Joma sees worse human rights violations under new AFP chief

Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) founder Jose Maria Sison. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

LUCENA CITY — Exiled Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) founder Jose Maria “Joma” Sison said Wednesday he expected worse human rights violations by the military under the new Armed Forces chief of staff Lt. Gen. Noel Clement.

“In his very short stint, Clement cannot do much, except to accept and probably aggravate the violation of human rights under strategic plan to suppress by military force the resistance of the people and their revolutionary forces against the treasonous, tyrannical, corrupt and swindling Duterte regime,” Sison said in a statement from his base in Utrecht, The Netherlands.

On Tuesday, Lt. Gen. Noel Clement formally assumed his post as the 52nd chief of staff of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP).

He replaced Gen. Benjamin Madrigal Jr., his “mistah” in the Philippine Military Academy “Sandiwa” Class of 1985.

Sison said the “system of AFP officers and personnel making easy money from faking NPA surrenderees and casualties will continue.”

He also expected that more people who were not at all connected with CPP and its armed wing, the New People’s Army (NPA) rebels, would be “victimized by red-tagging, harassments, threats, extortions, abductions, torture and extrajudicial killings.”

“In the first place, the one giving directions to the AFP is the commander-in-chief Duterte who is a bloodthirsty ruffian and who takes pride in criminal actions by his armed minions,” Sison said. /kga