By CPP Information Bureau
It has been close to two months since a warrant was issued by the Malolos Regional Trial Court for General Palparan’s arrest for the abduction and illegal detention of UP students Karen Empeño and Sherlyn Cadapan. To this day, the fascist butcher remains at large. Everyday that the indicted fascist criminal Gen. Jovito Palparan continues to enjoy freedom, the more the anguish suffered by the victims of his years of fascist rampage. The longer the Aquino regime fails to bring him to justice, the more the Filipino people’s anger builds up.
In failing to put General Palparan behind bars, the Aquino regime is making a mockery of its own justice system. The longer General Palparan evades arrest, the more credulous are reports that he is being coddled by high-ranking military and police officers and supported by big bourgeois compradors who have benefited from his brutal suppression of the people’s democratic struggles.
General Palparan has long been indicted for war crimes and gross violationVs of human rights in Mindoro, Eastern Visayas and Central Luzon. These include the extrajudicial killings and abductions of scores of peasants and workers, hundreds of cases of illegal detention and torture and the imposition of martial law policies in rural communities in violation of democratic rights. Such brutal methods of suppression were employed by General Palparan to instill fear into the people and make them bow to the reign of terror.
He was the epitome of the Arroyo regime’s brutal rule and served as the model of the AFP’s Oplan Bantay Laya. He is an anti-democratic and anti-patriotic zealot who considered anyone who stood up and raised his fist against oppression and exploitation a “threat to national security.”
Such dogma upheld by Palparan was reflected officially in the AFP’s “Know the Enemy” document and lectures which was used by its officials and men as their guide in directing their effort and aiming their weapons against the unarmed people who fought for land reform and peasant rights, wage increases and better working conditions and stood up against destructive mining operations and other policies and programs which harmed their rights and interests.
Such fascist dogma was never repudiated by Aquino nor by the AFP. The AFP has never officially repudiated Palparan nor his methods of brutal suppression. Aquino’s “peace and development” and “human rights” are empty rhetoric that simply camouflage the continuing war of suppression directed against the people and their democratic and patriotic movement.
As such, General Palparan is being coddled in more ways than one under the Aquino regime. For his valuable service to the reactionary system, he is being afforded all possible accomodation, both legitimite and otherwise.
Thus, the people’s quest for justice and to make General Palparan pay for all his crimes can never be fully attained under the reactionary system. General Palparan will simply join all the reactionary criminals of the past–from Marcos to Arroyo–who in the end enjoyed the fruits of their service to the imperialists and the local exploiting classes.
It is just and necessary for the thousands of victims of General Palparan’s brutal methods to step forward and demand that he be punished under the laws of the reactionary system. They should put to task the reactionary system and its current caretaker, the Aquino regime, for violating its own laws as well as international covenants of human rights and humanitarian law in having failed to put to justice General Palparan and other officials responsible for fascist crimes.
At the same time, the people’s democratic government reserves the right to exercise its political authority and state powers and subject Gen. Jovito Palparan to the revolutionary justice system. As a representative of the democratic interests of the Filipino people, the people’s democratic government is capable and determined to attain justice for all the victims of war crimes and gross violations of human rights committed by General Palparan and his ilk.
It is a matter of obligation to the Filipino people and state responsibility that the people’s democratic government undertake the necessary measures to put General Palparan under its duly authorized judicial organs. As such, the central organs of the CPP are authorizing all units of the New People’s Army, including the people’s militias, to take General Palparan into custody or do battle with him should he put up violent resistance. Once in custody, General Palparan should be brought to the central authorities tasked to convene a people’s court to try him for his crimes and render the appropriate verdict.
The Filipino people demand justice for all the crimes of General Palparan. The people’s democratic government will make sure that their clamor will not go unheeded.