Latest Davao Bombing "an anti-democratic attack serving an anti-democratic agenda

PRESS STATEMENT April 3, 2003 ARTISTS FOR PEACE

Reference: Joel Garduce, tel. 0919-3962320 (see other numbers below) 65 10th Avenue, Cubao, Quezon City Tels. 421-1880 • 724-6685 • 421-9427 Email: artists4peacephil@yahoo.comLATEST DAVAO BOMBING “AN ANTIDEMOCRATIC ATTACK SERVING AN ANTIDEMOCRATIC AGENDA”

The Artists for Peace joins the Filipino people in condemning in the strongest terms the cowardly antidemocratic attack on unlettered civilians yesterday evening in Davao City.

This latest attack is the logical outcome of suspicious government efforts to derail a serious investigation into the March 4 bombing of the Davao International Airport towards a ridiculous suicide-bombing theory.

We see this heinous attack as part of a continuing bloody scheme by a network of shadowy terrorists supremely confident of eluding accountability for this and previous terrorist acts. We see an intimate parallel between he arrogance of these terrorists and the hubris of the Bush government in pushing an illegal, immoral, illegitimate, and terrorist war on the Iraqi people.

More clearly than ever, this and the previous terrorist attacks that befell Davao City and our country at large form part of a bloody antidemocratic agenda of powerful dark forces in our society for an unconstitutional foreign armed occupation and the violent suppression of our people and their democratic and national rights. We urge our countrymen not to allow the antiterrorist fight to be hostaged by dominant social forces hellbent in further enlarging their antidemocratic economic, military and political power in our country, to the peril of public safety, good government and freedom.

Our people must retake the antiterrorist fight from these forces who fiercely conceal their actual intimate ties to this all-too-real terrorism in our midst.

To reclaim the antiterrorist fight in the interest of public safety, good government and freedom, we thus urge the following:

(1) Organize an independent investigative body composed largely of representatives from a broad spectrum of people’s organizations in Davao City to inquire not only into all the circumstances surrounding this and previous terrorist crimes, but more so into the gravely serious government failures that made possible these acts of terrorism; and

(2) Resist attempts surely to be made by the Macapagal-Arroyo government to derail the antiterrorist fight into a fierce concealment of an existing covert CIA-Abu Sayyaf terrorist network in the country; an endorsement of unconstitutional combat operations by foreign armed troops to preserve neocolonial exploitation and oppression; a fierce suppression of civil liberties; and a scheme to virtually monopolize political power, all to the detriment of democracy and national sovereignty.

Until the influential ring of terrorism behind this heinous bombing is busted, our people will remain hostage to their murderous agenda.