In solidarity with the Filipino progressive and revolutionary movements by Pierre Rousset Friday, Jan. 21, 2005 at 7:43 PM
What is at stake? The security and the lives of many activists, who are going to be forced into exile or killed if nothing is done. The future of the whole Filipino Left, which remains quite rich and active in spite of past and present odds. The dynamics of the international movements we are engaged in, laying new foundations for radical change. The very legitimacy of our fight: how to give a second breath to socialist alternatives if we prove unable to defend our most basic principles? In more than one way, the solidarity with the Filipino progressive and revolutionary movements threatened by the CPP is a death or life question.
In solidarity with the Filipino progressive and revolutionary movements threatened by the CPP
A new Letter of Concern
Pierre Rousset, January 18, 2005
January 15, 2005. Focus on the Global South issued a "Statement of Concern" in response to the publication by the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) of a list of "counterrevolutionary" organizations and individuals where Walden Bello, its Executive Director, and fourteen other activists are singled out. (1)
This issue has to be taken very seriously. For more than ten years now, the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) has "condemned" to death and actually assassinated cadres from other revolutionary and progressive Filipino organizations. In January 2003, this policy took a sharp turn to the worst, prompting me to circulate a first "Letter of Concern". (2) The situation aggravated continuously in 2004, with an increasing number of legal political activists and mass movement organizers killed or threatened.
In the December 7, 2004 issue of its central publication, Ang Bayan, the CPP published a "diagram" of Filipino "counterrevolutionary groups" and their supposed international links. (3) In another situation, or in another country, we could dismiss such a publication as a usual _expression of ultra-sectarianism with limited implications. Unfortunately, this is not the case here. It announces a new stage in the CPP's policy of threats and assassinations.
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