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‘Address roots of armed conflict,’ revolutionary Christians tell security council

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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 this 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)





































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.“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.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. 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.‘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.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 this 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)

CNL hails canonization of Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero

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An underground revolutionary organization of church people and workers hailed the canonization of a Salvadoran Archbishop known in his lifetime as a staunch human rights defender and for which he was martyred.

The Christians for National Liberation (CNL), an allied organization of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines, in a statement expressed its “heartfelt jubilation” on the canonization of Archbishop Oscar Romero to the Vatican’s roster of Saints.

Romero was canonized by Pope Francis in the Vatican last October 14 as the first Salvadoran Saint. He was gunned down during Mass in a hospital chapel on March 24, 1980, a day after telling the Salvadoran Army that “They are killing our own people.”

“No soldier is obliged to obey an order that is contrary to the will of God. One must not love oneself so much as to avoid getting involved in the risks of life that history demands of us. And those who fend off danger will lose their lives,” Romero also said on the eve of his martyrdom.

Romero was outspoken during his country’s bloody civil war in the 1980’s, and also against the role the United States played in his country’s tumultuous history.

In a letter he sent to US President Jimmy Carter in February of 1980, he urged the US not to send military aid to El Salvador.

“You call yourdelf Christian. If you are really Christian, please stop sending military aid to the military here,” Romero told Carter.

The CNL drew parallelism with Romero’s struggle for human rights in El Salvador with the Philippine militant church peoples’ struggle for social transformation, for which many are also killed and persecuted.

“CNL through the years, and up to the present, has a long list of martyrs, of church people killed, tortured, detained and harassed while serving the poor,” the group said.

“CNL members have participated in different forms of struggle, including the armed struggle, and devoted and gave up their lives for the revolution,” the group added.

CNL said that in the hearts of the ordinary Filipino faithful, their martyrs are saints just like St. Oscar Romero, as they offer their lives for the basic masses.

CNL said the sacrifice of their martyrs and members is the meaning of holiness in a world of injustice and oppression, as it challenged church people to work for the hoped “new heaven and new earth” by being one with the poor, deprived, oppressed and exploited. # (Raymund B. Villanueva)

EASTER HOMILY

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By Jason Montana

 

Open your eyes to the power of the people and the

arms they bear

Of sacrament and gun and a story living in their

hearts.

How different is the violence of the ruling classes and

their foreign masters

In their social system of exploitation and oppression!

The people’s war is violence of symbol and war:

Of seed sprouting from crushing rock and earth;

Of sun pushing out a sky full of dead stars;

Of mother and child struggling against the darkness of

wombs.

It is of Yahweh confirming the nothingness of evil and

death

When he stunned the precision and finality of his

sunrises,

And his mighty wind raised the Son of Man from the

dead.

Rehearsals of revolution are these deeds of sun and seed

and human birth,

And of Jesus glorious from the tomb, above all.

A great story is told, of driving force, and the people

rise!

——–

The poet wrote this piece as a member of the New People’s Army. Prior to joining the NPA, Fr. Paco Albano was a Benedictine priest who co-founded the underground Christians for National Liberation (CNL) that organized church peoples against Ferdinand Marcos’s tyrannical Martial Law and to wage the National Democratic Revolution. After many years in the underground, he resumed his priestly duties and died a priest of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Ilagan (Isabela Province) until his death earlier this month.

 “EASTER HOMILY” is part of the poet’s book “Clearing: Poems of People’s Struggles in Northern Luzon” published by the Artista at Manunulat ng Sambayanan, CNL, and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines in 1987.