Following the assassination of former senator Benigno Aquino, Philippine government forces have attacked several opposition demonstrations violently in an attempt to suppress them. About a dozen people have been killed.
Today President Ferdinand Marcos is talking about reinstituting the martial law that he clamped down on the country in 1972 and formally lifted two years ago.
In response to gigantic mass demonstrations demanding that the government resign and that those really responsible for the murder of Aquino be punished, the regime is stepping up repression and trying to intimidate people.
The Marcos regime is being rocked by a deepgoing social and economic crisis. It faces the spread of social mobilizations and mass struggles. The guerrillas led by the Communist Party are growing stronger. In the southern part of the archipelago, the government faces stubborn resistance from the Moro National Liberation Front and the people of the area.
At the same time, disaffection is growing among the middle classes, divisions are opening up in the bourgeoisie itself, and the government is more and more discredited in the eyes of international public opinion.
For more than ten years, the Marcos regime has directed an increasing militarization of the country, which has brought a train of pillage and massacre. There has been a rise of arbitrary arrests and growing numbers of "missing persons." The use of torture has increased. Paramilitary terrorist groups have gone on the rampage.
However, this repression has not succeeded in stopping the growth of the mass struggles. The Communist Party of the Philippines, the New People's Army, and the National Democratic Front have played an important role in leading and widening these battles.
The democratic and revolutionary struggles in the Philippines have entered a crucial period. The regime has the power of the army behind it and the direct support of the U.S., which has established some of its main military bases in the archipelago.
In particular since the defeat of U.S. imperialism in Indochina, the Philippines have held a key place in the deployment of American air and sea forces in the Pacific and the Indian Ocean.
Of all the regimes that belong to the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), the one in the Philippines is the closest to, and the most dependent on, Washington.
The riches of the country have, moreover, been pill aged by the imperialist capitalists, in particular the Americans and Japanese, and by the Marcos clan and its cronies. The democratic struggle against the Marcos dictatorship is at the same time a social struggle and a fight that the working people and the oppressed are waging against imperialism.
The stakes involved in the ongoing struggles in the Philippines are considerable, and not just for the peoples of the archipelago but also for the future of the revolutionary struggles in the region and for the fight against imperialism worldwide.
Active solidarity is urgently needed from all democratic, progressive, and revolutionary forces. The United Secretariat of the Fourth International calls for broadening and strengthening the movement of solidarity with the struggle against the U.S.-backed Marcos dictatorship. In their fight against the Marcos regime and the power of the United States, the peoples of the Philippines must not remain isolated.