Communists vow to press ‘people’s war’

LUCENA CITY, Philippines—Exiled communist party leader Jose Maria Sison said the government’s insistence on the legality of the arrest of an officer of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) could intensify the armed revolution.

In an online interview on Monday, Sison said the arrest of and denial of the Joint Agreement on Safety and Immunity Guarantees (Jasig) status to Ma. Concepcion Araneta-Bocala could only mean that there was no chance for the resumption of peace talks between the government and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP), the political arm of the CPP.

It also means that the “people’s war” being waged by the New People’s Army (NPA) would continue, Sison added.

The Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process (Opapp) on Monday said that Bocala, the alleged secretary of the CPP in Panay Island, was not covered by Jasig which mandates that peace consultants and other holders of immunity pass are exempt from arrest.

Bocala, 64, was arrested along with her nephew and an aide by police and military agents in a rented house in Barangay (village) Calumpang in Molo District, Iloilo City, on Aug 1. She is being held at Camp Martin Delgado, the regional police headquarters in the city.

Law enforcement operation

The Opapp statement said Bocala’s arrest on murder charges was a “law enforcement operation” based on a warrant issued by the Regional Trial Court’s Branch 2 in Kalibo, Aklan province. Since she is not covered by Jasig, there was no violation of the agreement, the statement added.

“As we have consistently held, Jasig is operative only for those personalities of the CPP, the NDFP and the NPA who are using their real names, and those who are recognized by the government as participants in the talks,” the Opapp statement said.

But the NDFP had insisted that Bocala, who assumed the name Remi Estrella, is an NDFP “peace consultant”covered by Jasig.

The peace panel said the failure of the validation mechanism that kept the records of Jasig made it impossible to verify whether Bocala and “Remi Estrella” are one and the same person.

Sison, the CPP founder based in the Netherlands, said the Opapp, headed by Teresita Deles, “had sabotaged the peace negotiations under the last two presidents, Arroyo and Aquino, and has unwittingly contributed to the continuance of the people’s war for national liberation and democracy.”

“Young cadres of the revolutionary forces have been replenishing the ranks of their veteran comrades,” Sison said. “They can continue the people’s democratic revolution and protracted people’s war indefinitely until a negotiated peace agreement becomes possible,” he added.

A list of 75 rebel consultants supposedly with pictures was jointly deposited by the Philippine government, the NDFP and Church witnesses in a Dutch vault in 1996, so it could serve as a future basis for identifying guerrilla consultants immune from arrests.

Two diskettes damaged

But in 2011, both parties discovered that the two diskettes containing the list had been damaged and the details could no longer be retrieved. The damage made it impossible for the government to verify rebel claims that some of their captured comrades were on the roster of guerrillas with immunity from arrest.

Sison claimed that the Aquino administration had blocked the reconstitution of the destroyed documents.

According to the NDFP, of the 528 political prisoners detained in different prisons across the country, 18 were “peace consultants” and Jasig pass holders.

Notable among these detained “peace consultants” are Benito and Wilma Tiamzon whom the government tagged as top officials of the CPP-NPA. The couple was arrested in Cebu in March 2014.