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Appeal - Extend international solidarity to Filipino left
February 2005
All sections of the independent, progressive and revolutionary left are today under military threat from the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and its armed wing, the NPA. Faced with a situation that has grown more and more serious over the last few years, an important international solidarity movement emerged in January 2005 at the 5th World Social Forum.
The Fourth International calls for this campaign to be extended further. We cannot remain passive when the lives of countless militants are in danger, the future of the popular forces in the Philippines is at risk, and the very principles that underlie our common struggle are at stake.
Several dozen activists have already been killed; hundreds more know they may at any moment become the targets of the NPA. All the main progressive and revolutionary parties not controlled by the CPP have already been affected (including the RPM-M, the Revolutionary Workers Party of Mindanao, Philippine section of our International) or are now specifically threatened.
Leading activists in the mass organisations, especially peasant organisations, have been assassinated. Leading personalities in the fight against capitalist globalization, for the cancellation of the third-world debt, and in the anti-war movement, have been singled out as “counter-revolutionaries” and “imperialist agents”.
The experience of recent years shows that such accusations can be followed swiftly by the condemnation of such people by kangaroo courts, “people’s courts” on the orders of the PCP’s leadership.
With this assassination policy against left activists, the Communist Party of the Philippines is creating a favourable situation for the provocations and manoeuvres of agents of the Philippine army and police.
It divides and paralyses the popular forces, making it more difficult for them to carry on their struggles. It profoundly discredits the revolutionary project and socialist alternative for which we are fighting. It therefore plays into the hands of imperialism and the right.
The CPP cannot tolerate the development of a pluralist popular movement and political left in the Philippines. It seeks to impose, by force of arms if necessary, its own monopoly. Everything possible must be done, internationally, to support and protect this pluralist left, and to assert its right to exist. Our responsibility is clear.
The CPP is violating one of the most basic principles of our fight for another world, for a socialist world based on solidarity, equality and freedom. Violence within the workers’ and popular movement cannot be tolerated. We cannot accept that a party calling itself revolutionary should turn its armed forces against progressive activist organisations. This is totally contrary to everything we stand for.
2 March 2005
International Committee of the Fourth International
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