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THE 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, or write to the Los Angeles PO Box on p. 2.
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. $1 each.
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