The Philippine Press Institute denounced Friday the red-tagging of two Mindanao-based journalists, a religious leader, and a human rights lawyer.
The two journalists, Leonardo Vicente Corales, associate editor of Mindanao Gold Star Daily, and Froilan Gallardo of the Mindanews news service, were labeled as communists in a flyer from a certain “Black Mamba” of the “MAT-NMR Press Club Chapter.
The suspected vigilante group claimed that Corales has a P1-million bounty on his head. It also named Iglesia Filipina Independiente priest Fr. Rolando Abejo and human rights lawyer Beverly Musni as having links to communist rebels.
“The Philippine Press Institute finds the red-tagging of journalists and media organizations baseless and irresponsible. This does not only endanger the profession and render chilling effect but also put the lives of those red-tagged and their families at risk,” PPI said in a statement.
“We urge the government to hold accountable the perpetrators of such false, malicious and dangerous propaganda,” PPI added.
Meanwhile, a ranking member of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict lambasted the communist group for purges that he said contributed heavily to the toll of missing persons.
“We commiserate with the family of missing persons, many of them gone as early as the purging years of the Communist Party of the Philippines in the 1980s,” said Maj. Gen. Antonio Parlade Jr., Armed Forces of the Philippines deputy chief-of-staff for civil-military operations, in a statement sent to the Philippine News Agency Friday.
An estimated 7,000 New People’s Army fighters and their supporters were reported tortured and killed by the CPP during a series of purges aimed at eliminating moles or undercover agents in the rebel ranks.
Parlade said families of these victims are still grieving from this atrocity perpetuated by the CPP-NPA against their loved ones.
“The parents, siblings, and friends of close to 7,000 cadres and NPAs which the CPP admitted to have tortured and killed during their Oplan Ahos, Oplan Zombie, Oplan Olympia, Oplan Kadena de Amor, and Oplan VD are still grieving from this injustice,” he said.
Thousands of these purging victims, he added, remained unrecovered and still lying in hidden mass graves.
“Some are just statistics to us, like the 625 whom the CPP-front organizations like Karapatan, chose to include in the UN List of Enforced and Involuntary Disappearances,” he said.
AFP spokesman Marine Brig. Gen. Edgard Arevalo, meanwhile, said the military is devoted in ending the communist insurgency, after President Rodrigo Duterte urged them to action, saying the country could not afford another 50 years of rebellion.
“We will exhaust all means available—lethal and non-lethal— to hit the enemy and hit them hard,” Arevalo said.
“We will employ the different lines of efforts with other agencies of government address or help alleviate the identified social issues that the NPA [New People’s Army] capitalizes,” he added.