Jose Maria Sison. FILE PHOTO
LUCENA CITY – Exiled Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) founder Jose Maria “Joma” Sison scoffed at the purported surrender of more than 8,000 alleged New People’s Army (NPA) rebels and alleged that military officials only earned money from such activity.
“This (NPA surrender) is a big racket with the crooked military officers pocketing the money for the fake surrenders,” Sison said in a statement sent to Inquirer from his base in Utrecht, The Netherlands Friday night.
Each NPA surrenderee receives generous cash assistance and livelihood aid package from the rebel returnees program of the government.
Sison accused the military of setting meetings in different communities “to stage fake surrenders of fake NPA fighters and fake people’s militia.”
“Then the military claim that 8,000 ‘communist rebels’ have surrendered,” Sison said.
According to Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana, more than 8,000 communist rebels have surrendered since the government carried out localized peace talks.
The Defense chief said that some 1,700 of the surrenderees were from the NPA’s unarmed “militias.”
He further claimed that the supposed rebel returnees were now surrendering because the issues raised by the communist insurgents were now being addressed by the government.
Lorenzana revealed that most of the communist rebels who surrendered were from Region 11 (Davao region), Masbate, and Samar.
Sison stressed that every committee of the CPP, commands and units of the NPA “have rejected and condemned the so-called localized peace talks.”
“The Duterte regime cannot destroy the CPP and NPA with the psywar tactics of fake surrenders and fake encounters,” Sison said.
Quoting reports from the CPP news organs “Ang Bayan” and “Philippine Revolution Web Central” (PRWC), Sison said “the CPP has already ordered the NPA to launch tactical counteroffensives on a national scale” against the government forces in 2019.
“These NPA counteroffensives are expected to demonstrate and increase NPA armed strength,” he said.
After the peace talks bogged down in November last year, the Duterte administration tasked local officials to engage in localized peace talks with NPA operating in their respective areas.
Sison branded the strategy as just a “stupid waste of people’s money.”
The NDFP had previously ruled out localized peace talks as a method of negotiation to deal with the decades-old rebellion.
It said NPA units were not authorized to engage in peace talks. The policy is observed by all local units of the communist movement, the NDFP said.
The NPA leadership also rejected the local peace talks and vowed to continue their protracted people’s revolution which has been going on for the past 50 years. /jpv