Stop all arms sales and military aid to the fascist US-Marcos government!

As the war-profiteers of the world are set to mingle at the NEDS arms fair today in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, we reiterate the need to call for an immediate stop to all arms sales and military aid to the Philippine government.

Last year, the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) had sent representatives to the NED arms fair. While the majority of the Filipino people faces landlessness, ever-worsening poverty and exploitation, the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP) under the US-backed Marcos Jr. administration and its armed forces are shopping for new bombs, planes, helicopters and other tools of war to use on its own people.

The Marcos Jr. government, under the direction of US imperialism, uses armed violence in the form of a violent “counterinsurgency” to guarantee and preserve the current system of exploitation. But since these attacks do not try to address the root causes that push the Filipino people to fight for national and social liberation, it can only fail in ending their struggle and result in a fully-fledged war against the Filipino people.

Earlier this year, the Filipino people took the Philippine and US reactionary governments to court at the International People’s Tribunal. The overwhelming amount of compelling evidence presented by the Filipino people and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDF) in their case, has left no doubt of the truthfulness of their assertion that the US-Marcos and US-Duterte regimes are guilty of various grave war crimes. Terrorist-tagging, abduction of activists, indiscriminate bombings of civilian areas, the killing of hors de combat, and the massacring of entire civilian families are only a few examples. Despite the guilty verdict, the US and other foreign governments continue to supply the fascist Marcos regime with arms and military aid.

The US is reported to be in the final stages of approving nearly $2 billion in additional ‘security aid’ to the Indo-Pacific including $500 million for the US-Marcos regime and the AFP. From 2015 to 2022 the Philippines had received around $1.14 billion worth of planes, heavy-lift helicopters, armored vehicles, small arms, and other military equipment and training from the US, including $475.3 million worth of foreign military financing. They furthermore acquired six T129B helicopters for the price of about $240 million from the Turkish government in 2020. In December 2021, Israel delivered Soltam ATMOS 155mm Howitzers to the AFP and the US-Duterte government purchased two batteries from Elbit Systems for a contract price of $42.2 million.

These weapons are used against the Filipino people by the US-Marcos regime. It is the poor farmers and indigenous communities in the remote areas that are hit the hardest. Communities are targeted indiscriminately, and the terror that aerial bombings, shelling and strafing cause the Filipino people is unfathomable.

As the Filipino people continue to resist these attacks in all fronts, there is an urgent need for the global Friends to expose, condemn and oppose intensifying US aggression in the Philippines and state terrorism by the US-Marcos government.

And in moments like this where the war-criminals and war-profiteers gather in one building ready to sell death for their own profit and personal benefit, we shall continue to fight back and call for an immediate stop to all arms sales and military aid to the fascist US-Marcos government, and for an end to imperialist violence and aggression!