ZAMBOANGA CITY, 15 March 2004 — Senior military officials in the southern Philippines have warned the government against releasing over 100 detained communist rebels and their supporters in exchange for the resumption of peace talks.
President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo resumed peace talks last month with the outlawed Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), while at the same time starting her campaign for a six-year term in the May 10 presidential election. The talks coincided with a continued attacks by New People’s Army (NPA) guerrillas across the country. The NPA is the armed wing of CPP and the NDF.
Government peace negotiator Silvestre Bello said they would soon free at least two dozens political detainees. The government said as many as 100 prisoners would be freed as part of an agreement last month with the CPP-NDF peace panel in Oslo, Norway.
Many military officials believe the rebels were only using the peace talks to step up recruitment of new members with the aim of toppling the democratic system and putting a dictatorial communist regime in place.
“Many senior officials are opposed to this plan of releasing political detainees every time the peace talks resume. Soldiers were killed and wounded in capturing these people and we cannot just allow them to walk free,” one official told Arab News.
“The CPP-NDF are just using the talks to further strengthen their forces. They pretend to talk peace, but NPA forces are out there attacking us,” said the official, who asked not to be named.
Another senior security official warned the government that the release of political detainees would further draw support from rightist soldiers who are secretly supporting the Magdalo group, which staged a failed coup last year in Manila after accusing the government of corruption.
Last week, the NPA spokesman in Mindanao, using the nom de guerre Ka Oris, said they were stepping up attacks against government targets as they saw no hope for peaceful political change in the country.
Oris invited a small group of journalists last week for a clandestine interview in the hinterlands of Surigao del Sur province, where fresh recruits graduated from training.
He was quoted as saying that rebel leaders saw little prospect of a peace deal with the Arroyo government and they planned to further step up their offensive. Oris also said that most of the NPA weapons had come from or were purchased from military personnel.
But this was denied yesterday by the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP).
“This allegation is not true. Nobody should believe what the NPA is saying. This issue is an old blatant lie and a propaganda of the enemies,” AFP information chief Lt. Col. Daniel Lucero told reporters.
On Friday, dozens of NPA rebels, who posed as campaign supporters of opposition presidential candidate Panfilo Lacson, attacked a private plantation in Mabini town in Compostela Valley province, wounding six security guards. The rebels also carted away weapons, the military said.
Government troops clashed with New People’s Army (NPA) forces on Thursday, killing at least three rebels, including a top leader, in the southern Philippine province of Surigao del Norte, officials said.
Last week, troops clashed with about 30 NPA rebels in the remote village of Alipao in Surigao’s Alegria town and killed three gunmen, including a front committee leader Eusebio Dumaguit, also known as Commander Iraq.
NPA rebels also killed a 13-year old girl in an attack this month on a military post in Monkayo town in Compostela Valley. The peace talks were suspended in 2001 after NPA assassins killed two lawmakers despite a cease-fire agreement with Manila.
The United States and the European Union tagged the CPP-NDF and the NPA as foreign terrorist organizations and froze its assets abroad on Manila’s recommendation. The rebel’s peace panel chief Luis Jalandoni said the tag and the subsequent freezing of CPP founder Jose Maria Sison’s assets and violated the provisions of the 1992 Hague Joint Declaration.
The NDF had insisted the Philippine government to issue a resolution to pressure the United States and the Council of the European Union into removing them and the NPA from their list of foreign terrorist organizations. But the United States Embassy in Manila said the CPP-NDF and the NPA must first sign a peace accord with the Philippine government and renounce terrorism before Washington could remove the terror tag.
