National Security Adviser Hermogenes Esperon Jr. called the National Democratic Front of the Philippines Tuesday as “desperate” to keep exiled communist party founder Jose Maria Sison relevant in peace talks with the government.
In a statement, Esperon marked out the NDFP’s diatribe “against me and other government officials [as] desperate attempts to keep Jose Ma. Sison relevant in the midst of the CPP/NPA/NDF’s immense decline.”
At the same time, the Communist Party of the Philippines on Tuesday slammed the Armed Forces of the Philippines for allegedly “twisting facts” while trying to cover up military abuses in the evacuation of thousands of lumads in Surigao del Sur.
In a news release, the communist group hit AFP Public Affairs Office chief Col. Noel Detoyato for “dismissing the suffering and hardships of the evacuees by claiming they are only being used in the ‘bakwit tactics’ of the New People’s Army.”
According to the CPP, Detoyato issued the statement after reports said soldiers had been conducting food, aid, and information blockades at Diatagon Gym in Lianga, Surigao del Sur, where 1,600 lumad residents were staying after evacuating from their communities in the previous weeks.
Last Saturday, NDFP negotiating panel chairman Fidel Agcaoili ranted against Esperon for supposedly insinuating that Sison, on self-exile in The Netherlands, was seriously ill.
He also claimed that Professor Philip Alston, former UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions, had belied Esperon’s claims the alleged mass murder of communists in the 1980s was part of “internal purges” of the New People’s Army.
Alston supposedly said, “There is no reasonable doubt that the military is responsible for a significant number of the killings and that subsequent evidence points to the continuing nature of that practice.”
Esperon, a former Armed Forces chief of staff, repeated his stance from 2007 and denied Alston’s assessment, saying the former rapporteur “did not go to Inopacan nor did he consult the courts where the cases against the CPP/NPA/NDF personalities involved in the purges were lodged.”