From their Newsletter ‘UPDATE’
No. 06 – March 31, 2024
The broad masses of Filipinos rejoice the 55th anniversary of the New People’s Army (NPA) as the beacon of hope for national liberation and democracy. The chronic crisis of the semi-colonial and semi-feudal society underscores the necessity and sustainability of armed struggle.
Over the past 55 years, the NPA has overcome the greatest difficulties and obstacles in waging people’s war in the Philippines as an archipelagic country. It has succeeded in self-reliantly developing guerrilla warfare on a nationwide scale despite the disadvantage of having no physical rear. Guerilla fronts and consolidated rural bases with fairly strong units of the NPA were established in all the major islands of the country. These guerilla fronts have served as theatres for NPA units to wage guerrilla warfare. They create guerrilla zones and bases first in the less-populated mountainous terrain, where they could consolidate, train and plan to expand to the better-populated plains, riverine, main lines of transportation and coastal areas.
Starting with only 60 Red fighters armed with only nine automatic rifles and 26 inferior firearms in the second district of Tarlac province, the CPP (Communist Party of the Philippines) has succeeded in developing NPA forces from squads and platoons to company-strength guerrilla forces. It created 14 regional commands of the NPA, each having reached a peak strength of a few hundred to more or less a thousand Red fighters, and each having a number of sub regional or provincial commands with several guerrilla fronts.
The New People’s Army has successfully frustrated the yearly declared targets of the enemy to crush the revolutionary armed movement. It surmounted the successive campaigns of encirclement and suppression and have, by and large, emerged stronger. The Party leadership estimated that the people’s war reached the middle phase of the strategic defensive in and around the middle of the 2000s, and made plans to fulfill the requirements to reach the advanced phase, and onto the threshold of the strategic stalemate.
Red political power were established across thousands of villages across the country. The Party has built the rudimentary forms of the people’s democratic government at the barrio or inter-barrio level, with officers elected in village assemblies or selected from local revolutionary mass organizations.
The US-Marcos regime is the current concentrated expression of the Filipino people’s oppressor. It represents the moribund ruling system and the worst facets of the ruling exploiting classes. Its neoliberal economic policies, outright subservience to US geopolitical interests, corruption, high-style living, and fascist suppression of democratic rights are causing even greater suffering on the Filipino people and rousing them to fight for national democracy with even greater tenacity.
The Philippine national democratic revolution has had the distinction of having advanced with great strides and waging armed struggle in the current era of international retreat of the world proletariat. With the defeat of the socialist revolution and capitalist restoration in China and the Soviet Union under modern revisionist rule, the Filipino people had to wage and self-reliantly develop revolutionary armed struggle.
The situation of rising inter-imperialist rivalries is rousing the Filipino people to defend the country’s freedom and demand the imperialist giants – both the US and China – to end their saber-rattling and withdraw their troops from the country’s territory. So far, the anti-imperialist revolutionary armed struggle of the Filipino people is the biggest factor preventing an inter-imperialist war from erupting in the region. To the US imperialists, the NPA is a critical impediment that prevents it from fully using the country as springboard for aggresion and using the AFP as pawn in its scheme of stoking military tensions in the South China Sea and dragging the country into a conflict with China in line with its geopolitical interests.
A units mount series of successful tactical offensives
PUBLISHED: 02 APRIL 2024
The New People’s Army (NPA) recently mounted a series of tactical offensives in different Philippine provinces. Red fighters of NPA-Quezon under the Apolonio Mendoza Command ambushed a 30-strong unit of the 85th IB in Doña Aurora, Calauag, Quezon, last 25 March. This is just a few days before the latest “deadline” (the end of March 2024), declared by the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) to defeat the units of the NPA in all the guerilla fronts.
Ka Cleo del Mundo, spokesperson of the NPA-Quezon, said the Red fighters blew up a command detonated explosive at the 85th IB, injuring three fascist soldiers, in the 10-minute battle. The NPA unit is safe.
Ka Cleo added, “The military action of the NPA is proof that the aim of Gen. Romeo Brawner of the AFP and its commander in chief Marcos to destroy the revolutionary movement is a pipe dream.”
It can be recalled that Quezon was also declared by the AFP as “insurgency-free” in June 2023. To stand by their lie and cover up their failure, the 85th IB now falsely claims the attacking Red fighters were from Bicol.
In Rodriguez, Rizal, the NPA-Rizal ambushed troopers of the AFP’s 80th IB on January 31. Apart from serving as guards of the Wawa-Violago dam project being built, the AFP unit also protects the interests of the ruling big land grabbers like the Aranetas, Villars and Robles.
The 80th IB is involved in multiple human rights violations including the illegal detention of indigenous people and peasants defending their right to livelihood. Since January 31, the 80th IB intensified and tightened surveillance on the residents’ entry and exit in the community. Soldiers set up checkpoints and went door-to-door intimidating residents and subjecting them to illegal interrogations.
In Prosperidad, Agusan del Sur, the NPA-Agusan del Sur mounted a harassment operation against the 3rd Special Forces Battalion of the AFP on 19 January.
According to the NPA-Agusan del Sur, the armed action is a response to the AFP’s relentless focused military operation that covers the mountains bordering Agusan del Sur and Surigao del Sur. It added that military operations have disrupted the livelihood of the indigenous people and peasant masses since 2022. Clusters of communities are militarized by the AFP to allow and protect large logging and mining companies in the Caraga region.
In Baleno, Masbate, a unit of the NPA-Masbate hit the 96th IB on January 13. According to Ka Luz del Mar, spokesperson of NPA-Mabaste, the armed offensive is part of their efforts to obtain justice for the victims of military abuses and defend the people against the ongoing military rule in the province. These include the 24 victims of political killings in Masbate under the US-Marcos regime. Residents are also very indignant at the persistent encampment of counter-insurgency units of the AFP and the Philippine National Police in the town.
Photo Courtesy: https://redherald.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/martiallawUSembassy.jpg
