Jose Maria Sison. FILE PHOTO / INQUIRER
MANILA, Philippines – Exiled communist leader Jose. Ma. Sison should get the distinction of being an “abominable violator of human rights” and not President Rodrigo Duterte, Malacañang said Monday.
Presidential Spokesperson Salvador Panelo issued the statement after Sison slammed Duterte’s order to “destroy” the communist rebels and all its legal fronts.
This order, Panelo said, “is pursuant to his constitutional duty to protect the people.”
He said the Communist Party of the Philippines-New People’s Army “was established for the purpose of seizing political power from the constituted government.”
“In a span of fifty years,” Panelo said the rebels “has waged a continuing rebellion and engaged in the killing of soldiers, policemen, civilians, destroying properties, extorting money from businessmen and landlords, kidnapping civilians and men in uniform, committing acts of terrorism, and even exterminating its own comrades without compunction in a cleansing purge of suspected traitors to their cause.”
“In doing these atrocities,” Panelo also said, the rebels “aided by – and in conspiracy with – its legal fronts, violated the human rights of their victims, disobeyed the laws of the land, and infringed the Constitution with such impunity in order to destroy the democratic way of life enshrined in the Constitution as crafted by its framers and ratified by the sovereign people.”
The Palace official then asserted the state “has the inherent right to defend itself and the President is mandated to protect the government and the governed.”
“It is Jose Ma. Sison, as founder of the CPP-NPA that aims to destroy the government, (who) should rightfully get the dubious distinction of being the leading ‘abominable violator of human rights’,” he said.
“Jose Ma. Sison as an ideologue should be the first one to know that the government that he wants to destroy will unleash its might and sends its forces to annihilate those who seek to dismantle the democratic society in order to protect its people, maintain peace and order as well as assert its constitutional authority,” he added.
Panelo warned the rebels “will reap violence” from the government” for “sowing violence against the people.
“That is the irreversible law of karma or the law of cause and effect,” he said.
He then urged “our brother rebels that have chosen to thread the path of destruction and bloodshed” to just surrender, saying “it is not too late to return to the fold of the law.”
“Your families await the warmth and the joy of your return. Let us end the
internecine among Filipinos,” he said.
“Let the spirit of Christmas enlighten all of us that change that we seek in our society can only be realized if we begin to change ourselves.”
“The road to peace and reconciliation,” he also said, “is more desirable than the road to bloodshed and destruction.”
“There is honor in returning to the rule of law,” he added. /kga