ALLIANCE PHILIPPINES (AJLPP-USA) STATEMENT ON THE FOURTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE U.S. WAR AND OCCUPATION OF IRAQ

March 17-18, 2007

The Alliance for a Just and Lasting Peace in the Philippines (AJLPP) joins hundreds of thousands of protesters in hundreds of cities and towns across the United States and all over the world to mark the

fourth anniversary of the U.S. war and occupation of Iraq and the 40th year of the protest march at the Pentagon during the Vietnam War in 1967.

Four years after George W. Bush hastily declared the war to be “over,” more than 3,200 U.S. soldiers, 650,000 Iraqis have died and hundreds of

thousands including more than 30,000 American veterans maimed in an ongoing brutal war and occupation which was premised on lies.

Onboard that aircraft carrier Lincoln,Bush said that he would make the Philippines the “model of democracy” for Iraq. But to Filipinos, it meant the death of 840 social activist, 200 misssing and the jailing of 200 patriots including two congressmen: Satur Ocampo and labor leader Crispin Beltran who were stripped of their parliamentary immunity.

Filipinos also want to point out that the U.S. global war on terror which has the war on Iraq as its centerpiece has really been a war of terror not only against the people of Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and

other countries in the Middle East but also against our people and those of many other countries.

Thanks to the post-911 hysteria against an ill-defined “terrorism,” the U.S. military has returned with a vengeance and in large droves, trampling our sovereignty and conducting so-called “joint military

exercises” in our land, in effect, virtually transforming it into one big U.S. military base.

Thanks to the U.S. arms, U.S. advisers, U.S. dollars funneled to the Today, the Philippines is next to Iraq as the most murderous place on earth for journalists. The Philippines is next to Colombia as the most murderous place for labor unionists.

With Anti-Terror laws in effect, mere expressions of freedom and dissent have now been distorted and demonized as “terrorist acts.”Peace negotiators, patriots and freedom fighters are labeled “terrorists.” Consequently, labor leaders,peasant organizers, journalists, lawyers, pastors,priests, even bishops have been and continue to bemurdered in the Philippines in the name of this “waron terror.” These killings have the uncanny resemblance to peration Phoenix conducted by the U.S. in Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s.

Is it any wonder why the people of my country are rising up to resist the corrupt, criminal, andmurderous U.S. puppet Arroyo regime? And rise up they are in mountain fastnesses, in the valleys and plains,in the streets, and even in the polls.

The plunder and bloody carnage being unleashed by the U.S. war machine that is also unfolding worldwide today is of a scale unprecedented and unparalleled.This is why we Filipinos say that the U.S.imperialists are the world’s biggest terrorists. This is also why we join the people of the world in stopping the wars of pillage and conquest of U.S.imperialism:

U.S. OUT OF IRAQ NOW!

END THE COLONIAL OCCUPATION OF IRAQ, PALESTINE, HAITI

AND EVERYWHERE!

SHUT DOWN GUANTANAMO!

U.S. TROOPS OUT OF THE PHILIPPINES!

STOP THE POLITICAL KILLINGS AND U.S.-ARROYO WAR OF TERROR AGAINST THE FILIPINO PEOPLE!

STOP ALL U.S. AID TO THE CRIMINAL, MURDEROUS ARROYO REGIME IN THE PHILIPPINES!

LONG LIVE INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY! #