Compatriots-NDFP, the revolutionary mass organization of Filipinos overseas, is outraged at US imperialism’s brazen disregard for Philippine sovereignty and the lives of the Filipino people demonstrated through its missile launch on May 5. As part of the Balikatan war games, the US and Philippine militaries fired a Tomahawk missile from Tacloban Airport in Leyte toward a target more than 600 kilometers away in Laur, Nueva Ecija. It marks the first time a ground-based intermediate range cruise missile has been deployed and fired within the US’ so-called “first-island chain,” a network of US military facilities across the Asia-Pacific region that serves as a forward launching pad for imperialist war against China.
The firing is a dangerous escalation of US imperialist provocation that drags the entire country closer into a war we have no interest in. Just as the US-Zionist war against Iran has proven, US military facilities across West Asia are prime targets for retaliatory attacks. Two Filipino migrants have already died from being caught in the crossfire of that war, and millions more have had their livelihoods impacted. Now, the Marcos regime threatens to create this same war theater in the Philippines itself. Rather than keep the Philippines safe, the growing presence of US troops and bases, as well as the escalating nature of these war rehearsals, place a bigger target on the backs of the Filipino people.
Even without full-blown war, joint US-Philippine war drills already endanger the Filipino masses. The missile’s impact site, Barangay Canantong, is not an unpopulated area—it is home to 3,000 people. And given the track record of misfires during Balikatan and other joint US war games such as in south Korea, any of those 3,000 lives could have become casualties. This is on top of other well-documented impacts of Balikatan, including “no sail” policies enforced in coastal areas that prevent fisherfolk from putting food on the table, or similar restrictions to movement for peasant farmers to work the fields. This is not even to mention the tons of fuel the US-Marcos regime has chosen to waste while the Philippines faces one of the worst economic crises in recent history.
Filipinos overseas must unite and protest foreign intervention in our homeland, especially those among us who live in countries with visiting forces agreements with the Philippine state: the United States, Canada, Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and France. We must see through and expose the regime’s lies that US troops are there to help with humanitarian relief, or that planned US defense facilities like refueling hubs and ammunition factories are there to give jobs to the people. The solution to the forced migration of our compatriots is not the creation of temporary work that will only serve the US’ military industrial complex—it is in creating genuine industries and enacting genuine land reform that serve the people’s interests. And this can only be done through waging people’s war, not by being cannon fodder and pawns to imperialist war.
We must also expose and oppose the Marcos regime’s bid to win a non-permanent seat at the United Nations Security Council, when it is the US-Marcos regime itself that threatens the security and future of the Philippines. We must see this for what it is: a ploy to deodorize the Marcos dynasty’s name in the international arena while also seeking to be a reliable lapdog of US imperialism within that body.
We must not allow our country to be used as imperialism’s playground, nor our people for imperialist target practice. Stop the war games! US bases, troops, weapons, and military facilities—out now!
source: NDFP