Filipino questions N.Z. involvement

Press, 7 September 1984, Page 11

Filipino questions N.Z. involvement

Any direct military intervention by the l United States in the Philippines could involve New Zealand troops, according to a visiting Filipino woman, Ms Lisa Dacanay. Ms Dacanay, who is deputy secretary-general Of the Asian'Students’ Association, is in New Zealand as a guest of the New Zealand University Students’ Association. Last month she attended ■the N.Z.U.SA. national council. She also attended a Wellington conference on the Philippines and met Parliamentarians to discuss problems there. Activity against the dictatorship of President Marcos has intensified since the assassination of the Opposition leader, Benigno Aquino, last year. Opposition to foreign control and oppression had existed among farmers, students, and workers since colonial times but the middle classes and even some of the “elite” were now also opposing the Government, Ms Dacanay said. The forces opposed to President Marcos had matured into a united front with a common programme cutting across sectors and classes, she said. But at the same ' time Government repression of the opposition was also intensifying. Because of inter-: national and Filipino public opinion the Government was on the defensive. Instead of open oppression there were massacres and “salvaging,” a word used to describe abductions and murders by the State. Ms Dacanay herself is on the military ,! biackiisL” Her actions are monitored and she could be arrested any time she returns to the Philippines. Filipinos had come to accept such oppression as “part of the struggle. It is a necessary sacrifice,” she said. With intensifying repression the possibility of direct United States military intervention was becoming more imminent, Ms Dacanay said. Opposition aims, which included the nationalisation of basic industries and the dismantling of United States military bases in the Philippines, posed a direct threat to United States interests, she said??"American naval and air bases in the Philippines were the largest outside the United States with 15,000 American troops; and the United States had billions of dollars invested in Filipino industry, Ms Dacanay said. “Our problems are not only because Marcos is there. It is a dictatorship, but he is there in collusion with the United States to protect the United States.” If the United States did directly intervene, New Zealand troops could also be involved, because of its links with the Philippines Government and the United States through the Manila Pact and the A.N.Z.U.S.

treaty, Ms Dacanay said. New Zealand had participated with the United States/ Australia, and the Philippines in joint military training exercises. In 1981 two New Zealand S.A.S. soldiers were killed while flying an anti-insurgency aircraft on a joint exercise, she said. “That does not only mean exercise per se. They are exercises that are there to be used when the need arises.” New Zealand did not give direct military aid to the Philippines, but such mili-

tary links should be cut, said Ms Dacanay. She also wants the New Zealand Government to rechannel the economic aid it sends to the Philippines. Instead of sending it to the Government it should be sent direct to where it was needed, she said. Present New Zealand aid could be misused. For instance, New Zealand had given aid to build a geothermal power plant for rural electrification. But because of Government intervention, the electrification programme never eventuated.

Instead, the power was used by a transnational coppersmelting plant that was established after people were displaced from their land with military intervention, Ms Dacanay said. The problems Filipinos faced were not unique. They represented a "classic case” of Third World countries’ problems, of under-develop-ment, extensive poverty, military oppression, and foreign intervention. One of the reasons for her New Zealand visit was to highlight this shared oppression, she said.