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Maoist Internationalist Movement

MIM Notes 169 SEPTEMBER 1, 1998
NO U.$. MILITARY INTERVENTION IN THE PHILIPPINES!

The united $tates and the puppet government of the Philippines have renewed their campaign to overturn the victory the Filipino people won on September 16, 1991, when they pressured the Philippine Senate to reject the treaty which would renew u.$. bases in the Philippines. The united $tates and the new Estrada regime are now promoting the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA), which will essentially grant the u.$. military direct control over Philippine territory. The VFA will soon be deliberated by the Philippine senate, and the toady Estrada regime guaranteed that it will "lobby very hard" for the ratification of the VFA.

Because the so-called "Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Security" was not renewed in 1991, the united $tates closed its large military bases in the Philippines: Subic Bay Naval Station and Clarke Air Force Base. These bases had a pernicious history, since they were used both as a base for supporting u.$. aggression against countries like Vietnam and as a base for aggression against the people of the Philippines themselves. The closing of these bases, which was the culmination of decades of anti-imperialist and anti- militarist struggle, was a great step towards true self- determination for the Filipino people.

But as soon as the treaty was rejected and the bases closed, reactionaries in the u.$. and their pals in the Philippines began looking for ways for the u.$. military to sneak back in to the Philippines. For example, before she stepped down in 1992, Philippine president Corazon Aquino guaranteed u.$. forces continued access to Subic Bay.

The regime of General Fidel V. Ramos (which followed Aquino's and lasted until this year) secretly drafted a new agreement with the u.$. government which would provide the u.$. with further military access to the Philippines. This agreement, called the Acquisition and Cross-Servicing Agreement (ACSA), provided for joint military training on Philippine soil, intelligence sharing, landing and porting rights for u.$. forces, and the deployment of u.$. personnel in the Philippines as part of "logistical planning units." ACSA would also explicitly give the u.$. military access to 22 ports throughout the Philippines, effectively turning the whole country into a u.$. military base.

Again, the outrage of the masses against the ACSA forced the reactionaries to table the agreement. And again - true to their motto of "make trouble, fail, make trouble again" - the reactionaries tried to resurrect the old base agreements in 1997 through the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA). The SOFA contained many of the ACSA's provisions and included guarantees of immunity for u.$. military personnel for any crimes they committed while in the Philippines.

Now after some more tinkering the SOFA has been renamed the VFA, and the reactionaries are once more going all out to get paper approval for u.$. intervention in the Philippines.

But at the same time, the people of the Philippines are going all out to ensure that the unites $tates cannot regain former levels of military dominance in the Philippines. In particular, the national democratic movement in the Philippines - which encompasses the underground Communist Party of the Philippines and the National Democratic front, as well as legal mass organizations like BAYAN (New Patriotic Alliance) - is exposing and opposing the VFA.

The national democratic forces point out that the VFA is simply a result of u.$. imperialism's need to protect its economic interests and protect its political dominance of the Philippines. They also point out that the VFA would again make the Philippines a staging point for u.$. aggression in Asia.

The united $tates has only been interested in the Philippines as a colony or neo-colony, a source of cheap profits and cheap raw materials. U.$. intervention in the Philippines began with a brutal decade-long war at the turn of the century, in which the u.$. military killed 600,000 Filipinos. U.$. economic and political hegemony in the Philippines today is marked by extreme poverty, with 70% of the population suffering from malnourishment. The struggle against the VFA is part of the larger struggle against u.$. imperialism in the Philippines and for true self- determination for the Filipino people.

You can contribute to the struggle against the VFA by raising your voices against the agreement! There are educational events and public rallies scheduled on or around 16 September across the u.$. Contact your local RAIL representative to be part of the RAIL contingent at these rallies. You can also contribute to the larger anti- imperialist struggle in the Philippines by plugging into RAIL's other work, from raising money to directly aid legal struggles to raising public anger against u.$. crimes in the Philippines and elsewhere.

Ultimately, the best aid anti-imperialists in the u.$. can give anti-imperialists in the Philippines is to build a strong anti-imperialist movement here in u.$. borders.

For information on anti-VFA events in Los Angeles, e-mail larail@mim.org For more information about events in the San Francisco Bay area, contact rail5@mim.org

Notes:
For more information on the struggle in the Philippines, read Support the National Democratic Front of the Philippines," a RAIL pamphlet. MIM Notes is not copyrighted. Please credit MIM when redistributing or referring to this material.
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