- Mitch M. Lipa
Militant group Bayan Negros commemorated the 49th anniversary of the declaration of Martial Law yesterday by joining the broad Filipino masses in resisting the current administration.
The group, in a press statement, said that both the present regime and the administration of former President Ferdinand E. Marcos have vilified progressive groups and made use of their propaganda machinery in doing so.
The group said the Duterte administration has “successfully made the Philippines under a de facto martial rule through the approach to counterinsurgency, under the auspices of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC).”
Bayan Negros said it remembers and continues to seek justice for the martyrs of the bloody Escalante Massacre in 1985.
“More than four decades later, our farmers and sugar workers are still facing the same problems, such as landlessness, slave-like wages, and hunger. Despite the promises of reform by the post-Marcos regimes, nothing fundamental had changed,” the statement said.
The group said it is one with the medical frontliners in their immediate demands for just benefits and allowances.
It also echoed the frontliners’ call for the immediate resignation of Department of Health Secretary Francisco Duque III.– MML
