[Reporting on the recently-announced negotiations and agreement between the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and the Philippine government, this article from Ang Bayan (organ of the Communist Party of the Philippines) traces the CPP’s view of the agreement, its dangers, and the CPP’s relationship with the Moro Independence movement. — Frontlines ed.]
Editorial, Ang Bayan
October 21, 2012
The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and the national-democratic revolutionary forces are among the most ardent advocates of the Moro people’s struggle for their right to national self-determination.
The Program for a People’s Democratic Revolution supports the struggle of national minorities against chauvinism and oppression and recognizes their aspirations for autonomy and their right to secede from the ruling oppressive state. This support is also unequivocally contained in the 12-Point Program of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP).
The struggle of the Filipino and Moro peoples are tightly intertwined. Both of them resist the same reactionary state that oppresses and exploits the toiling masses. As an instrument of US imperialism, the Philippine puppet reactionary state tramples on the rights of the Filipino people to national liberation in allowing American and foreign big companies to exploit the Filipino nation’s natural resources. It further allows the US military to interfere, dominate and freely operate in the country and make use of the Philippines as a platform for its power-projection and interventionism in other countries.
In recent decades, this same reactionary state, from the Marcos to the current Aquino regime, has gravely abused the Moro people’s political, economic and cultural rights. Fascist troops of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and the Philippine National Police (PNP) occupy the ancestral land and political territory of the Moro nation in an effort to impose the constitution and political power of the reactionary state upon the Moro people.
The violent suppression of the Moro people has sparked their armed resistance throughout history. They largely succeeded in resisting over three centuries of Spanish colonialism. Their aspiration for self-determination was, however, more effectively suppressed with the supplanting of the Spanish colonialists by the new US colonial power. Using its bigger, more economically and technologically advanced capability, US imperialism, and later, its puppet reactionary state were later able to completely dominate the Moro homeland.
It was only through persistent revolutionary armed struggle since the 1970s that the Moro people were able to defend themselves, gain recognition for their struggle for self-determination and provide it a more national form. The Maguindanao, Maranao, Tausog, Samal, Yakan and other Moro groups united under the banner of armed struggle. Since the start of their national armed revolution, the revolutionary movement has been one with the Moro people in advancing their struggle for their right to national self-determination. Continue reading
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