The Regional Committee of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and the Regional Operational Command (Chadli Molintas Command) of the New People’s Army (NPA) in the Ilocos- Cordillera Region (ICR) fervently condemn the ruthless massacre of Comrades Julius ‘Ka Nars’ Soriano Giron, Dr. Ma Lourdes Denero Tangco, and Arvie Alarcon Reyes, perpetrated by the barbaric killing machine of the fascist US-Duterte regime. The three unarmed comrades were mercilessly slaughtered by joint operatives from the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and the Philippine National Police (PNP) inside a residential house at 3:30 AM of March 13 in Hamada Subdivision, Barangay Queen of Peace, Baguio City.

Such a dastardly criminal act bespeaks of a paranoid regime vainly seeking to end the revolutionary armed struggle. For failing to successfully crush not even a single unit of the NPA in the guerilla fronts, they aimed their lethal bullets to an ailing and aged Ka Nars, his attending physician and his aide. And immediately after, the generals of the AFP Northern Luzon Command (NOLCOM) and the PNP Regional Office Cordillera (PROCOR) arrogantly announced their “outstanding accomplishment”. Elated over their “accomplished mission”, they overzealously await their impending reward of promotion and millions of coveted bounty for Ka Nars’ murder. But the additional medals and insignia these military and police officers shall claim and brandish are not decorations of honor and heroism. They are awards of disgrace and cowardice blemished by the blood of their hors de combat victims.

To justify their Gestapo like operation of conducting a raid at dawn, officials of the AFP-PNP wove a ridiculous fairy tale, well publicized in print media, TV and radio stations nationwide. Complete with posted photos of the massacred victims with planted firearms beside their bullet riddled bodies, the AFP- PNP deceitfully claimed that they were “serving arrest and search warrants” and that “the three resisted arrest, ensuing a firefight that resulted to their death”.

Comrade Julius ‘Ka Nars’ Soriano Giron is the second NDFP peace consultant, butchered in cold- blood by the US-Duterte regime in Northern Luzon. The first was NDFP peace consultant Randy Felix Malayao, murdered by Duterte’s death squad while asleep inside a bus in Aritao, Nueva Vizcaya at 2 AM of January 30, 2019.

With overbearing arrogance, the fascist generals of NOLCOM and PROCOR even went to the extent of declaring that with the death of Ka Nars, the CPP-NPA in the Ilocos Cordillera Region will “finally be crushed within six months”. But the frenzied execution of revolutionaries and civilians under the US-Duterte Regime’s Oplan Kapanatagan, such as the recent crimes committed against the three comrades in Baguio, can never quell the people’s armed revolution nor derail its advancement.

Oplan Kapanatagan’s vicious attacks against the revolutionaries and the people is definitely further arousing the Filipino masses to arm themselves and join the NPA in the intensifying people’s war for national liberation and people’s democracy. The exploited and oppressed classes more and more realize that armed revolutionary resistance is necessary, just and legitimate to liberate themselves from the ruling class and the reactionary state’s rampant fascism, corruption, plunder and repression in order to achieve a just and lasting peace.

As the fascists are celebrating the murder of Ka Nars, the people’s revolutionary fervor is further inflamed. And as Ka Nars sang during his last moments with comrades, “tatanda at lilipas din ako, ngunit mayroong prinsipyong iiwanan sa inyo”, his shining legacy as a pioneer revolutionary in Northern Luzon shall continuously serve as a beacon for the revolutionaries and the masses in pursuing the advancement of the people’s democratic revolution until final victory. ###