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LIKE 1ST QUARTER STORM

Communist rebels tapping students for ‘Red October’


Communist rebels would mobilize students in an effort to oust President Rodrigo Duterte by likening the Duterte administration to the former President Ferdinand Marcos' Martial Law regime which committed atrocities against the people, Armed Forces Chief of Staff Carlito Galvez Jr claimed Tuesday.

Galvez, during a budget hearing at the Senate, noted that this was in connection with "Red October," the supposed communist-led plot to oust President Duterte.

“The CPP-NPA (Communist Party of the Philippines-New People's Army) is using a broad coalition. In fact, they have already organized 10 of the universities in Manila. They are making a lot of information drive wherein they will show high school, even college students, the atrocities committed during the Marcos regime and equate that to the present administration,” Galvez said without naming the schools.

"They will use the [unabated] inflation [rate], the rising prices; paint [that] the government will resort to dictatorship and tyranny, with mobilization by agitation of students, labor sector and the IPs (indigenous peoples)," Galvez added.

Marcos' Martial Law regime sent 70,000 people to prison, subjected at least 34,000 persons to torture and killed at least 3,000 individuals based on the tally of local and international human rights groups.

Since Marcos declared Martial Law in September 1972 which abolished the courts and Congress, he managed to perpetuate himself to power until he was ousted by the bloodless People Power Revolution in February 1986.

In 2012, then President Benigno Aquino III signed the Human Rights Victims Reparation and Recognition Act, a law which mandates the Philippine government to compensate the victims of human rights violations during the Martial Law years such as summary executions, enforced disappearances and torture using the P10-billion ill-gotten wealth of the late president Marcos and his family retrieved by the Philippine government from the Swiss bank.

President Duterte, on the other hand, is already facing the International Criminal Court’s preliminary examination on charges of committing crimes against humanity due to the high death toll of the drug war, which has already reached as much as 12,000 based on the count of local and international human rights groups.

The police, however, maintained that a small percentage of drug suspects are killed under police operations since only 4,000 have died out of those 176,000 drug suspects arrested as of September.

Galvez also claimed that the communist-led plot would be like the First Quarter Storm where students in the 1970s started to protest the Marcos administration's policies in the streets.

“They (communist rebels) have this Operation Talsik and Operation Aklasan wherein they will hold simultaneous labor protests and tactical offensive in far flung areas. They have an elaborate plan, likening it to First Quarter Storm model. Joma Sison has been conducting conferences with UP students, and we have document [on this] that we can show you in an executive session,” Galvez said.

Joma is National Democratic Front (NDF) founder Jose Maria Sison, while the NDF is the umbrella group of all communist groups in the country.

In May 2017, Duterte told Presidential Communications Office Assistant Secretary Margaux Uson in an interview that his martial law in Mindanao will be no different from that of Marcos.

"Ang martial law is martial law ah. So kayong mga kababayan ko, you have experienced martial law. It could not be any different from what the President Marcos did. I’d be harsh,” Duterte said.

President Duterte has put Mindanao under martial law since May 2017 to neutralize the ISIS-inspired Maute group of terrorist which held Marawi City in Lanao del Sur under siege from May to October 2017, displacing 500,000 people, leaving over a hundred civilians and soldiers dead and P51 billion worth of damages. — MDM, GMA News

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