New AFP chief: To win vs Reds, make more friends, not foes

MANILA, Philippines — The military must be deliberate in identifying enemies of the state and make more friends if it wants to win the decades-long war on terrorism and insurgency, the new chief of staff of the Armed Forces of the Philippines said on Friday.

“My main instruction was that whenever we talk or whatever things we do, we should be deliberate, we should exercise due diligence so we can serve the public better,” Lt. Gen. Cirilito Sobejana said in a television interview on Friday, a day after he assumed the highest post in the military.

“I do believe that for us to win this war we should not just make ourselves bigger but make the enemy smaller, so it’s better to create friends than creating enemies. Besides we are mandated to serve the people so we should not appear as the enemy of the people,” he said.

His remarks followed statements by Lt. Gen. Antonio Parlade Jr. that suggested that Inquirer.net reporter Tetch Torres-Tupas was a communist propagandist who was “aiding the terrorists by spreading lies.”

Tupas wrote a story on Feb. 2 about two Aeta men, Japer Gurung and Junior Ramos, who told the Supreme Court in a petition against the Anti-Terrorism Act of 2020 that they were illegally arrested and tortured by Army soldiers in August last year in Zambales province.

Parlade’s remarks drew rebuke from journalist groups and from Inquirer.net, and criticism from Sen. Panfilo Lacson, the main author of the antiterror law.

Parlade is chief of the AFP’s Southern Luzon Command and spokesperson for the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-Elcac).

Distancing

Sobejana said he would have Parlade’s statements against Tupas investigated—but not necessarily the three-star general himself, noting that his allegations were made as NTF-Elcac spokesperson.

He distanced Parlade’s statements from the position of the AFP, saying the military had its designated spokesperson, Maj. Gen. Edgard Arevalo.

“I could not tell him directly in his capacity as the spokesperson of the NTF-Elcac [to correct his statement]. But if [Arevalo] made the statement, then immediately I can correct him, especially if there is no basis for his statement,” Sobejana said.

“We should be very careful because the burden of proof is on our hands,” the AFP chief noted. “We cannot just talk a lot without providing evidence.”

Sobejana did not directly reply when asked whether he would tolerate Parlade’s false claims that some critics of the government were members of terrorist groups.

But he said the AFP would “need to look back on all the erroneous things and mistakes we have committed and draw lessons from them.”

For 6 months only

Like his predecessor, Gen. Gilbert Gapay, Sobejana will also serve for only six months as he will reach the mandatory retirement age of 56 on July 31.

During his term, Sobejana said his focus would be “to put an end” to the so-called communist terror groups—the New People’s Army, the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines—and the “local terrorist groups” (LTGs) such as the Abu Sayyaf Group, Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters, Dawlah Islamiya-inspired groups, Maute and remnants of the Ansar Al-Khilafah Philippines.

While all threat groups were of “equal importance,” Sobejana said in a separate TV interview on Thursday that due to his brief stint, he would “prioritize” the LTGs.

“We should be able to destroy the right targets, because going fast, but not deliberately done, we might experience or incur collateral damage which we do not like,” Sobejana stressed.

In his speech during the change of command ceremony on Thursday, Sobejana promised that there would be no human rights violations in his antiterrorism campaign.

“Rest assured that your soldiers, all your soldiers—airmen, sailors and marines—of the Armed Forces of the Philippines will do their job, following the rule of law, give due respect to human rights and strictly adhere to the provisions of the international humanitarian law,” he said.

Sobejana graduated from the Philippine Military Academy in 1987. He is the first in his class to be appointed to the top military post.

He is also the first Medal of Valor awardee to be appointed AFP chief in more than seven decades. Sobejana received the highest military award for leading a 16-man Ranger unit in a deadly clash against more than 150 members of the Abu Sayyaf group in Basilan in 1995.