The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) remains unfazed by President Rodrigo Duterte’s threat to target the insurgents in mass killings, CPP founding chair Jose Maria Sison said on Monday.
The President told soldiers in Compostela Valley on Saturday he wanted to replicate in the Philippines the late Indonesian strongman Suharto’s campaign against communist rebels, which led to the deaths of about 3 million people.
But Sison said the President’s “ranting and raving” were “self-incriminating” and advised him to plead insanity in the International Criminal Court or any other court where he may be charged with human rights crimes.
Getting worse
“Duterte’s mania for mass murder is really getting worse every day,” Sison said in a statement posted on his Facebook account on Monday.
“Duterte is failing to intimidate the CPP and the revolutionary masses with his ranting and raving,” he added.
Suharto’s anticommunist campaign, which reached its peak in 1965 and 1966, also targeted rebel sympathizers, ethnic Chinese and other alleged leftists in Indonesia.
Sison said the President merely incriminated himself by “openly inciting and ordering his armed minions to engage in mass murder on the basis of mere suspicion that entire legal organizations are communist.”
‘Destroy’ communists
The President made the threat to the insurgents in a speech to troops of the Army’s 10th Infantry “Agila” Division at its headquarters in Camp Gen. Manuel T. Yan, Compostela Valley.
He also said he had ordered the military to “destroy” the local communists.
“Do not just fight them, destroy them. Destroy them, kill them,” he said, adding he would take full responsibility for the killings.
But Sison said the President’s statements only exposed him “as the mastermind of state terrorism and the No. 1 violator of human rights” in the country.
“Before the International Criminal Court or the people’s court of the people’s democratic government, the only defense left for him is for his lawyer to plead his insanity,” Sison said.
“[Presidential spokesperson Salvador] Panelo’s usual defense of him as a ‘clown’ will even be more disastrous as [a] lame excuse in a court of law,” he added.