To: "KMU Internatl Dept" <kmuid@tri-isys.com>

I send my deepest regrets to Diasdado Fortuna's family and to all the workers and other people who struggled alongside him over many years.

I visited the Nestle strike encampment in Cabuyao, Philippines in the summer of 2003, where I met Ka Fort.  I was impressed with his intelligence, his  determination to see the strike through to victory, and his unbending opposition to the Arroyo regime and to the other exploiters and oppressors of the Filipino people.

While it is not yet clear who ordered Ka Fort's politically motivated killing, I hold the Armed Forces of the Philippines, the Philippine National Police, the strike-breaking goons hired by Nestle responsible, and behind all of them, the  US-Arroyo regime.

Ka Fort was well aware of the danger of being a union president and a mass leader in a stronghold of the national democratic movement in Southern  Tagalog. Nevertheless, he stayed on the front lines of struggle.

By cutting down this leader of the Filipino working class, the forces of reaction in the Philippines will find that they have dropped a rock on their own feet.

Ka Fort's martyrdom will certainly hasten the day when the whole  structure of exploitation and oppression will be brought down by the revolutionary struggle of the Filipino people.

Dave Pugh