Read in: Pilipino

Driven by their obsession to whitewash their bloody crime, the police showed their useless trump card – declare their newest victims, Jemar Palero and Marlon Naperi, as members of the NPA. The truth is Jemar and Marlon were not and never have been members of any NPA unit in Bikol.

How many times did the public hear this sorry excuse of an argument? They have brought it into their minds to think that by using the nanlaban or NPA argument against their victim, however brutal their crime, it will be the end of the matter – they will be free from any criminal responsibility and the people’s demand for justice. But they cannot make something true just by repeating the lie endlessly. Pray tell, who in his right mind would still believe that each and every one of the countless children, senior citizens, disabled and sickly they killed, raped, tortured and abused were all members of the NPA? Just about every one who dares to think objectively and criticize the government, NPA. Every one who has principles, NPA. Every one who has integrity and upholds what is just, NPA. Surely, even among their ranks this argument is no longer accepted.

What these foolish police, military and their bosses do not understand is that the more they curtail the democratic space for the people’s practice of their civil rights and liberties, the more they open the public’s minds that absolutely no substantial change is possible and the masses’ voices will always be unheard in a system that only serves the ruling few. In debasing even the most basic of rights, they only push the people to see that this rotten system has no salvation. In killing artists and farmer-activists like Jomar and Marlon who had no weapon aside from their words, it only becomes all the more clearer that the roots of poverty in the country will never be resolved through peaceful means. When the so-called authorities and leaders who should have been protecting the people’s interests are the ones who champion violence and destruction, what else remains to be believed in with this system? Only in the path of armed struggle do the people have a fighting chance. Only in the revolution can there be justice for all the oppressed.

The Romulo Jallores Command-BHB Bikol calls on the public to make the criminal AFP-PNP-CAFGU and the US-Duterte regime pay for their blood debts within and outside the bounds of the courts. Because the laws of the reactionary government are deliberately blind and deaf, take arms and attain genuine justice and equality in the course of the people’s democratic revolution. End Duterte’s tyranny and ensure that no other power hungry tyrants like him shall ever cloak the Filipino society and the people’s future in despair and destruction. The masses are the decisive force. Genuine hope and change lies in their hands. Advance the people’s just war until victory!