No To US-Arroyo's Armed Fascist Vigilante Groups.

Los Angeles – The Philippine Peasant Support Network (Pesante) today condemns the newly issued US-Arroyo government's Executive Order No. 465 to form a new Civilian Volunteer Organizations (CVOs) that will be used as Gloria Arroyo's fascist armed vigilantes.

The new EO, a recycled brainchild of Interior and Local Government Secretary Ronaldo Puno, EO 465 was signed recently by Gloria Arroyo for the mobilization, training and arming of CVO’s as local armed auxiliary units working under the supervision and command of the Philippine National Police (PNP) “to counter terrorist threats.”

Under the new US-Arroyo scheme, as usual, the CVO will serve as a multiplier force in addition to the Civilian Armed Forces Geographical Units (CAFGUs) under the supervision and command of the Armed Forces of the Philippines. Peasant-USA anticipates the intensification of human rights abuses, as these Coves will be used to suppress legitimate opposition to the ruling regime.

We will never forget that these vigilantes killed Fr. Tulio Favali in Mindanao during Marcos era. They also are responsible for the most dastardly human rights violations like massacres, lootings, rapes, beheadings, eating human parts, burning people alive or using them for human sacrifices for their bestial and psuedo-religious rituals.

We should be reminded that a vigilante psuedo-religious vigilantes like the PBMA, Kabalyerong Itim of the INK and others even at times turned against their masters and attacked them and refused to be restrained or controlled.

Vigilantes failed then, They Will Miserably Fail Again

Historically, it was also Puno who originally conceived and initiated the Barangay Tanod (Village Guards) under Marcos' martial law dictatorship. “Inspired by Hitler's Brown Shirts Storm troopers, he planned to transform the barangay tanods into a loose local fascist force. Puno had already set up a number of secret training schools to train local goons to put up a barangay-based Marcos army, but this was frustrated by the downfall of the Marcos dictatorship.

US Arroyo’s formation of a new armed CVO “has the actual objective of building Gloria Arroyo's fascist armed vigilantes at the 'grassroots' aims to support its military, police and other state apparatuses. It aims to terrorize and lord over barangays and local governments, consolidate and perpetuate its hold on power and fight people’s revolutionary and democratic resistance and other legitimate opposition to her regime.”

Pesante is aware that US supporters of Arroyo regime in the State Department and the US military in the Bush Adminsitration has already smuggled arms for the regime’s “Black Army” commanded by the First Gentlemen Mike Arroyo, they might be used to arm the fascist vigilante groups.

The CVO’s “will also be used as Malacañang’s additional forces to encroach and help cheat in future elections. And to defend the regime against coup threats.

But contrary to the regime’s expectations, Puno’s planned nationwide barangay and town-based CVO setup is no different from Marcos’ notorious Barrio Self-Defense Units (BSDUs) and Civilian Home Defense Forces (CHDFs); Fidel Ramos' CVOs, CAFGUs and other armed anti-communist and anti-Muslim “vigilante” groups initiated since the Aquino regime; and the Davao and Cebu-based “death squads” which have heartened Gloria Arroyo.

Like these notorious vigilante groups, Arroyo's CVOs will be used as instruments of violent suppression in the vain effort to perpetuate itself in power.Instead, Arroyo’s CVOs will only add to the fascist atrocities of the AFP’s CAFGUs, death squads and other fascist paramilitary forces and will raise human rights violations to unprecedented levels of intensity.

Like before, they may have a shocking effect at first, but it will not take long before their political and military weaknesses begin to show and disintegrate them.

Because they are politically weak and not properly trained, CVOs are viable targets of political work or military operations by the New People's Army. The Filipino people will reject, expose and oppose these anti-people vigilante groups. This happened during Marcos time, this would happen again. ###