The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) today said Rodrigo Duterte is “personally responsible for the relentless campaign of killings in Negros” which has already claimed at least eight lives over the past four days.

The CPP said Duterte “incited his armed minions in Negros to carry out the killings by making false claims of that four police officers killed in an NPA ambush last July 18 in Ayungon town, Negros Oriental were tortured.” He announced last July 25 that he will give a P3 million reward to anyone who can “bring the head” of the people behind the ambush.
The killings intensified since then, the CPP pointed out. Most of the victims were previously red-tagged or have been remotely linked to people’s democratic movement in Negros.

The CPP said “Duterte’s military, police and paramilitary death squads are targeting even civic-minded people as communists.”

The CPP dismissed as a fake the spray-painted words “Traidor sa NPA” left on the walls where some of the victims were killed. According to the CPP, those slogans were “obviously left to mislead and cover-up the real identity of the perpetrators.”

The CPP said the PNP is “utterly stupid” if it thinks the people will believe that the NPA is behind the killings based merely on those spray-painted slogans.