LUCENA CITY—The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) has cautioned government officials against prematurely releasing information on ongoing back-channel talks between the two sides amid President Rodrigo Duterte’s latest effort to vilify the insurgents.
Saying that leaks on the progress of the preliminary talks could jeopardize efforts to restart formal peace negotiations, the CPP said officials of the Duterte administration “should be more circumspect” in talking about it in public “so as not to preempt the outcome.”
In a statement posted on its website, the CPP said negotiators from the government and National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP), the umbrella organization of underground groups aligned with the CPP, had earlier agreed to keep mum on the back-channel efforts.
Interim agreement
Last week, Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III, who also chairs the government peace panel, said formal talks were likely to resume by the second week of June after the two sides reached an interim peace agreement.
The deal would pave the way for a formal ceasefire between the military and New People’s Army (NPA), the CPP’s armed wing, for the duration of formal negotiations, according to Bello.
Sources earlier revealed that both sides were working on an arrangement that would suspend the alleged collection of “revolutionary taxes” by the rebels.
Mr. Duerte has said the rebels must stop collecting revolutionary taxes, which the military likens to plain extortion, as a gesture of sincerity in the negotiations to peacefully end the country’s nearly half-a-century-long Maoist insurgency.
On Friday, the President denounced the insurgents anew before the people of Lanao del Sur and Marawi City by saying the communists did not believe in God and that a “genocide” might take place if the NPA managed to take over in Mindanao.
He cited Cambodia’s experience under the communist Khmer Rouge, led by the tyrant Pol Pot, between 1976 and 1979 when two million of its citizens were ordered killed.
“If you are associated with a person who does not believe in God, does not have a religion, if they will prevail—look at what happened to Cambodia, genocide,” he said in a speech during his visit to Marawi.
“You better be careful. At the end of the day, if they get Mindanao, they will finish us off,” he added.
The President said that instead of supporting the communists, the people of Lanao should talk to him so they could thresh out any problem.
“All I am asking you is don’t take up arms,” he said.
Clamor for justice
The CPP, in its statement, said that while the government had publicly declared that it wanted rebels to commit to a truce, the NDFP “has underscored the clamor for justice.”
The government should declare a general amnesty to release at least 500 political prisoners and commit to massive social and economic reforms that would include a sweeping land reform program and national industrialization, it said.
Because formal talks have not started, clashes between government forces and the rebels persisted.
On Saturday morning, two Army soldiers were killed and eight others were wounded in an encounter with the insurgents at Sitio Atubon, Barangay Tan-awan, in Kabankalan City, Negros Oriental.
Thirty soldiers from the 62nd Infantry Battalion were patrolling Sitio Atubon at about 5 a.m. when at least 60 armed men ambushed them, said Capt. Ruel Llanes, chief of the 303rd Infantry Brigade Civil Military Operations office.
Llanes withheld the identities of the slain and wounded soldiers. —WITH A REPORT FROM CARLA P. GOMEZ