Philippine Ecumenical Peace Platform

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.  He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. (Luke 4:18-19)

We, the participants from various churches in Central Luzon who attended the PEPP Regional Workshop on Peace focusing on the Comprehensive Agreement on Social and Economic Reforms (CASER), held on October 21-23, 2009 at the Social Action Center of Pampanga (SACOP), City of San Fernando, declare that we:

• appreciate the fact that both the GRP and NDFP parties in peace negotiations aimed at attaining a just and lasting peace by addressing the root causes of the long-running armed conflict raging in our country today have renewed their efforts to resume the stalled peace talks;
• are greatly disturbed however, by the present social realities that we are experiencing particularly in Central Luzon, the most glaring of which are the landlessness of majority of small farmers, the massive land grabbing of the ancestral lands of the Aeta tribe by local and foreign individuals and groups and destructions of their environment and culture, low wages of workers, unemployment, anti-people development projects like special economic zone, large dams, commercial logging and mining accompanied by intensive militarization spawning innumerable human rights violations;
• are deeply concerned by the deteriorating situation of peace and order in our region, and the growing indifference especially among our youth due to the gravity of the social and economic problems we are facing today, aggravated by the graft and corruption in government.

Aware of our responsibility as Christians, we accept the challenge to contribute our share in helping build a civilized, humane and just society where people can truly live in freedom, peace, and security.

It is in this light that we urge the GRP and the NDFP panels to take the necessary steps to resume the formal peace talks in accordance with all the previous agreement that both parties had already entered into in the past.

We affirm the need to disseminate and likewise raise the consciousness of our people, especially the youth, regarding the issues affecting our lives and our future.  We, therefore, encourage the PEPP to continue bringing groups together to study and discuss the social and economic reforms needed to uphold the rights, interests and welfare of our people.

We commit ourselves to pray fervently and take an active role in mobilizing our groups, organizations and parishioners to attend seminar-workshops on Human Rights and on socio-economic reforms as our contribution to the promotion of a just and lasting peace.