CNL: Peace should be based on justice, not surrender
The National Security Council (NSC) is continuing its verbal attacks against the ongoing dialogues for the possible resumption of formal peace negotiations, but an underground revolutionary organization of Christians is having none of it.
After another tirade from NSC spokesperson Jonathan Malaya, the Christians for National Liberation (CNL) replied that it is the government functionary who is being dishonest and hypocritical in insisting that revolutionary movement abandon armed struggle.
In a statement Wednesday, September 11, the CNL pointed out it was Armed Forces of the Philippines chief of staff Romeo Brawner Jr. himself who vowed that military operations against the New People’s Army (NPA) would continue despite the signing of the Oslo Joint Statement in November last year.
The CNL is an allied organization of the NDFP, composed of the clergy, religious and lay church workers.
“Why is the GRP continuing its counterrevolutionary offensives while the CPP (Communist Party of the Philippines)-NPA-NDF is asked to abandon armed struggle?” the CNL challenged.
The joint statement announced ongoing efforts to revive peace negotiations between the NDFP and the Manila government that has been unilaterally terminated by former GRP President Rodrigo Duterte in 2017.
READ: GRP, NDFP announce possible resumption of peace talks
Malaya said on Tuesday that the Ferdinand Marcos Jr. is “committed to the peace talks… provided that they will give up the arms struggle.”
The NSC assistant director general added that they support the exploratory talks “provided that the CPP-NPA-NDF does not impose their usual preconditions,” referring to the NDFP Negotiating Panel’s assertion on the 1992 GRP-NDFP The Hague Joint Declaration as the framework of the talks.
READ: No talk of surrender in the peace negotiations, NDFP says
Malaya’s NSC boss Eduardo Ano said the Marcos Jr. GRP wants a fresh start in the talks, insisting on the abandonment of previously signed agreements such as respect for human rights and international humanitarian law as well as free land distribution to poor farmers.
READ: Reds tell Marcos officials to quit sabotaging efforts to revive talks
‘Evil intentions’
The CNL said Malaya’s demand that revolutionary forces prove their sincerity “is nothing more than an attempt to hide the GRP’s own evil intentions.”
“The basic assumption of a negotiation is that both parties are treated on equal footing, but Malaya’s statement reveals the opposite,” the CNL said.
“He imposes on the revolutionary movement to lay down its arms while the GRP continues to bomb peasant communities and violate international humanitarian law, all the while attempting to avoid the substantive issues at the heart of the conflict: social injustice, landlessness, widespread joblessness, and the systemic oppression of the poor,” the group fumed.
READ: CPP: If surrender is all Galvez wants, we are not negotiating
The CNL said it refuses to let Malaya’s “blatant lies and double standards” go unchallenged.
“The (NDFP) and the entire revolutionary movement has always been clear: we are ready to negotiate peace, but it must be a just and lasting peace, one that addresses the root causes of poverty, exploitation, and inequality,” CNL said.
“But the GRP, under the mask of ‘peace and reconciliation,’ continues to wage war against the people. Their demands for surrender are not peace negotiations. They are the demands of oppressors looking to crush legitimate resistance and struggle,” it added.
CNL said the GRP should cease its “duplicity and hypocrisy” and to engage in honest, principled peace talks that focus on the fundamental issues that have driven the conflict for decades.
“Only then can we begin to move towards true and lasting peace, based not on surrender, but on justice,” the CNL said. # (Raymund B. Villanueva)
