STREET PROTEST. Downtown Baguio closes half of Session Road to traffic every Sunday which allow kids to use the pavement to express themselves, including teen activists who advocated human rights on Sunday (Dec. 8). INQUIRER PHOTOS/ EV Espiritu
BAGUIO CITY —- To protect Baguio activists, an adjudication process could be incorporated in a measure to declare New People’s Army (NPA) unwelcome in the summer capital, Mayor Benjamin Magalong said on Thursday (Dec. 19).
Members of the militant Cordillera Peoples Alliance (CPA) and its allied organizations petitioned Magalong’s office to pass an executive order clearing them from what they described as a “military smear campaign” that labeled them as “terrorists.”
“Activism has become dangerous,” said militant artist Luchie Maranan, at a Thursday afternoon dialogue between leftist groups and Magalong’s chief of staff.
“The unfounded, malicious and irresponsible terrorist accusations pose serious threats to the lives of activists,” the groups asserted. The smear campaigns have “directly resulted in the killing of human rights defenders [and] journalists,” they said.
Many of the CPA members were described as communist rebels or sympathizers by the Department of Justice in a court petition seeking to declare the NPA, the Communist Party of the Philippines and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines as terror groups. All of the CPA members implicated by DOJ were cleared by the court, said CPA chair Windel Bolinget.
Magalong, a retired police general and chair of the Cordillera peace and order council, said he had asked the military and police to start an adjudication process “to clear progressive thinkers.”
A proposed resolution that declared the NPA “persona non grata” had been shelved thrice by the council due to concerns about the safety of Baguio-based activists and one of its members.
During the council’s last session for the year on Monday (Dec. 16), Councilor Arthur Allad-iw, a member of the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP), said he was listed by the military as an NPA sympathizer.
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But the Department of the Interior and Local Government still required a “persona non grata” resolution from the city.
“Baguio is where communist rebels meet and plan their operations, so allowing that practice to continue would mean the city is complicit whenever rebels attack mining operations or kill soldiers and policemen in other Cordillera provinces,” said Evelyn Trinidad, DILG Baguio director, in a previous council session.
According to the Regional Task Force to End the Local Communist Armed Conflict (RTF-ELCAC), 43 of 77 towns and cities in the Cordillera have declared the NPA as “persona non grata,” including Sagada town in Mountain Province, also a peace zone. Some Army clashes with the NPA occurred in Mountain Province and Abra.
Edited by TSB