PROTEST TRUMP'S IMPERIAL WAR-MONGERING IN ASIA AND IN THE PHILIPPINES

ON PRESIDENT TRUMP'S VISIT TO THE PHILIPPINES

Washington, D.C.--November 6, 2017--

by KAMALAYAN: PHILIPPINE EDUCATIONAL FORUM, Washington, DC

With collusion scandals on his back, President Trump visits Manila and Clark Field, Pampanga, Philippines, historic outposts of the then rising U.S. Empire at the turn of the last century.

Today, virtually a neocolony, the Philippines serves once again as a springboard for U.S. imperial interventions in the Asia-Pacific region. Various government agreements have converted the former U.S. military bases in Clark, Subic, and elsewhere into counterinsurgency centers against Filipinos protesting corporate plunder of the country’s natural and human resources. 

The Duterte regime of corrupt oligarchs has welcomed renewed U.S. military intervention in the destruction of Marawi City in the global campaign against ISIS. The war on drugs and terrorism has become a pretext to justify a Plan Colombia-type of U.S. intervention in their former colony.

Duterte welcomes Trump in the hope of increased military aid. The issue of Duterte’s bloody human rights record, the extra-judicial killing of over 9,000 suspects in the drug war, and the vicious bombing and massacre of peasants, Lumads, and Moro villages, will fill the silent corridors of Malacanang and the Asian Summit halls.

After boasting of U.S. devastation of Japan in World War II, Trump wants to involve the peoples of Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, China and the Philippines in his campaign to destroy the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea with “fire and fury.” Nothing less than a genocidal campaign will fulfill Trump’s America-First policy.

As peoples concerned with social justice, respect for human rights, and peace among nations, we call on everyone to protest Trump’s endorsement of the corrupt, deceitful Duterte regime.

Trump’s attempt to project U.S. military power on the region, and his threat of nuclear war, only serves the profiteering interests of big business. We support the demilitarization of the South China Sea and respect for national sovereignty. 

We call on all peoples in Asia and the United States to reject Trump’s war-profiteering and neoliberal programs that destroy people’s jobs, their civic and political rights, and the ecological health of the planet.

KAMALAYAN Philippine Educational and Cultural Forum
Washington DC