President Rodrigo Duterte. INQUIRER.NET FILE PHOTO
MANILA, Philippines — There is no need for a warrant of arrest to apprehend communist rebels, President Rodrigo Duterte said Tuesday after he slammed the recent attacks of the New People’s Army (NPA).
Duterte said he would just “finish” the rebels whom he said were “in a continuous crime of rebellion 24 hours a day” by going “around the community asking for money and killing them if we don’t give.”
“Why do I need to have a warrant? By the fact that you are a rebel you are a 24-hour violator of the Revised Penal Code of rebellion,” he said in his speech during the Barangay Summit on Good Governance Region XI in Davao City.
“The crime will not disappear while you sleep. It attaches to your person unless you surrender or you die,” he added.
Duterte has initiated peace talks with the armed rebels when he assumed the presidency in 2016 but negotiations between the government and the Communist Party of the Philippines-New People’s Army-National Democratic Front (CPP-NPA-NDF) collapsed in November 2017 after the President signed Proclamation No. 360, formally terminating the talks with the Maoist insurgents.
The termination came after the rebels launched a series of attacks against government troops.
Malacañang on Tuesday said Duterte would not declare a holiday ceasefire with the communist rebels despite exiled communist leader Joma Sison’s pronouncement that the rebels were ready to declare a temporary suspension of fighting this holiday. /cbb
READ: No holiday truce with Reds – Medialdea