No ‘genuine friendship’ between US, PH — youth group

Members of the League of Filipino Students protested in front of the US Embassy on Philippine-American Friendship Day. The group said there was no “genuine friendship” between the US and the Philippines. /Photo by Ryan Leagogo, INQUIRER.net

On Filipino-American Friendship Day on Wednesday, a youth group, protesting in front of the United States Embassy, said there was no “genuine” friendship between the US and the Philippines.

“There is no genuine friendship between our country and the US as long as US military troops are utilized to bomb Philippine communities and ancestral lands,” Kara Taggaoa, spokesperson of the League of Filipino Students (LFS), said in a statement.

“We were never truly liberated by the United States. The US government has long engineered a system that would cater to its economic, political, and military interest,” she added.

Taggoa also criticized the military initiatives undertaken by the Philippines with the US, such as the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA), Visiting Forces Agreement, and the Balikatan exercises.

She also accused President Rodrigo Duterte of deploying 70 battalions of the Armed Forces of the Philippines in Mindanao under the supervision of the US government.

Taggoa cited reports from KARAPATAN, a non-government organization, and other fact-finding groups which she said have revealed there were over 362,355 victims of indiscriminate firing and another 426,590 victims of forced evacuation under this alleged military deployment.

“Duterte is no different from the past administrations – a blind puppet of Trump,” she stressed.

“This regime invests so much military aid while it can’t even provide for the basic needs of the Filipino people,” Taggoa concluded.

The Filipino-American Friendship Day is commemorated every 4th of July, when the United States recognized the Philippines as an independent state in 1946.   /vvp