Malaya Movement USA welcomes the prospects for Peace Talks in the Philippines

We express cautious optimism for the potential resumption of Peace Talks between the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP) and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP). As a movement founded with the express intent to advance genuine democracy and stop the rampant killings of Filipinos, whether under the government-sponsored “war on drugs” or repression of dissent through various fascist schemes like the NTF-ELCAC, we want to register our membership’s desire for the GRP to address the root problems of poverty, landlessness, and suffering that have led to armed resistance against repression and government reaction using detention, torture, and assassination.

Good faith negotiations require that the GRP abandon its current conduct by upholding international humanitarian law, and all previous agreements such as the Joint Hague Declaration, Joint Agreement on Safety and Immunity Guarantees (JASIG), Comprehensive Agreement on Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law (CAHRIHL). We repeat our call to end government counterinsurgency programs and abolish the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) and the Anti-Terror Law.

We strongly hope that this round of efforts toward peace do not fail like five years ago under Duterte, who unilaterally and insolently ended the peace talks despite running his campaign for President as the candidate most enthusiastically interested in negotiating progressive socioeconomic reforms to achieve the laying down of arms.

We support the call to release all political prisoners, including 12 NDFP Peace Consultants, to carry out the peace talks. There are currently 795 political prisoners languishing under horrendous living conditions merely for holding beliefs in contention with that of the Marcos-Duterte regime.

Malaya Movement USA will not only be watching closely but doing its part to popularize the call for a just, lasting, and genuine peace. Not a peace that is based on fear or elimination of democratic and progressive dissent. If genuine in its declaration, we encourage the GRP to abandon the decades-old policy of unending war by addressing the economic and social roots of armed conflict.