STRUGGLE IN PHILIPPINES
[The following article appeared in the January 15 issue of Laging Una, a newspaper of the Filipino people published in Los Angeles, California. ]
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Resurgence of the Huk guerrilla movement in the Philippines is indirectly helping the fighters of the National Liberation Front in Viet Nam in their resistance to the armed might of U.S. imperialisn.
President Ferdinand E. Marcos admitted as much on his return last month to Manila from Australia, where he attended a memorial service for the late Prime Minister Harold E. Holt and held a meeting with President Johnson.
The Manila Times, reporting Marcos' arrival, said the president "pointed to the Huk resurgence in Central Luzon as one of two reasons why the Philippines cannot extend additional aid to the allied war effort in South Viet Nam." The other reason, he reportedly said, was lack of funds.
The president indicated, however, that the 2,000 Filipino troops now in South Viet Nam will not be brought home. To keep them there, the Congress must vote a sustaining fund of about $35 million for the coming fiscal year, which it is expected to do.
Manila observers believe that Marcos was pressured by Johnson, as he was during the Manila "summit" conference, to commit more troops to Viet Nam. But anxious as he was to accommodate the president of the United States, Marcos felt unable to make any additional commitment.
Marcos' concern over the Huk revival reflects the nervousness of the propertied classes. At his direction, the Philippine Constabulary [PC] has deployed sizeable numbers of troopers in the Central Luzon provinces of Pampanga, Nueva Ecija, Bulacan and Tarlac in an effort to round up the armed dissidents.
PC intelligence places the number of actual fighters at just 153, backed by a "combat support group" of 345. More ominous, from the government point of view, is the fact that these guerrilla warriors have a "mass base" of 26,000 in the four provinces. This is at best a guess. The number may be far greater.
In an editorial Dec. 26, the Manila Times struck a note of extreme urgency, saying that "the danger in Central Luzon is real and immediate and calls for the use of all possible resources -- both in the line of military operations and of rural services which are now being provided by special construction and health units of the armed forces."
A few days later (Dec. 29) the same paper decried a PC prediction that the Huks would be "eliminated" by June of this year. It declared: "The last time a similar assessment was made was about ten years ago when the situation in Central Luzon was even more favorable, with the top Politburo leaders and Huk commanders either dead or in jail. But the Huks have since come back...and new Huk commanders have risen to take the place of those who have fallen.”
Directing the military drive against the Huks is Brig. Gen. Emilio Zerrudo, 1st PC Zone commander. In a directive issued from Camp Olivas, Panpanga, Dec. 9 he ordered his men to "show no mercy" to the dissidents.
Judging by the experiences of the anti-Huk campaign in the early 1950's, this iron-fist order foreshadows a campaign of military terror in which villagers will be the main victims. This will increase popular hatred of the government and its minions and most likely swell the ranks of the dissidents.