Reveal details of VFA review, negotiations with US – progressive groups

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/