Reds Hit Balikatan As Show For Continuing US Military Interventionism

April 13, 2021 JUST IN

BAGUIO CITY (April 13, 2021) – The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) on Tuesday denounced the Balikatan 2021 exercises which, according to the underground group, “forms part of heightening US military interventionism in the
Philippines, both in counterinsurgency and Philippine external defense.”

According to the CPP, the annual Balikatan exercises “reinforces US doctrinal and operational control of the Philippine military forces in the name of “interoperability.”

(It) trains the Philippine military “to provide support services to the US military in its overseas operations especially in this part of the globe,” it added, while insisting that “(such kinds of exercises) influences the AFP to prioritize counterinsurgency operations and entices it to buy surplus weapons of the US showcased during the exercises.”

The CPP stressed that this year’s Balikatan exercises “is even more deplorable in the face of the increasingly brutal war of suppression being waged by the AFP in the countryside, marked by relentless aerial bombing operations supported by the US.”

Two hundred-kilo bombs are being dropped near rural communities and farms forcing peasants and minority people to flee their homes, causing widespread trauma among the masses and destruction to the environment, the group claimed.

The CPP further added that “the Balikatan exercises fosters the false notion that the US military is the only option for the Philippines to stand up China, amid increasing Chinese aggression in the Philippine seas”.
It taunted that “the AFP remains incapable of defending the country independently because of its long standing reliance on the US military.”
This reliance is made worse by the Duterte government’s failure to come up with a more robust and comprehensive plan of resisting China’s aggression, Marco Valbuena, information officer of the CPP Central Committee said.
Artemio A. Dumlao