Fight Back News Service is circulating the following Oct. 27 statement from Jose Maria Sison, Chief Political Consultant, National Democratic Front of the Philippines.

Even before the emergence of a people’s army, the toiling masses of workers and peasants suffer the daily violence of exploitation by the exploiting classes of big compradors and landlords.

Whenever they exercise their right to speak and assemble, the toiling masses face the threat and actual use of violence of the state apparatuses (the army, the police, the prisons and the courts). The reactionary state is institutionalized violence.

The New People’s Army (NPA) under the leadership of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) arose long after the fact of people’s exploitation and oppression by the big compradors, landlords and corrupt bureaucrats. The people’s armed revolutionary movement is resistance to the prior unjust violence of the reactionary state.

The assertion of Duterte and his spokesman Panelo that the CPP and NPA promote violence and imply that they are the source of violence is utterly wrong. The US-Duterte regime is the main source, promoter and perpetrator of violence in the Philippines.

The NDFP, in representation of the CPP and NPA and other revolutionary forces, has been open to peace negotiations with any reactionary government willing to engage in peace negotiations.

Like all previous ruling cliques of the reactionary government, the Duterte ruling clique has delayed or stopped the peace negotiations whenever they cannot obtain the surrender and pacification of the armed revolutionary movement or whenever they can no longer tolerate the people’s demands for basic social, economic, political and constitutional reforms.

The US-Duterte regime is responsible for the termination of the peace negotiations and the continuance of the armed conflict between the reactionary government and the revolutionary movement.

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