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Comrade Ruben assassinated by the army in Mindanao (Philippines)!

Tuesday 7 March 2017, by Fourth International

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Statement issued by the Bureau of the Fourth International, 7 March 2017.

On March 4, 2017, Comrade Ruben was killed by the army in the province of Lanao del Norte, Mindanao, Philippines.

This was clearly an assassination. Ruben was certainly wanted for his involvement in the People’s Revolutionary Army (RPA) and the People’s Revolutionary Party - Mindanao (RPM-M), the Philippine section of the Fourth International. But he was visiting friends and family. He was not wearing any weapons. He could easily have been arrested, he was executed.

It was not the police (who were also present), but a heavily equipped governmental infantry battalion that led the operation in Kapatagan. Ruben is the only one to have been killed, victim of numerous shots.

Ruben was a member of the Communist Party of the Philippines and the New People’s Army (CPP-NPA), before breaking in 1994 and participating in the founding process of the RPM-M / RPA. A political and military cadre, he made many enemies among local landowners for his activities against drug trafficking; against the purchase of votes by local politicians during the elections; against gangs and henchmen in the service of despotic landowners, whom he disarmed; and for the defense of the peasants and the rural poor ...

The popularity of the RPM-M / RPA in north-west Mindanao dates back to the early 1980s (under the then Communist Party, Maoist). After the split in 1994, the new organization consistently adopted a defensive politico-military posture. It stopped all offensive operations against the army and promptly initiated peace talks, under the Arroyo administration (2001-2010).

The current President Duterte undertook to relaunch the peace processes in the Philippines and, in particular, in Mindanao. The attack by the police and the army, the assassination of Ruben is in contradiction with this commitment. This is in fact a violation of the peace talks previously initiated with the RMP-M / RPA.

We share the grief of Ruben’s comrades and we send them our deepest solidarity.

We call for international solidarity to ensure that all progressive and revolutionary forces in the Philippines are supported, as extra-judicial killings have already caused so many victims.

March 7, 2017

The Bureau of the Fourth International