Lila Pilipina expresses alarm over recent reports on the formation of a US-Japan-Philippines Security Triad in light of intensifying military tensions between the US and China in the Asia-Pacific region.
We oppose the US-Japan-Philippines Security Triad which includes expanded agreements for Japanese war exercises on Philippine territory and for the so-called “transfer of defense technology” which we fear might be used as a basis for stockpiling military arms on Philippine territory and which can later also be used by the Philippine government to crush dissent and discontent in the country.
We are gravely concerned over reports of US Arsenal soldiers arriving in the country who will be overtly directing military operations in the country. We are deeply disturbed as well by the possibility of live fire exercises given such context. We vigorously oppose such plans and call on patriots within and outside Congress to investigate these reports and similarly oppose these plans.
The US-Japan-Philippines military alliance impinges on the Philippine Constitution’s clear renunciation of war as a national policy. It is also rubbing salt on the brutal and massive wounds inflicted by both the US and Japan on our peoples in history. In the case of Japan, the wartime abuses which included the military sex slavery of hundreds, probably thousands of Filipino women. In the case of the US, the spawning of the flesh industry around the US Bases and the sexual violence committed against Filipino women, most of whom never achieved justice for the crime committed against them by US soldiers.
We demand that the government of President Marcos, Jr adopt an independent foreign policy. Do not drag the nation into war. The Philippines must remain non-aligned in the face of the intensifying conflict. It can and must not allow itself to be used as canon fodder by any of the superpowers.
We should not allow these superpowers to foment wars in our territory. The conflict must not be used as an excuse by the superpowers to re-invade and re-occupy the country.
Likewise, we reiterate our calls for Japan to correct the historical injustice it committed against Filipino “comfort women” ; for it to desist from the path of war and to face up to its responsibility over the wartime crimes it committed. #
