The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) announced it will celebrate its 52^nd founding anniversary today despite all-out attacks by government troopers.

In a Christmas day statement, CPP public information officer Marco Valbuena said “simple but joyous activities” will be held today in both rural and urban areas throughout the country.

“These activities are going to be held clandestinely to evade suppression by the fascist enemy’s military and police forces,” Valbuena said.

He said the Armed Forces of the Philippines’ (AFP) continue to attack peasant communities even during the Christmas and New Year holiday season.

“The AFP has, so far, failed to detect and prevent the gatherings and assemblies which have already been held in some revolutionary areas… In some villages, the masses and local NPA units were able to mount their gatherings right under the nose of the AFP,” Valbuena added.

He said that more activities will also be held in the coming days.

Last December 16, the CPP Central Committee urged party members to celebrate their 52nd anniversary “with secret meetings and assemblies to mark the event wherever and whenever possible.”

The CPP also did not declare a holiday truce with the government following the December 7 announcement by Rodrigo Duterte that he will never again issue a ceasefire order with the CPP and its forces as long as he is president.

Duterte said, “There will be no ceasefire ever again under my term…For all intents and purposes, that ceasefire is dead. That’s gone. That has been long gone.”

‘Fight against terror and evil’

The CPP said its celebrations this year shall focus on looking back in the past year, taking stock of the current situation and paying tribute to the heroes and martyrs of the Philippine revolution.

The celebrations shall also “affirm the commitment and determination to serve the people and fight to end the reign of terror and evil of the tyrannical US-Duterte regime.”

“Some of these meetings and gatherings double as education seminars to discuss the Party’s views about the current international and national situation,” the party’s statement added.

In the cities, the CPP said its revolutionary forces are also set to hold clandestine gatherings and assemblies among Party members and the revolutionary masses in their communities and homes.

“As in the rural areas, they can employ various creative methods to avoid enemy detection,” it said.

It also reminded its members it is not far-fetched for Duterte’s anti-communist National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Coflict to carry out another clampdown against the legal democratic forces in the government’s desperation to drown the joyous and militant spirit of the Party’s anniversary celebrations. # (Raymund B. Villanueva)