Kin worry about safety of elder linked to NPA

MEETING National Security Adviser Hermogenes Esperon Jr. (left) meets Anne Margaret Tauli in Baguio City. —EV ESPIRITU

BAGUIO CITY, Benguet, Philippines — Relatives of Anne Margaret Tauli, who was accused of having ties with the communist New People’s Army (NPA), are worried about her safety after she was flown last week to this city from her hometown of Besao in Mountain Province by military helicopter.

Tauli, 70, is a member of the Cordillera People’s Congress that founded the Cordillera Peoples Alliance (CPA) in 1984. She is the sister of Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, the former UN special rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples.

“We … call for vigilance and support from friends and family to ensure that [she] returns home safely,” one of their nieces, Kinja Cariño Tauli, said in a statement last week.

Tauli had been receiving threats to her life and security after she was linked to an incident in March when a top-ranking official of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and two suspected NPA rebels were killed in a joint police-military operation in her house here, Kinja said.

Among those killed was Julius Soriano Giron, head of the NPA finance committee and who reportedly replaced detained CPP chair, Benito Tiamzon.

Immense pressure

“After this incident, there were reports of a shoot-to-kill order against her [Tauli] in the allegation that she had escaped from the incident even when she was in Besao the whole time,” Kinja said.

National Security Adviser Hermogenes Esperon Jr. last week facilitated Tauli’s return to Baguio so she could clear her name. They both graduated from Philippine Science High School in 1968.

According to Tauli’s relatives, she had been under “immense threat and pressure since then that made her decide to clear her name.”

When Esperon presented her to reporters here, Tauli insisted that she had no ties with the NPA.

Interrogation

According to the CPA, Tauli had retired and had been active in arranging clan reunions in her hometown, where she is an elder and president of Batil-ang Peypeyan clan.

The clan said her visibility in the community “belies claims that she is a member of the [NPA].”Esperon and Baguio Mayor Benjamin Magalong had taken custody of Tuali before she was transferred to Metro Manila on Friday for interrogation.

“She denied being a member of the NPA and said that there was no reason for her to return to the fold of the law, being a law-abiding citizen,” Tauli’s relatives said.