The Apolinario Gatmaitan Command-New People’s Army Negros Island Regional Operational Command (AGC-NPA) called the amnesty program of the current Marcos regime as “bogus and obtuse” similar to the local peace efforts bragged about by the Armed Forces of the Philippines Visayas Command (AFP-VISCOM).
In a statement on Friday, AGC-NPA spokesperson Ka Maoche Legislador pointed out that the reactionary government is contradicting itself by issuing Proclamation 404 which stated that amnesty granted to the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and New People’s Army (NPA) “shall not cover terrorism” among others, while the CPP-NPA has been wrongly tagged by the Anti-Terror Council as “terrorists.”
“That logic alone proves how insincere the Marcos Jr regime is in addressing the roots of the armed conflict,” he said.
Meanwhile, Legislador dismissed the statement of AFP-VISCOM chief MGen. Benedict Arevalo that local peace efforts ‘delivered irreversible losses to the CPP-NPA.’
According to Legislador, the AFP’s continuing counterrevolution plaguing both the countryside and urban areas are “not a testament of success, but rather a proof of failure of their repeated deadlines of defeating the national democratic revolution mainly waged by the NPA.”
“The numbers of so-called surrenders the National Task Force (NTF)-Elcac keep bragging about are actually farmers threatened or bribed to participate in the surrender ruse, or else risk harm to themselves and their families,” he added.
He underscored the stupid irony of claims of “weakening or dismantled guerrilla fronts with a few Red fighters left” but so-called surrenders keep on coming.
Legislador called the AFP’s ‘local peace engagements’ as obvious cover-ups. “Focused military operations in Negros Island are marred by countless war crimes against the people. There cannot possibly be any peace when landlessness and poverty exists, perpetuated by killings and impunity through rampant militarization,” he said.
Legislador added that the only incessant endeavour of the AFP is “their effort to violate human rights and international humanitarian law.”
“Whether it comes from Arevalo or his commander-in-chief Marcos Jr, it is clear to revolutionaries and the Filipino people that peace remains to be taboo while those in power methodically take strides away from that path,” he said.
“The more they falsely prattle about peace, or at least their own murderous and opposing version of it, the more they reveal themselves as criminals and enemies of the oppressed and exploited.”
The CPP will celebrate 55 years of leading the national democratic revolution with a socialist perspective this December 26.
