Makatarunganang Maghimagsik! it is right to rebel!
Makatarungan ang Maghimagsik! It is right to rebel!
On March 29, we commemorate the 55th Anniversary of the New People’s Army (NPA), established by the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) in 1969.
The NPA was first established with 60 red fighters, each ready to carry out the people’s democratic revolution--ready to break the Philippines free from the clutches of imperialism, feudalism, and bureaucrat capitalism and to establish a socialist state.
The NPA’s ranks have swelled by the thousands over the decades-- joining from the peasantry, the workers, the artists, the doctors, the students, and more . All across the archipelago, red bases are found in nearly every single province. So many red fighters join having borne the brunt of exploitation and repression in the ever worsening economic crisis. They have all experienced the never ending joblessness and landlessness which each Philippine regime not only fails to address but maintains in order to protect the wealth of the ruling compradors and the landlords.
When the ruling classes will not give up their wealth and power voluntarily, when they continue to ruthlessly exploit the people, there is no other path but to resist. The NPA wages agrarian revolution in the countryside to end the exploitative usurious practices and to redistribute monopoly lands to the landless peasants who work it. The people’s protracted war is a hard and long struggle that is not without sacrifice.
We give the highest salute to the red fighters who have been martyred, like Hannah Cesista and the Bilar 5, who were captured, tortured, and extrajudicially executed by the AFP 47th Infantry Battalion and Bohol PNP this past February. Hannah Cesista was a law student and youth leader in Cebu before she took up the fight in the countryside.
Hannah was a witness to how the law was used to justify the demolition of Carbon market, which left 8,000 vendors without livelihoods. It is because of cases such as these she realized that, in our current society, justice can only be attained by going beyond the courtroom and by changing the roots of society itself. She joined others in Bohol to fight against land monopoly and land conversion practices that were pushing so many into worsening livelihoods.
The NPA is an army that is of the people and for the people. Even as the National Democratic Front of the Philippines and Marcos Regime state their intention to re-open peace talks with the people’s resistance, the armed struggle will continue the fight for national democracy until the root issues of imperialism, feudalism, and bureaucrat capitalism are vanquished. Until then, the NPA will continue to grow and expand in the countryside as more and more join to build and fight for a truly just and democratic society.
Long live the militant people’s struggle!
