(We yield this space to the statement of the Alliance of Concerned Teachers due to its timeliness. – Ed.)
THE Duterte administration should abrogate by all means the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) with the US government. VFA is among the pinnacles of the neocolonial ties of the Philippines to the United States.
Whatever his reasons may be, the President should abrogate the VFA. Doing so will greatly serve the interests of the Philippines as in all the years of its effectivity, the VFA has only undermined our national sovereignty as it has virtually turned the entire Philippine territory into a US military base for its military exercises, apart from onerous provisions that gave special privileges to US military personnel
The VFA, along with other military agreements with the US, licensed American soldiers to violate the rights of Filipinos with impunity. Since VFA’s signing in 1998, several forms of human rights violations have been committed by US military personnel against Filipinos. Recent documented and publicized cases include the rape and murder of Jennifer Laude by US Marine Scott Pemberton in 2014 and the gang rape of “Nicole”’ by another US Marine, Daniel Smith, in 2005. Accountabilities of both soldiers were severely watered down due to problematic provisions in the VFA that intervened in the trying of their crimes in Philippine courts, following domestic laws. Additionally, both soldiers remain in the custody of the US government.
Aside from the rape of our women, military agreements with the US as well as US-funded military campaigns in the Philippines have resulted in the large-scale killings and displacement of our people. The government’s very counterinsurgency program is dictated, supplemented, and funded by the US, who has been launching “anti-terror” and proxy wars in many nations all over the world. Our government’s continuing ties with the imperialist US government make us a vulnerable target to its enemies, just as we had been during the last world war. We have more to lose by keeping these ties.
The following agreements between the governments of the Philippines and the US must also be revisited and consequently junked – Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA), the Mutual Logistics and Service Agreement, the Mutual Defense Treaty, and the Military Assistance Agreement.
The government should have never entered into any of these lopsided agreements with the US government, so its abrogation is but a move to rectify that error. It shall also be immediately followed by the establishment of an independent foreign policy that will allow us to break free from the long-standing master-puppet relations of the Philippines with the US.
