Statement
July 12, 2025
In a report dated June 16, 2025, the US House Committee on Appropriations ordered the US Department of Defense (DOD), the Department of State and the International Development Finance Corporation (IDFC) to assess the feasibility of establishing a joint ammunition production and storage facility in Subic Bay. ICHRP strongly opposes this clear and alarming escalation of US military presence and control. The basing of factories for weapons of mass killing in the Philippines is an affront to the Filipino people’s right to national sovereignty and self-determination.
The move to produce and store weapons in the Philippines places the Filipino people in further danger of being at the crossfire of US-led war in the region, and as the colonizer, the US continues to treat Filipinos as collateral damage.
The creation of a new production and storage facility in the Philippines paves the way for the further escalation of the US war against China and the US-backed counterinsurgency which targets Filipinos struggling for democratic rights and liberation. The location of the proposed facility, 1,000 kms from China, is purely an offensive capability, endangering the lives of millions of Filipinos and subverting their sovereignty.
We lend our full support to the Filipino people who are valiantly resisting the government’s involvement in the US military-industrial complex that manufactures weapons meant to murder and inflict suffering on Filipinos and oppressed peoples across the globe.
The Coalition also sees this as an increasingly aggressive US military push aimed at crushing the national liberation movement in the Philippines so it can put its full focus on China. Framed as part of the US Indo-Pacific Ammunition Manufacturing Strategy, this project would revive America’s forward-deployed logistics capabilities in Asia by producing and stockpiling munitions, including key explosive chemical precursors like nitroglycerin and nitrocellulose, on Philippine soil. The proposal follows after an increase of US Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) sites in the Philippines, as well as a growing trend of US military forces strategically leaving weapon systems in the country following the Balikatan exercises. This includes the deployment of the Typhoon missile system in 2024 and the Navy-Marine Expeditionary Ship Interdiction System (NMESIS) in 2025.
The setting up of a US military production facility in the Philippines at a former US military base – Subic Bay – flies in the face of the popular unrest that led to the dismantling of US military bases Subic Bay in 1991. The termination of the US Bases Agreement, which had been imposed on the Philippines by its colonial power for almost a century, was a victory for the democratic movement and was considered a break from its colonial past.
Now 30 years later, the past is the present, with every succeeding government since 1991 caving to US interests, increasing integration with the US military, openly embracing the US containment of China strategy developed under the Obama administration’s 2011 Pivot to Asia policy, and further enhanced through military agreements and the annual multi-national Balikatan war games.
The Philippine Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr. has already issued public statements welcoming and fawning over this direct assault on the sovereignty of the Philippines. Teodoro was totally onboard with the proposal of the US House Appropriations Committee’s Defense Subcommittee recommendation to establish an ammunition manufacturing facility in the Philippines. Given that the genesis of the plan is in the US Capitol, it is clear that Tedoro’s marching orders as nominal secretary of Philippine defense are coming from Washington and not Manila.
The proliferation of US military presence in the Philippines only leads to greater destruction of the Filipino people’s rights and livelihood. US presence in the Philippines has always brought toxic waste, destruction of land, suspension of fishing, displacement, oppression of women and children, and widespread killings in so-called counterinsurgency operations.
The presence of US and foreign military forces in the Philippines, as well as the eventual establishment of a US military weapons manufacturing hub, infringes upon the Filipino people’s right to self-determination and national sovereignty. These rights are enshrined in the United Nations Charter and recognized by the Algiers Declaration on the Rights of Peoples. We remain in solidarity with the Filipino people in their fight and aspirations for a truly independent Philippines, free from foreign intervention.
Oppose US Munitions Factory in Subic Bay!
Oppose the ongoing expansion of bilateral military agreements that continually violate the people’s right to self-determination!
Oppose the use of the Philippines as a staging ground for US Wars in Asia!
