THE New People’s Army (NPA) has lost it. Totally. Hear it from former Vice President Teofisto Guingona Jr. “The [NPA] ideology sometimes seems to have been lost, changing for the worst,” he said. “It’s a just condemnation because it need not have happened. Two lives were lost in the event.”
Guingona insisted that the attack on the convoy of his 78-year-old wife, Gingoog City Mayor Ruthie Guingona, must be brought to justice.
Bayan Muna Representative Teodoro “Teddy” Casiño agrees. He lashed at the NPA ambush on the Guingona convoy. “I strongly criticize the New People’s Army’s military action on Mayor Ruthie Guingona’s convoy that resulted in the death and injury of civilians. What happened is wrong and unacceptable. Civilians, especially women and the elderly, should be spared from such actions.”
In fact, the killing of civilians is starting to be an NPA trademark. Their magic formula of absolving themselves of criminal culpability is by way of apologies to the families of their victims, offer of indemnification and investigation of their ranks, and then castigating the military for failing to own up to its “blood debts.” Sauce for the goose is NOT sauce for the gander, so goes their argument.
Unacceptable! The NPA apologies are wearing thin. We kept on reading repeat performances on civilian killings. These people see the trees, but not the forests; they see the firearms but not the civilians. I cannot even classify their so-called “mistakes” akin to reckless impudence leading to homicide in hit-and-run cases or drunken driving. NPA ambushes are all planned, with intent to kill unidentified targets.
Early this year, the NPA’s Leonardo Panaligan Command apologized for the collateral damage on its deadly attack on a civilian truck in La Castellana, Negros Occidental that killed 9 people, including a number of civilians.
NPA’s Merardo Arce Command Spokesperson Rigoberto Sanchez in Davao City takes full responsibility for the grenade throwing and apologized to the public and the families for the scores of casualties, including children.
In 2009, the National Democratic Front (NDF) and the New NPA apologized for a rebel unit’s ambush in Toboso town, Negros Occidental, which left three civilians dead and three others wounded.
No less than priest-turned-rebel Frank Fernández, the NDF-Negros spokesman, had to apologize and ask in behalf of the NDF-Negros for the forgiveness of the victims’ families and the people of Negros.
In 2008 in Davao, the NPA admitted the killing of businessman Vicente Ferrazini was a mistake, based on grounds “insufficient to warrant the maximum penalty of death.” Before the admission, the NPA earlier claimed responsibility for the murder, accusing Ferrazini of “counter-revolutionary and anti-people acts.”
Much earlier, in 1989, NPA rebels swooped down a remote village in nearby Davao del Sur and killed 39 civilians, most of them women and children in the infamous Rano Massacre. The NPA later apologized for the massacre and demoted commanders from their posts for the blood debts they incurred.
No wonder the military is having a field day filing criminal cases left and rights against the NPA for violations of Republic Act 9851 defining and penalizing crimes against International Humanitarian Law (IHL), Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity; violence against women and their children; Article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Right to Life, Liberty, and Security of a Person); and even Part 4 of the Comprehensive Agreement on the Respect of Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law (CARHRIHL).
And frankly, I laud the Armed Forces of the Philippines for using international human rights instruments for holding NPA human rights accountable for gross violations of human rights standards.
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