Major General Antonio Parlade, Jr., AFP Deputy Chief of Staff for Civil-Military Operations, reiterates that exposing the truth about the real agenda of communist-front organizations like NUPL, Karapatan, Gabriela, among others, is not red-tagging and never a harassment. (PNA File photo)
LOS ANGELES, California – In the wake of its loss over the writs of Amparo, habeas data, and kalikasan filed by Karapatan, Gabriela, and Rural Missionaries of the Philippines (RMP) against the government, an official of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF ELCAC) on Saturday said they expect militant human rights defenders’ group, National Union of People's Lawyers (NUPL), to keep on complaining.
Major General Antonio Parlade, Jr., who is also Armed Forces of the Philippines Deputy Chief of Staff for Civil-Military Operations, however, said regardless of the Court of Appeals (CA) ruling, the NTF ELCAC will ensure that NUPL members will be protected from more attacks from their own ranks that portray a ruthless government and prove their point that they are indeed in danger.
“This is not new. These killings of CPP (Communist Party of the Philippines) cadres including simple activists by their own hit squad have been a modus operandi of the CPP. In fact, that is what Vicente Ladlad, a communist rebel, and not a simple activist, is accused of. He, together with a handful of CPP cadres, including CPP founding chair Joma Sison, are accused of killing their own cadres during the purging of their ranks in the 1980s,” Parlade told the Philippine News Agency .
The CPP Anniversary Statements published by the CPP in 2018, he added, admitted to the torture and killing of more than 950 cadres as part of “Oplan Missing Link” and “Kadena de Amor”.
“These deaths were later blamed on the government of (then presidents) Marcos and Aquino, and later included on the list of 625 Desaparecidos cases of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCHR) Working Group on Enforced and Involuntary Disappearances.
Parlade reiterated that exposing the truth about the real agenda of CPP front organizations like NUPL, Karapatan, Gabriela, among others, is not red-tagging and never a harassment, adding that it is the sworn duty of State officials to protect its citizens, especially from exploitation of violent organizations like the CPP, and dissuade them from joining the armed rebellion that the CPP has been espousing.
“Let this be a reminder to all that the cunning and evil ways of the CPP-NPA is true and imminent. As they push for a UN probe on human rights violations in the Philippines, we anticipate more killings by the NPA hit squads of activists, especially those that the CPP considers as irrelevant already, or those who have violated CPP rules on financial and sexual opportunism” he added.
The CPP-NPA is listed as a terrorist organization by the United States, European Union, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the Philippines.
He also clarified that activism, especially by open mass organizations like Anakbayan, is not a crime but violent activism, especially by underground mass organizations like Kabataang Makabayan (KM) is violent extremism, which is only a notch away from terrorism.
“Let us all defend our democracy and protect the gains of our freedom from these fake nationalists and harbingers of destruction” he added. (PNA)
