Nagkaisa! Calls for New Initiative to End Armed Conflict

Today, in commemoration of world peace day, the biggest labor coalition in the country calls for an end to trade union repression, extra-judicial killings and to end Asia’s longest running armed Conflict.

Nagkaisa Labor coalition (N1) asserts that Mr. Duterte’s war on drugs is a complete failure. After causing the death of tens of thousands, Mr. Duterte himself admits that his administration is nowhere close to delivering its promise of ending the drug-menace that he claims to have engulfed our society.

Meanwhile, Mr. Duterte is also a dismal failure in his peace initiative with the communist insurgency, even after the CPP other Maoist organizations enabled his administration in its first few years.

The bloody war on drugs, together with the declaration of an all-of-society approach to wipe out the armed communist insurgency, created a climate of impunity that paved the way for extra-judicial killings, turning the Philippines into one of the most dangerous countries for trade unionists, human rights and environmental activists, lawyers and journalists.

Enough killings! It’s time to give peace a chance.

In this context, NAGKAISA calls for an end to the bloody wars in drugs.

It also calls for the abolition of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) that has been responsible for widespread red-tagging now being experienced by the labor movement and other social movements. Nagkaisa believes that the Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process should take over its tasks.

In preparation for a new administration, the Nagkaisa also calls on the leaders of Christian churches, Muslim communities , trade unions and civil society groups to initiate measures for the de-escalation of violence and to  stop the rampage of EJKs in urban and rural communities.

Faith-based, non-governmental and civil society groups need to offer an alternative. Instead of keeping their guns blazing, warring factions of society, an alternative forum must be initiated that should hold genuine peace talks that seriously seek an end to armed conflicts on the basis of social justice and the common good.