No truce: Reds vow to fight ‘Hitler of the South’

DAVAO CITY — The communist New People’s Army (NPA) in southern Mindanao has vowed to fight President Rodrigo Duterte and help remove from office the “madman and [the] Adolf Hitler of the South.”

In a statement issued on Monday, Rigoberto Sanchez, spokesperson of the Merardo Arce Command of the NPA’s Southern Mindanao Regional Operations Command, accused the President of having a “madman’s dream to place the country under perpetual police state … to hold on to power as a US puppet and chief representative of his cronies of big bourgeoisie and landlord class in the country.”

“His two recent edicts, Proclamation No. 360, which cancels the peace talks between the GRP (Government of the Republic of the Philippines) and the NDFP (National Democratic Front of the Philippines) and Proclamation [No.] 374, which declares the CPP (Communist Party of the Philippines)-NPA-NDFP as terrorist groups are the latest in a parade of legal absurdities masquerading as strongman tactics,” Sanchez said.

Mr. Duterte has admitted to his cordial relationship with the NPAs when he was Davao mayor for over 20 years.

But that bond has apparently crumbled with the collapse of the peace talks.

Mr. Duterte on Monday again condemned the communist armed wing for attacking an Army unit providing relief to survivors of Tropical Storm “Urduja” in Northern Samar, comparing the communist terrorists to the so-called Islamic State (IS) jihadists, whose sympathizers laid siege to Marawi City last May.

“I strongly protest and I condemn the actions (of the NPA). I would say that this is something which I have been telling you all along. It does not have the ideology anymore,” Mr. Duterte said during his visit to storm-ravaged Biliran province.

He said he was “sick and tired of talking to a group similar to the IS that has no ideology except to destroy and kill.”

Sanchez slammed the President for undermining protocols and agreements relating to the peace negotiations, such as the immunity from arrest of so-called rebel consultants and for ordering the mass arrest and killings of alleged communists and their supporters.

He said Duterte had “deep proclivity to rights abuse with the killings of nearly 15,000 mostly poor drug suspects nationwide, the murder of 57 activists and members of Left-leaning organizations in southern Mindanao, and aerial bombings and military operations which affected 7, 600 people and displaced 13, 800 farmers and ‘lumad.’” —Frinston Lim and Delfin T. Mallari Jr.