Major General Antonio Parlade, Jr., AFP Deputy Chief of Staff for Civil Military Operations
MANILA – There is no denying that reports on the more than 9,000 hapless victims of mass murders by their own comrades in the Communist Party of the Philippines and its armed wing, New People’s Army (CPP-NPA) is not a fabrication concocted by the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP).
According to Major General Antonio Parlade, Jr., of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict, these thousands of victims of the CPP-NPA “purgings” in the 1980s is an admission contained in the CPP Anniversary Statements (1992-2017) posted in their website.
“Visit the source https://www.philippinerevolution.info/2018/12/15/cpp-anniversary-statements-compilation so that you will know that this is not propaganda,” said Parlade, AFP Deputy Chief of Staff for Civil Military Operations, on Sunday.
Page 27 of the 852-page anniversary compilation read, “In 1985, in the absence of a comprehensive assessment and analysis of the increasing setbacks, suspicion grew that these had been due to enemy deep penetration agents, among other causes. Panic rapidly ensued after arrests and torture of DPA suspects "confirmed" the worst fears about a large-scale enemy infiltration network. This gave way to Kampanyang AHOS, resulting in the prejudgment, torture, and murder of more than 950 DPA suspects, including Party comrades, Red fighters, mass activists and other people,” the website post read.
“By 1986, the Party membership had fallen from 9000 to 3000, the mass base had shrunk by 50 percent and the 15 companies and 30 platoons of the NPA had fallen to 2 companies and 17 platoons,” it added.
The website post also said that “following the successful enemy raids in 1988 on the central organs, including the general command of the NPA, in Metro Manila, and with Kampanyang AHOS still widely believed to have really uncovered a large scale enemy infiltration network in Mindanao, many leading cares and units became highly susceptible to suspiciousness and panic.”
The NPA then launched bloody internal purges under several campaign names, among them “Operation Cadena de Amor” for Luzon, “Operation Zombie” for the Bicol region, “Operation Olympia” for Manila-Rizal, and “Oplan Missing Link” for Southern Tagalog.
Thousands were reported to have been brutally tortured, summarily executed and buried in shallow graves in various parts of the country as a result of those paranoid purges.
The purge was also referred to in the National Democratic Front website www.ndfp.org as “a bloody witch-hunt reminiscent of medieval times in Europe… deprived of the right to due process and other democratic rights”.
Help for CPP-NPA purge victims
Meanwhile, Parlade congratulated the National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers (NUPL) for getting the ear of the Supreme Court relative to its petition for writ of Amparo and habeas data for protection.
“We will humbly comply and submit to the magistrates all the pieces of evidence to prove to the Filipino people that your duplicity and hypocrisy deserves a second look. That you, as well as the rest of the Kamatayan (Makabayan) bloc, is bringing death to our democracy and freedom,” he said.
Parlade said NUPL, being a nationwide association of human rights lawyers, law students, and paralegals to the defense, protection, and promotion of human rights, especially of the poor and the oppressed, should also help victims of the communist group’s bloody “purgings”.
“We can only hope that you will also help the families of the more than 9,000 victims of CPP-NPA purgings in the early 1980s,” he said noting that the Commission on Human Rights has announced the third round of distribution checks to the 11,103 claims approved by the HR Victims Claims Board.
“You claim to be defenders of human rights, maybe you can also represent these families of NPAs killed,” he added.
He said that though ironic, if CPP founding chairperson Jose Maria Sison, who ordered the bombing of Plaza Miranda in order to force (former preaident Ferdinand) Marcos to declare martial law, is entitled ML to payment from this successful class suit, he believes these grieving families who are also seeking justice 'quietly' for fear of reprisal from the CPP NPA deserve NUPL’s help.
“We hope to hear your comments on this. We will even rejoice if you can condemn the NPAs who did this to your own kind,” Parlade said. “Until then we will be firm in Jose Ma Sison's position that you are indeed his stooges.” (PNA)
