By NDFP Human Rights Committee
NDFP Human Rights Committee Chairman Fidel Agcaoili hit today the announced P15M bounty for Prof. Jose Maria Sison, chief political consultant of the NDFP, and Gregorio "Ka Roger" Rosal, spokesperson of the CPP, by the Department of Interior and Local Government as "preposterous and the height of cover-up and impunity for the armed minions of the Arroyo regime."
"This is but another ridiculous public stunt of the Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo regime to lay the crimes of extrajudicial killings of activists on the feet of the NPA and the revolutionary movement. In the face of the findings to the contrary of UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executionsPhilip Alston and countless other highly credible international groups such as Human Rights Watch of the culpability of the GMA regime and its agents in the wanton murder of unarmed social activists, this move again highlights this regime's twisted scheme to wriggle its way out of its crimes," he remarked.
Agcaoili added that even governments and parliaments such as the European Parliament have recognized the findings of the Alston Report as well as the GMA regime's own Melo Commission on extrajudicial killings as expressed in a resolution it passed on March 2009.
"It is only the GMA government that believes in its own innocence on the killings of activists. Its persistence in blaming the revolutionary movement is deeply insulting to the victims and their families seeking for justice and the international community that has put tremendous pressure on the regime to solve extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances and other gross human rights violations," he stated.
Agcaoili believes that the new bounty is another way of the GMA government to fabricate cases especially against Professor Sison.
"The dropping by Dutch prosecutors of the case against Professor Sison on March 31 is a sore defeat for this criminal regime as its plot to get Professor Sison expelled from the Netherlands crumbled to dust. It is very likely that the AFP, PNP and the criminal minds of the likes of Eduardo Ermita and Norberto Gonzales are again building up fake cases and laying down the ground for false testimonies to continue its obsessive prosecution of Professor Sison," he relayed.
Agcaoili also expressed that the bounty scheme will only likely be used by the GMA regime to prop up its killing machines and thereby intensify extrajudicial killings and other attacks on civilians, activists and its perceived opponents especially now that the 2010 elections are coming.
"This regime is so fearful of getting booted out of power for it knows that the people's movement will never let them off the hook for its criminal actions. The P25-M allotted by the GMA government and the P23.5-M allocation of the DILG are the pot money that very possibly will only be used to step up killings of activists and militarization of communities nationwide," he further added.
Finally, Agcaoili called on the people not to get deceived by the recent move of the GMA government.
"GMA, her cohorts and henchmen, and butchers such as Palparan are the ones liable for the spate of killings against progressives. No bounty is even needed for their arrest," he concluded.