Reveal details of VFA review, negotiations with US – progressive groups
“We do not need the government to once again sell out our sovereignty.” – Bayan Muna Rep. Teddy Casiño
By MARYA SALAMAT
Bulatlat.com
MANILA – As students and activists remembered nationalist Claro M.
Recto and his branding of the Philippine government’ policies as
“mendicant” in a forum at UP Diliman, Gabriela Women’s Party Rep.
Luzviminda Ilagan, in Congress, issued a strongly worded manifestation
against the “transgressions” to Philippine sovereignty of US troops.
Last week, the Mindanao Examiner reported that US troops led a
successful airstrike by the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) in
Sulu, killing three alleged leaders of Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), an
international terror network (based on US military intelligence
reports). If the said US hand in the airstrike were true, said Ilagan,
it would only be one of many such incidences reported in the past 10
years involving US troops.
The US government has been revealed to be maintaining camps in
southern Philippines though officially its troops are just “visiting.”
Their permanent “visit” has been going on for a decade now, noted the
multi-sectoral group Bayan (New Patriotic Alliance).
Over the years, Filipinos, especially patriotic groups, have railed
against “visiting” US troops. The Philippines had booted out these same
troops in 1991, but “the US forces don’t want to say goodbye,” said
Renato Reyes Jr., secretary-general of Bayan, during a forum on the
“return” of the US Bases in Claro M. Recto Hall of UP.
The patriotic groups’ campaign against the return, in various forms,
of US troops has prodded the Philippine Senate to issue a resolution
calling for a review of the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA). It is the
pact between the US and Philippine governments that allows for US
troops’ periodic “visits” and military exercises in the Philippines.
“Although the Senate resolution has no legal effect, it is testament
to the fact that there is apparently something wrong with the VFA,”
Reyes said in Filipino.
But rather than address these flaws, President Benigno Aquino III has
recently allowed, or “invited,” as US officials claimed, an increase in
US military presence in the Philippines. Aquino’s ‘invitation’
coincides with reports that the US government is planning to send about
4,500 U.S. Marines stationed in Japan to Guam and to rotate another
4,000 through Australia, Subic Bay and “perhaps a smaller base in the
Philippines and Hawaii.”
Rep. Ilagan criticized President Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino’s decision
to “kowtow to the US government’s militarist plans in the region.” The
US troops had committed many violations while ‘visiting’ and basing in
the Philippines, Ilagan reminded the Congress. She decried the Aquino
administration’s failure to learn from lessons past, as Aquino’s
decision was seemingly made without the benefit of a review or study of
the impact of US military presence in the Philippines.
Going into a deeper commitment without thinking it through?
Early into Aquino’s presidency, he ordered a review of the Visiting
Forces Agreement (VFA). Until now, though, amid the active foot traffic
in Malacañang of top US officials in political-military affairs, not a
page of the result of that review has been shared to the public. Bayan
Muna Representative Teddy Casiño charged that Aquino had not pushed
through with the review. At the forum in UP, though, Bayan
secretary-general Renato Reyes Jr. claimed that a source had told them
the review had been concluded..... MORE
Source: Bulatlat.com
URL: http://bulatlat.com/main/2012/02/10/reveal-details-of-vfa-review-negotiations-with-us-%e2%80%93-progressive-groups/
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