DND chief: Joma, not military, is serial killer

As far as the Defense Department is concerned, there is a killer out there, and it is Communist Party of the Philippines founding chairperson Jose Maria Sison.

Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana issued the statement in response to Sison's recent comments on the killing of nine sugar workers in Sagay, Negros Occidental over the weekend.

In a post on Tuesday, Sison, citing the statement of the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) which tagged former members of the Revolutionary Proletarian Army (RPA) as suspects in the killing of the Sagay farmers, claimed that RPA is a paramilitary auxiliary group of the Armed Forces and the police.

“The so-called RPA has long been a paramilitary auxiliary of the AFP and PNP and is practically a private gang of the provincial governor and sugar landlords. However. The Duterte regime, the AFP and PNP cannot escape responsibility for the continuing existence and crimes of the RPA. The RPA always operates under the command and direction of the AFP and the PNP,” Sison said.

Lorenzana, however, shrugged off Sison’s claims.

“Yeah, right. Coming from the mastermind of the Plaza Miranda bombing, the killing of hundreds of New People’s Army cadres suspected of being agents of the government, as well as the killings of innocent civilians in the past 50 years,” Lorenzana said.

“Come on, Mr. Sison. Don’t be quick to point your finger as your other fingers are pointing back at you. You have been unmasked as the man behind these atrocities by no less than your former comrades,” the Defense chief added.

Lorenzana said Sison's psychological warfare no longer works and that the self-exiled communist leader does not command respect among the insurgents anymore.

“Nobody, even your so-called fighters, believes you anymore. You will be consigned to the dustbin of history as a pathetic revolutionary failure who has achieved nothing of note but who, instead, wrought bloodshed and suffering to the Filipino people,” he said.

Earlier, Philippine National Police chief Director General Oscar Albayalde said that “all indications suggest the participation of the CPP/NPA (New People’s Army” in the Sagay massacre supposedly for “CPP-NPA's pursuit of Oplan Bungkalan at Okupasyon.”

Albayalde claimed that ‘Oplan Bungkalan at Okupasyon’ is a “a grand design to occupy private and government property using their mass base and to create untoward incident only to blame it on the government.”

The Armed Forces of the Philippines, on the other hand, also claimed that the massacre of the workers in Sagay City was part of the Oust President Rodrigo Duterte plot being hatched by the communists.

The Department of Agrarian Reform has created a task force to look into the incident. The National Bureau of Investigation and the Commission o Human Rights are also undertaking their own investigation.

Duterte was scheduled to visit the kin of the fallen farmers on Tuesday, but it was postponed due to inclement weather. — Llanesca T. Panti/RSJ, GMA News