PRESS RELEASE
Information Bureau
Communist Party of the Philippines

Letter to the editor - Philippine Daily Inquirer
January 3, 2004

This is in reaction to your Jan. 2 editorial titled "Cannibal revolution."

To say the least, we are disappointed at how the Inquirer editorial unfairly treated the facts and issues regarding the anti-infiltration campaigns carried out by some errant leaders and members of Communist Party of the Philippines during the 1980s.

We take strong exception to the statement that the CPP has responded to the issue only "with silence or denial" and that it "has not come up with anything remotely scientific to explain the bloody purges." Such comments totally ignore the fact that the CPP has issued several documents since the early 1990s stating in no uncertain terms the Party's strong condemnation the errors as violative of Party and revolutionary principles and regulations.

The CPP has meted out appropriate disciplinary actions and reeducated those responsible for the errors. Those who have committed the worst crimes and abuses, as well as those who have expressed no remorse and refused to rectify were expelled from the Party. The CPP has taken great pains to carry-out criticism and self-criticism. It has reached out and made amends to as many of the victims and their loved ones. It has exhaustively studied the phenomenon to root out the causes, draw valuable lessons and reaffirm and reinstitute the correct policies and processes to prevent any repetition in the future. Either the editorial writer has been totally uninformed of this or has completely ignored the facts.

Pertinent materials are publicly available at the CPP's website (www.philippinerevolution.org), including an earlier relevant statement of the CPP's Central Committee in February 2003. A quick look at the website will also show that the CPP released two statements on December 31, 2003 concerning the issue. Copies of these statements were also promptly sent to the Inquirer. In fact, the Inquirer website published a news report on January 1, 2004 about the statement of the CPP.

Juan Sarmiento's five part series (December 26-30) in the Inquirer missed out on some important facts while others where presented unobjectively. Yet, even from those articles as well as other accompanying articles and statements, one can cull a generally fair reading of the facts, history, context and turn of events. Sarmiento's series also detailed the decisive positive actions the CPP leadership and organization undertook to stop and correct the grave aberrations and abuse. Earnest readers would have been able to see and conclude for themselves that the erroneous campaigns could not have been intrinsic to the revolutionary movement and to communist ideology and practice.

But the Inquirer's editorial seems not to have even bothered to consider the facts stated in its own newspaper. Instead of looking at the facts straight in the eye, the editorial preferred to base itself on preconceived notions as well as untruths, irrelevancies, half-truths and distortions of fact which would not pass even the most elementary standards of objective journalism. The editorial ended up with the same starting point that it itself critiqued and dismissed as a deterministic view--that "revolutions devour their own children," that the "communist revolution... seems to breed the utter nightmare of paranoia" and that "purges and executions are a way of life" in the CPP.

From its determinist and anticommunist bias, the editorial proceeded with its baseless attack on the CPP. The poverty of the Inquirer's editorial is all the more reflected in its choosing to condemn the CPP for acts which the CPP itself has repeatedly condemned in the strongest and no uncertain terms.

The CPP does not deny and in fact has made public the condemnation and rectification of the errors which were committed during the erroneous anti-infiltration drives. The CPP's self-critical and transparent attitude and its openness, sincerity and zest at rectification in regard to mistakes, in fact, strengthen the Party's unity and raises its prestige among the revolutionary forces and masses.

After decisively stopping the implementation of Oplan Missing Link in the Southern Tagalog region immediately upon learning about it and investigating it at the end of 1988, the CPP's Executive Committee of the Central Committee made a scathing report and denunciation of OPML and meted disciplinary measures against those responsible. In early 1989, it came out with a stringent policy to avoid such further errors and issued "Mga Alituntunin sa Paglilitis ng mga Pinaghihinalaang Espiya ng Kaaway" (Rules for the Investigation of Suspected Enemy Spies) which clarified correct principles and methods regarding investigations, trials and evaluation of evidence. Similar errors in the past were also thoroughly investigated by the CPP leadership.

When the CPP launched a thorough rectification movement in 1992 to correct grave errors in line, policy and practice of the Party and revolutionary movement since the early '80s, the erroneous anti-DPA campaigns were included among those errors that were severely criticized and had to be decisively rectified. The Central Committee reviewed and approved disciplinary action on those responsible for the erronous anti-DPA campaigns.

Clear criticism of OPML, Kampanyang Ahos and other erroneous anti-DPA campaigns were explicitly covered by the rectification document issued by the CPP Central Committee ("Rectify Errors and Reaffirm of Basic Principles") in 1992. The document contains the incisive call for the rectification of grave errors in the '80s that led to the setbacks of the CPP and revolutionary movement for several years. In the same plenum, the Central Committee approved the 1989 EC-CC policy document, reaffirming basic civil rights and due processes guaranteed in the CPP constitution, the NPA rules and the provisions of the people's democratic government.

The Inquirer editorial entirely misses out on the fact that many of the principal leaders of the erroneous anti-infiltration campaigns who refused to face up to their responsibility for such and other grave errors were expelled or expelled themselves from the Party and are now viciously attacking the Party for such errors to cover up for their crimes and mistakes. In the first place, such dishonest, incorrigible and arrogant attitute can never be consistent with Party membership.

The Inquirer editorial also unjustly condemns the CPP for arbitrariness in carrying out capital punishment. It wrongly accuses the CPP of meting punishment on Romulo Kintanar, Filemon Lagman and Hector Mabilangan "on the merest suspicion about their loyalty."

Kintanar was a fully armed combatant and intelligence operative of the Philippine government and its armed, police and intelligence units and had a direct role in armed counter-revolution when he was killed while resisting arrest early this year. He had been charged for many crimes since 1992 for which he was directly culpable, including several killings and involvement in operations of criminal syndicates as well as embezzlement of large Party funds. While it is also true that Kintanar had an indirect hand in the erroneous anti-infiltration campaigns in Mindanao, he was punished not for his responsibility in Kampanyang Ahos.

Mabilangan was also punished for many crimes against the revolutionary movement and the people, including teaming up with criminal syndicates, inveigling NPA guerrillas into committing criminal acts such as bank robberies and kidnap-for-ransom and stealing Party funds.

Lagman was not punished by the CPP. He was killed by his co-renegade Sergio Romero of the RPA-ABB in infighting over proceeds from a multimillion peso bribe in connection with the PEA-Amari land deal and the eviction of Freedom Island urban poor dwellers.

In its conclusion, the Inquirer editorial issued a call for the CPP to submit itself to an investigation of possible human rights abuses. If this were the whole point of the Inquirer editorial, then it need not have to go through dishing out such anti-CPP diatribes.

As a matter of fact, the CPP has long since been pushing for the implementation of the Comprehensive Agreement on Respect for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law (CARHRIHL), jointly signed by the NDFP and the Philippine government in 1998, and the setting up of the Joint Monitoring Committee (JMC) required by the agreement to oversee its implementation, accept complaints and investigate cases of alleged violations. Since the signing of CAHRIHL, the CPP through the NDFP has sought its implementation. But the Philippine government has kept on refusing to implement the CAHRIHL and has been blocking the formation of the JMC.

Despite the GRP's refusal to implement the CARHRIHL, the CPP, the NPA, the NDFP and its allied members have actively disseminated the CARHRIHL document, conducted thorough study and education of its content among their ranks and also among the revolutionary activists and mass base. The CPP leadership has issued guidelines for the its strict implementation.

NPA fighters are specifically required to adhere to the basic principles of respecting and protecting the rights and welfare of civilians as well as the rights of combatants and hors de combat of the enemy armed forces.

If all this is not the very opposite of what the Inquirer editorial calls "Leftist fascism," we don't know what is. Nothing of the sort or even approximating such earnestness and efforts at ensuring the respect of human rights has ever been made by the Philippine government, much less its armed forces.

Anne Buenaventura
Media Liaison Officer
Information Bureau
Communist Party of the Philippines

Email: [email protected]
Website: www.philippinerevolution.org

Reference:
Anne Buenaventura
Media Officer
Cellphone Number: +63910-240-3553



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