October 27, 2024 | 12:00am
MANILA, Philippines — The National Security Council (NSC) laughed off yesterday the claim by the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) that its chairman, who was arrested on Thursday in Quezon City in a joint military and police operation, is a peace advocate.
“We find as funny and preposterous the claim of the CPP-NPA-NDF that CPP chairman Baylon Villarico is a ‘peace consultant’ and is therefore immune from arrest under the Joint Agreement on Safety and Immunity Guarantee (JASIG) signed way back during the Fidel Ramos administration,” NSC spokesman, Assistant Director General Jonathan Malaya, said.
“The JASIG was terminated by the government in 2017. So what immunity under the JASIG are they talking about? The Joint Oslo Communique of 2023 signed under the Marcos Jr. administration with the NDF did not resurrect the JASIG,” he added.
Malaya noted that the JASIG is as good as dead and the NSC wishes to underscore “that this notorious NPA leader was arrested based on a warrant of arrest issued by the Regional Trial Court of Mauban, Quezon for multiple crimes including extortion, recruiting minors and students to be combatants, violation of Anti-Terrorism Act, rebellion, aside from kidnapping with murder.”
“He is responsible for numerous atrocities against government forces, the killing and liquidation of individuals, terrorist attacks on innocent communities, sabotaging government projects and various extortion and money-making activities in Southern Luzon,” Malaya said.
“He also led violent purges within the CPP-NPA Southern Tagalog Regional Party Committee in the 1980s, where many were executed by his own hands,” he added.
“The CPP-NPA-NDF wants him to get away with murder because he’s a peace advocate? Not so fast. It is time for him to face the court of law and to account for his crimes to the Filipino people,” Malaya said.
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