November 2, fourteen (14) workers were arrested. In Lucena, Quezon, one (1) worker sustained a bullet wound while many were injured.
Of the political killings in the Philippines, twenty (?) are unionists or union supporters – making the Philippines the second most dangerous country for trade unionists, next only to Colombia. Moreover, this unabated, unlawful violence is true not only for trade unions, but all militant organizations perceived to be part of the national democratic movement in the Philippines.
Yet one may ask: what emboldens the state to unleash its regime of terror? Why are the people not outraged over the slaying of these activists?
This brings us to the second characteristic of the government’s strategies – the trope of deceit. Arroyo won the 2004 elections only because she cheated. She also continues to dupe the people into believing that charter change is for the good of the country when in fact, it was designed to enable her to hold on to power. She continually constructs herself as pro-poor and “mother of the country” while staging an all out war against people’s organizations.
Deception has also long characterized Philippine-American relations, as manifested not only in unequal trade agreements, but also in cultural texts. In Jonathan Best’s Philippine Picture Postcards, 1900-1920, for example, we see the following: the construction of almost naked, spear-carrying, polygamous Filipinos as savages; the soldiers depicted as superior (with their height, clothes, and new technology such as phonographs); and consequently, the “white man’s burden” to educate the native population. This tutelage continues today with the Visiting Forces Agreement, with American soldiers teaching Filipinos how to use high powered weapons while Filipinos, still constructed as savages, teaches them jungle survival. Moreover, the United States has brought to the Philippines its red-scare tactics and McCarthyism. By branding people’s organizations and party-list groups as communist fronts, the government hopes to isolate them and render many Filipinos numb from the violence that goes on.
But why resort to killings? The Arroyo government is in a panic, and it is its fear of the people’s strength that leads it to commit acts of terror. These three characteristics of the government’s strategy of aggression – unlawful violence, deceit, and panic -- only strengthen our resolve to fight for our just cause.
Creeping Martial Law And The Global War on Terror
On February 24, 2006, President Arroyo issued Proclamation 1017 and declared a state of national emergency. This gave her the license to jail Anakpawis representative Crispin Beltran, drive five (5) other party-list representatives (Satur Ocampo, Teddy Casino, Joel Virador, Rafael Mariano and Liza Masa) to seek protective custody from the House of Representatives, and to declare protest actions illegal and unlawful. While the administration constantly cries “Wolf” to its perceived alliance between the military and the left, it continues its crackdown of its enemies, the latest being the illegal arrest and torture of Estrada supporters.
Meanwhile, it devotes all its energies into charter change. No less than Vicente Paterno, former cabinet member and esteemed economist has said that the proposed charter change has provisions eerily reminiscent of Marcos’s sweeping powers as president. First, the President will have the power to appoint the members of the interim parliament from at least one third of the cabinet and another thirty experts from various fields. Second, the Prime minister is merely a cabinet member under the President. Third, the interim parliament gives the president all the powes vested in the Head of State and the Head of Government of the Constitution.
It is by constructing its enemies as “terrorists” that the Arroyo government uses the discourse of U.S. imperialism and war, at the same time that it offers its services as a U.S. satellite in Asia. This “romance” between the U.S. and Philippine governments – and Presidents Bush and Arroyo have turned out to be a “nightmarish” romance for the Filipino people.
This brings me to the third and last section of my paper: the people’s response in the context of international solidarity movements.
Our Struggles in the Context of International Solidarity Movements
We have employed a variety of strategies. To fight for workers’ rights and wage increases, we have lobbied in Congress and sought the assistance of the partylist group Anakpawis as well as other pro-worker Representatives; we held a National Wage Summit in March 2005; staged demonstrations in front of the Department of Labor and Employment and the office of the President; and initiated researches and information campaigns the Ecumenical Institute of Labor Education and Research (EILER) and our radio program Buhay Manggagawa (Workers’ Lives). We are also relentless in our mass actions against creeping Martial law, state terrorism, and charter change.
Proving that our struggles can also be creative, we have used folk traditions such as the santacruzan or May Flower festival where the privileged members of the community (in this case the governor and her daughter) parade while honoring the Virgin Mary. Transformed by the Workers’ Partylist group, women wore placards calling for a two-dollar wage increase. They also held up satirical pictures of Gloria Arroyo and slogans such as “No to US Intervention!” and “Globalization, A Curse to the People!” In spite and because of our grief caused by the extrajudicial killings, we have paraded mock coffins in the streets and performed songs and dances to honor our dead and reaffirm our belief in the struggle. We have published books of poetry and staged concerts and musicals on human rights.
The KMU believes in the internationalization of the struggles against imperialism. Concretely, we manifest such struggles through mobilizations and being part of organizations such as the RESIST Imperialist Plunder and War (RESIST) and the International League of Peoples’ Struggle (ILPS).
` Alongside our efforts to arouse, organize, and mobilize the workers is the need to utilize technology to our advantage. The 1990’s saw the advent of linking arms in solidarity via electronic mail or hypertext transfer protocols and other form of exchanges such as cellphone text messaging. The triumph of anti-WTO solidarity demonstrations in 1999 and 2005, the anti-US led Iraq invasion demonstrations in the United States, France and other countries in 2003-2004, and even the “People Power II” that led to the ouster of Philippine President Estrada in 2001 is a testament to the power of this technology. We need to harness and utilize such methods of communication and worldwide networking to stay connected and march in unison to the beat of our struggle against Imperialism.
Moreover. we join the rest of the world’s working class movement in pushing forward the march of science, industry and technology to a genuine borderless world where the entire population benefits from the fruits of science and industry. Solidarity in the struggle of workers around the world is a must; theirs is the core of the anti-globalization and anti-imperialist struggle. No less than an international working-class led struggle could achieve victory against globalization and the wars of counter-revolution and aggression!
“...Our executioners are slaves of fear.
The blood that does not run cold
Is the blood of the righteous.
Linking arms,
In the picketlines and the streets,
In all our fields of battle,
We stand,
Demanding dignity,
Claiming our rights.
We stand on leveled ground.
Slay the people, and ask not why the people revolt.”