31 JULY

Colonial body Philippine Assembly, imperialist US Occupation

1907 - As the bloody and protracted Philippine-American War (1899-1914) persists in certain parts of the Southeast Asian archipelago, elections are held for the Philippine Assembly, the colonial legislative body set up during the imperialist United States Occupation, with Sergio S. Osmena's (pro-immediate independence) Nacionalista Party capturing majority of the 80 seats representing 80 districts; only less than 1.5% of the Filipinos were able to vote their representatives to the Assembly, which was effectively the lower house to the appointive, all or mainly American-in-composition Philippine Commission, because of the severe qualification requirements (real estate ownership worth at least P500; able to read and write; and could speak in Spanish or English); the imperialist Americans began invading the Southeast Asian archipelago at the turn of the century after conning Filipino revolutionary leader Emilio Aguinaldo y Famy into cooperating with them to fight Spain during the so-called second phase of the Philippine Revolution that intersected with the Spanish-American War: more than two months after the Aguinaldo declared Independence "under the protection of the Powerful and Humanitarian Nation" [the Bald Eagle nation], the US vilely arranged the infamous August 1898 Mock Battle of Manila that made it appear that it was the Americans instead of the Filipinos that expelled the Spaniards, and in February of the following year, secretly instigated hostilities to spark the Fil-Am War (1899-1914), USA's first war of invasion where an estimated hundreds of thousands to 1.5 million Filipino freedom-fighters and civilians perished either from direct killing/torture or from famine, sickness, or from the asperity of reconcentration, scorched earth, and other horrific war tactics of the enemy Americans.


Photo credit: http://philippineamericanwar.webs.com/