The National Democratic Front salutes the Toboso 19 for their unswerving dedication to serve the people and their steadfast stand for the interest of the masses in the face of fascist military assault. As we have often quoted Mao, “their death is heavier than a mountain.”
Alyssa Alano, RJ Ledesma, Errol Wendel, Maureen Santuyo, Roger Fabillar, Roel Sabillo, Lyle Frijoles, Kai Sorem and all the others of Toboso 19 now join the honored pantheon of people’s heroes and martyrs. Their loss falls heavy on our hearts but the memory of their lives and struggle uplifts our will to fight.
We continue to honor the increasing number of people’s heroes and martyrs, for the US-Marcos regime knows no bounds in squandering the lives of the Filipino people, from the best and the brightest to the most innocent children. In the factories where workers’ bodies are incessantly worn away by repetitive overwork and low pay. In urban poor communities where children and youth are stunted by poverty and malnutrition and denied their right to education and health care; and mothers are prematurely aged by the double burden, unaffordable health services and lack of public utilities. In the fields and waters where farmers and fisherfolk struggle to wring out products that are ever diminishing from imported competition abetted by the government itself. Even in prisons where political detainees whose incarcerations are intentionally prolonged such that some even die without culmination of trial. And all the time, the regime amasses more and more wealth and feasts on the labor of the people it has impoverished.
In the fields and mountains, the US-Marcos Regime unleashes its fascist dogs to execute, bomb, massacre, terrorize, and militarize the people who are rising in revolution against this assault on their lives and livelihood. In the urban areas, it red-tags, harasses, summarily executes, abducts, and forcibly disappears or arrests activists, progressives and revolutionaries for protesting the oppression and exploitation of the ruling classes.
Alyssa Alano, RJ Ledesma, Errol Wendel,
Maureen Santuyo, Roger Fabillar, Roel Sabillo,
Lyle Frijoles, Kai Sorem and all the others
of Toboso 19 now join the honored pantheon
of people’s heroes and martyrs.
Their loss falls heavy on our hearts but the memory of their lives and struggle uplifts our will to fight.
And all the while, US imperialists heap tons upon tons of war materiel to make the Philippines a giant US military base or a giant military hamlet where the Filipino who protests its continuous destruction of our forests by mines and bombs or our seas and air by poison and military exercises is immediately made out into a military target. Where the Toboso 19, who worked with the people against the landgrab-plunder projects in Negros, are murdered and the murderers are praised. While US imperialist militarizes our land and seas to use as a forward base and magnet for retaliation from China, funds, trains and commands the AFP to kill and destroy our people to give free rein to its frenzied thrust for world hegemony.
There is no international humanitarian law for US imperialism. There is no humanitarian morality, no rules-based order to drive it forward but its own insatiable greed for profit and power. How it murders schoolgirls in Iran, devastates lives and homes in Palestine, massacres people in Yemen, Syria, and Lebanon, inflicts starvation and poverty in other places all over the world is also how it devalues the lives of Filipinos in the city and countryside. The puppet US-Marcos Regime that allows the US imperialists to plunder our natural and human resources and reserves some of the spoils for itself, can never be expected to listen to people’s call for justice nor lift a finger to defend our interests against imperialist exploitation and oppression.
It is incumbent upon the patriotic people and
the oppressed masses to rise and take power
for themselves to rid the world of this evil,
to exact justice through our own strength.
So that the Toboso 19’s death and all the
sacrifices of previous heroes and martyrs
will not be in vain.
It is incumbent upon the patriotic people and the oppressed masses to rise and take power for themselves to rid the world of this evil, to exact justice through our own strength. So that the Toboso 19’s death and all the sacrifices of previous heroes and martyrs will not be in vain. So that the peasants whom they love so much and gave up their lives for will win victory against feudal oppression. So that all of us who grieve, who have been diminished by this tragedy, will see a future where imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism will never break our hearts again. And we can not do this by open protests alone, but by uniting for a people’s war primarily by armed struggle in the countryside and secondarily by parliamentary struggle in the cities.
The victory of our struggle against imperialism will be our gift not only for the Toboso 19 but for the revolutionaries, peoples, and children the world over who have been murdered by US imperialism.
Turn grief into revolutionary courage!
Justice for the Toboso 19!
Down with imperialism, bureaucrat-capitalism and feudalism!
Victory to the people’s democratic revolution!
