SANLAKAS Militantly Salutes HR Online

SANLAKAS MILITANTLY SALUTES HRONLINE FOR A VIRTUAL YEAR OF PROPAGATING DEMOCRACY WITH SOCIAL JUSTICE AND FOR DEFENDING OUR PEOPLE’S RIGHTS!

30 March 2012

SANLAKAS warmly extends a clench-fisted militant salute to HROnline on the occasion of your 1st Anniversary and for having raised and waved high the banner of progressive unity in the frontlines of mass struggle for one year now! We do so as a show of proud solidarity with HROnline’s dedicated and principled cadre of human rights defenders. We do so with respect just twelve months after HROnline successfully launched a new cyber-battlefront in defense of human rights in the Philippines and across the world. 

We fully recognize that HROnline has clearly proven itself to be an effective social-political platform that courageously propagates the broad progressive struggle for genuine social change. We can surely see this in the way HROnline has been able to act as a virtual campaigns contact-point which allows for a wide range of progressive organizations and individuals to come together in a concerted effort. In a sense, HROnline is also a ‘progressive forces projection-multiplier’ that can link up, magnify and re-echo the progressive mass movement’s agenda via the bourgeois-controlled mass media and to also develop alliances with other interested sectors and entities in the Philippine social-political arena. Thus, in recognition of this very important accomplishment, we in SANLAKAS wish to encourage HROnline to continue to develop this ground-breaking pathway and to even raise higher the potential level of coordination among various progressive forces.

In fact, HROnline’s just and honorable cause is not only shining a bright light on the many other progressive mass campaigns and struggles of today. It is also helping to serve the progressive mass movement with a critically vital component in relation to educating-organizing-mobilizing both the organized forces and the basic masses. Thus, HROnline helps to enhance and further develop the collective capacity of our general struggle in order to be able to one day overturn and change the ruling system, in unity with the broad working-class masses. Its ultimate outcome must be to favor the 99% social majority. 

Indeed, it can only be a revolutionary mass struggle that must and can win this fight for genuine systemic change. Its principled objective is to inevitably pave the way forward to socialism as an egalitarian social-economic system that does not exploit nor oppress other fellow human beings in society. Yet for now, we must first collectively and concretely advance a universal war to essentially liberate all of humanity from all forms of oppression and exploitation on the basis of general democratic reforms. This means carrying forward a democratic struggle for structural reforms and aimed at eventually destroying and crushing the main pillars of capitalist exploitation and oppression as the root cause of systemic mass poverty in present-day Philippine society. Nevertheless, this struggle must also be pursued on an international scale if it is to be victorious because capitalism is a globalized system and hence, its systemic replacement must also be of a global nature.

And so it is, that our joint forces are now truly engaged in a global war of liberation to uphold, to protect and to defend all human rights for all. Definitely, this necessitates the formation of mass resistance fronts in all countries of the world to combat the worldwide camp of hegemony, especially that one led by US imperialism and its reactionary puppet-states (i.e. the PNoy Regime in the Philippines). 

The economically and socially destructive domination and control of the international system by US imperialism today can be seen and felt in terms of the dangerous and deadly massive human rights violations worldwide. These outcomes are a direct result of the US imperialist-led neoliberal economic imposition and dictations, political maneuverings to ensure pro-US regime changes and ultimately, the subjugation of anti-imperialist states through wars of aggression. All of these are the basic elements of the US foreign policy framework aimed at absolutely securing puppet-agent states, market protection and expansion, sustained oil supplies and other strategic resources, and forward force projection through military bases, visiting forces-type agreements and other related defense arrangements. 

In order to systematically and institutionally attain its imperialist objectives, the US and its international agents will never hesitate to violate any and all the key provisions of the international bill of human rights. Ever since 1948, all Philippine governments have continuously violated and stepped on the principles and provisions of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), and the many other human rights-based instruments reflective of universal norms and values that uphold and protect the human rights of all the peoples of the world. This is clearly witnessed in the unabated number of HRVs, such as: warrantless arrests, torture, enforced disappearances, state-sponsored assassinations, and also unfair labor practices and non-compliance with accepted economic and social standards. 

So long as this globalized system of human rights violations continue on a massive scale all the genuinely sincere individuals and progressive and revolutionary Left forces shall have to continue on the fight for systemic change. And in this unjust environment, HROnline, SANLAKAS and all other organizations still active within the progressive mass movement will need to carry on our combined struggle until genuine social change is finally achieved for the social benefit and welfare of all.

Lastly, in total recognition of this, SANLAKAS confidently expresses its admiration for HROnline’s very good and highly positive work in strengthening and propagating our shared vision for a truly people-centered society premised on full democratic freedoms with social justice. And as we further encourage you to continue on with this noble fight, we now convey to our HROnline comrades that SANLAKAS shall also continue to firmly stand beside you and to resolutely march with you in our united struggles to build a truly free, democratic and socially just world order in the near future.