GINGOOG CITY—The village chief of a former stronghold of the New People’s Army (NPA) in Misamis Oriental has presented to a member of the government peace panel a manifesto expressing his peoples’ desire to live in peace—free from any interference from the government and the Communist front that once made their village a “war zone.”
Barangay chairman Paquito Daao of Kibanban, Balingasag, Misamis Oriental, handed over to Fr. Albert “Paring Bert” Alejo, SJ, a copy of the “Lantad Manifesto” wherein the villagers spelled out their desire for the government and the Communist Party of the Philippines-New People’s Army-National Democratic Front (CPP-NPA-NDF) to respect their right to self-determination.
Alejo, a member of the Reciprocal Working Committee on Socio-Economic Reforms (RWC-SER) of the government panel negotiating peace with the CPP-NPA-NDF, gladly accepted the manifesto.
He, however, urged Daao to also give a copy of the manifesto to the CPP-NPA-NDF panel. He also promised to bring the manifesto to the attention of the government peace panel.
“If you have any suggestions, comments and agenda you want both panels to discuss and take up during the talks, it would be better to give both panels copies of these documents,” he said in his keynote address during Thursday’s Joint Provincial Peace and Order Council Meeting of Misamis Oriental and Agusan del Norte here which was highlighted by Daao’s giving Alejo of a copy of the Lantad Manifesto.
The manifesto, which was read during the Joint PPOC meeting, demanded that the government and the CPP-NPA-NDF respect their decision to live in peace.
It cited the Comprehensive Agreement on Respect of Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law (CARHRIHL), which was signed by the GOP and the NDF in The Hague, Netherlands, on March 16, 1998.
Particularly, it cited Part III, Article 2 of the CARHRIHL, which “seeks to confront, remedy and prevent the most serious human rights violations in terms of civil and political rights, as well as to uphold, protect and promote the full scope of human rights and fundamental freedoms….”
In a chat after presenting Alejo with their manifesto, Daao told the BusinessMirror in the dialect that they are sick and tired of war, having grown in sitio Lantad, barangay Kibanban and experienced the conflict there in the 1970s to the early 1990s.
Daao said it was not just the NPAs who violated their human rights but also the military, saying that the Lantads bore the brunt of both the military’s anti-NPA Operation Ahos and the NPA’s Operation Zombie.
Operation Zombie carried out the death penalty to people the NPA suspected of being deep-penetration agents (DPAs). Operation Ahos resulted in the killing of hundreds of suspected DPAs and sympathizers.
Daao said, “We are still at war,” explaining that “this time, our war is against the widespread poverty of our people.”
