The NPA-CL support MILF’s proposal to create an international fact finding body to investigate the beheading and mutilation of the corpses of the Marines after an encounter with MILF forces in Basilan. That fact-finding body should be impartial, and should include experts on international humanitarian law and must have deep knowledge of the Muslim people’s history and struggles.

The fact finding body should, among others, specifically look into information cited by a columnist of the Philippine Daily Inquirer that the mutilation of the corpses was the handiwork, not of the MILF, but of the men of former Basilan governor Akbar, a former Abu Sayyaff commander who surrendered to the government. The columnist, quoting his sources, went further to say that Akbar received 800 pieces of M-16 and M-14 rifles, grenade launchers and mortars before the May 14 elections, from the government itself.

Given this lead, the fact finding mission could yet uncover the sinister plot behind the mutilation of the Marines’ dead bodies.

It wouldn’t come as a surprise, though, that Macapagal-Arroyo and her cohorts in the COCIS, are behind all these as they continue to lay the basis of heightened repression and fascist terrorism on the people. As they do so, they whip up more turmoil and disorder to deflect opposition and rally the people to support the Human Security Act to get it going.

For months now, the COCIS is attempting to justify the “terrorist” tag on the NPA and MILF, so far the legitimate armies of peoples seeking to end exploitation and oppression of the Filipino and Muslim peoples. Repeatedly, the AFP has attempted to link the NPA and the MILF to drug trafficking, and the banditry of the Abbu Sayyaff and other criminal groups.

But all of these prove to be futile. The NPA and the MILF are waging just and legitimate wars against the oppressors of their peoples, and enjoy the support of their peoples. The Arroyo regime, on the other hand, is waging an unjust and dirty war to save the oppressive system and preserve itself in Malacanang even beyond 2010.