April 24, 2011
DAVAO CITY – The alliance of patriotic and progressive organizations, Bagong Alyansang Makabayan in Southern Mindanao Region (Bayan-SMR) pays tribute to Santos "Ricky" V. Manrique, as he is laid to rest today in Pantukan, Compostela Valley.
Manrique, another patriotic and progressive leader paid dearly to defend Filipino land from U.S. imperialist agenda of plunder and destruction.
That he was killed amid an intensifying campaign of resistance launched by the people of Pantukan against the entry of American company, Russell Mining and Minerals Inc, shows that no other elements can have the motive to eliminate him but those whose agenda run counter to his political activities.
The state security forces hold the record of protectors of foreign large-scale mining entrants. Their hands are tainted with the blood of activists being killed similarly elsewhere in the country until today.
Manrique is the sixth activist killed in SMR and the 44th victim in the country’s record of political killings in the span of President Benigno Aquino III’s less than a year rule.
His death bore the patent of killings perpetrated by elements of state security forces against activists, the recent cases in the region include those of other Anakpawis leaders, namely Julius Tamondes and Reynaldo Labrador who were slain successively in Paquibato in the early days of Aquino’s rule; Vicente Felisilda in Mawab, and most recently, father-and-son, Rudy and Rudyric Dejos whose lifeless and tortured bodies were found in their homes just this February.
That Manrique was killed by four armed men on board two motorcycles who entered his home and shot him to death in view of his grandson and wife was meant to sow terror in order to quell the ongoing massive opposition against the entry of large-scale mining.
Manrique, as president of the Federation of Miners’ Aggrupation in Pantukan (FEDMAP) and member of the progressive party list group, Anakpawis, led small-scale miners, indigenous peoples, farmers and small traders of Pantukan who stood to be displaced if the US-owned Russell Mining and its local counterpart, Nationwide Development Corporation (Nadecor), would succeed in their claim on a total 1,663-hectare land area in Pantukan for large-scale copper and gold mining.
Like the many slain activists before him, Manrique’s death, was preceded by harassments, threats, and tagging as a leftist, if not, a member of the revolutionary New People’s Army (NPA), by elements of the AFP.
A month prior his death, Manrique was held and harassed by soldiers at an army detachment of the 1001st Brigade in Nabunturan, Compostela Valley as he was on his way home from a meeting.
Manrique was also the one who reported to progressive organizations sightings of U.S. troops offshore Pantukan, particularly in the municipal mayor’s family-owned resort Batiao Beach last end of January, where a military training dubbed “Fleet Marine Exercise Pagsisikap 2011, Amphibious Raid Capability Demonstration” was held.
His death shows that President Aquino has not departed from the fascistic methods employed by his predecessors in suppressing people’s legitimate dissent.
Contrary to its purported “humane and non-traditional approach” of carrying out its military program Oplan Bayanihan, Manrique’s death exposes President Aquino to be no different from Gloria Arroyo who carried out the murderous campaign, Oplan Bantay Laya.
After all, Aquino’s Oplan Bayanihan, which is patterned after the US Counter-Insurgency (COIN) Guide in January 2009, serves best his role as the leading agent of the U.S. imperialist’s agenda in the country.
Manrique’s fight is testament to the people’s continuing struggle against ever getting fiercer oppressions in their midst wrought by a leadership whose policy is now getting clearer to be that of espousing sell-out of the country’s patrimony to U.S. imperialism.
But the people will persist. By this death of another of the people’s martyr, we carry on the fight for genuine national sovereignty and opposition to further U.S. control of the country’s economy.
For Bayan-SMR,
FRANCHIE BUHAYAN
Secretary General
0999.195.3370
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