Satur joins Mindanao-wide anti-Balikatan protests, slams US troops’ “continued presence” in Philippines

Deputy Minority Leader and Bayan Muna Rep. Satur C. Ocampo today linked arms with thousands of protesters in a Mindanao-wide protest greeting the opening of the RP-US Balikatan exercises dubbed Balikatan 2008.

“In a span of only seven years since 2002, Balikatan 2008 is the 24th in a series of joint military exercises held in the country. These war games, many of them held in actual combat areas in Mindanao, were launched under the auspices of the onerous and one-sided Mutual Defense Treaty (MDT) and the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) between the two countries,” says Ocampo. “Many incidents of human rights violations were documented in these actual combat areas where previous war games were held.”

He added that “throughout the year since 2002, there have been US military forces in Mindanao thus negating the Constitutional prohibition against foreign troops’ presence in Philippine soil.”

“The US is circumventing the country’s Constitutional ban on foreign troops,” the militant lawmaker said. “This trampling upon our sovereignty by the US has been made possible with the subservient consent of the Arroyo administration.”

The Bayan Muna lawmaker reiterated calls for the pull-out of US troops from Philippine soil and the scrapping of the US-RP VFA which he described as “an onerous and one-sided” agreement between the two countries.

The progressive party-list bloc in the House seeks thru House Resolution 458 the abrogation of the Visiting Forces Agreement. Bayan Muna, Anakpawis and Gabriela Women’s Party are also set to file a resolution seeking the abrogation of the Mutual Defense Treaty. #

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