ROAD TO PERDITION Aside from Nickel Corp.’s smelting plant and a guest house, communist guerrillas set on fire 132 dump trucks, 22 backhoes, nine barges, two cranes, two bulldozers, a compactor and a grader. contributed photo
The communist New People’s Army (NPA), now in the spotlight for its attack on three mining facilities in Surigao del Norte, is being censured by the Human Rights Watch for its “cold-blooded” killings of civilians.
The New York-based rights watchdog demanded that the NPA, armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), stop the unlawful killings and detention of noncombatants.
“For four decades the New People’s Army has offered excuses for cold-blooded killings of civilians,” said Elaine Pearson, deputy Asia director of Human Rights Watch. “Recent attacks show that there has been no real departure from this illegal practice.”
Human Rights Watch also assailed the Philippine military and police for extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances of alleged NPA supporters and leftist politicians and activists.
“Both the NPA and government forces have committed numerous atrocities in more than 40 years of armed conflict,” Pearson said. “Each claims to have the interests of the ordinary Filipino at heart, but neither seems to show it.”
Pregnant woman
The NPA’s Alip Front Operations Command in Mindanao owned up to the September 2 killing of paramilitary man Ramelito Gonzaga for his “crimes to the people” and the accidental wounding of a pregnant woman, Ana Marie Campo, according to the watchdog.
The NPA also claimed responsibility for the August 19 killing of Raymundo “Monding” Agaze in Kabankalan City, Negros Occidental, saying it was carrying out a 2008 order of the “people’s court.”
The watchdog said the rebel group had often justified the killings by claiming that “people’s courts” had condemned victims to death because of various “crimes against the people.”
Punishments are imposed both for alleged criminal acts, such as rape and murder, and for activities deemed anti-NPA, such as spying.
Deeply flawed
Philip Alston, the United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions from 2004 to 2010, reported that the NPA’s court system “is either deeply flawed or simply a sham.”
“Any claim that people who are tried by the NPA’s ‘people’s courts’ are receiving a fair hearing is ludicrous,” Pearson said. “The NPA’s ‘revolutionary justice’ is not just—it is simply old-fashioned murder.”
The NPA also has detained civilians in violation of international law, the watchdog said.
Mayor in captivity
The NPA is currently holding at least 13 people in Mindanao, including Mayor Henry Dano of Lingig, in Surigao del Sur, along with his two military escorts, Corporal Alrey Villasis Desamparado and Private First Class Allan Pelino.
The NPA captured them on July 13 on suspicions they were intelligence operatives of the 75th Infantry Battalion-Intelligence Section. On Saturday, the CPP ordered Dano’s release.
The NPA also detained four Bureau of Jail Management and Penology guards—Murphy B. Todyog, Eric D. Llamasares, Rogelio E. Begontes, and Rolando D. Bajuyo Jr.—on July 21 as “prisoners of war.”
The remaining six detainees were Ronald Boiles, James Mabaylan, Nelson Bagares, Ernesto Callo Jr., Ronald Boiles, and Julieto Sarsaba, all traders from Misamis Occidental and accused of spying for the government. They were to be tried in a “people’s court.”
The watchdog pressed the government to investigate the killings and unlawful detentions and to prosecute the perpetrators.