Non-refoulement, or how Utrecht has shielded Joma for the past 31 years, and counting

By Lt. Gen. Antonio Parlade

ACCUSATIONS of red-tagging by the government will not stop, as expected, and so we don’t stop explaining and exposing why this is so. But let us explain a bit why Jose Maria “Joma” Sison’s stooges won’t stop accusing the government of human rights abuses and of being fascists and tyrannical.

Non-refoulement is the principle under international human rights law that guarantees that no person, such as a political asylum seeker, can be returned to a country where they would face persecution, torture, punishment and other irreparable harm.

The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) propaganda machinery must continually maintain the perception of “all relevant conditions, including the existence in the state concerned (Republic of the Philippines) of a consistent pattern of gross, flagrant, or mass violations of human rights” in order to keep Sison in Utrecht, the Netherlands.

The non-refoulement principle is contained in United Nations Resolution 47/133, Article 8, paragraph 2 of 1992 and this is what the Dutch court has been invoking to prevent Sison from being repatriated to face charges of genocide. The moment the international community, especially the European Union and the United Nations Commission on Human Rights are convinced that our country is safe for Joma to return immediately, he will be sent home by the Dutch government.

This explains why the CPP and its propaganda machine is hell bent on projecting an image of this administration, and all administrations in the past for that matter, as human rights violators. That’s the reason why when the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) consistently achieved zero human rights violation for the past seven years, the CPP was frantic. Suddenly they started classifying the anti-drug campaign as political in nature. It is not. It is a law enforcement campaign targeting criminal syndicates. Incidentally, many of these syndicates are also run by politicos and scions of the oligarchy. Along Taft Ave, there is a posh condominium where the sons and daughters of the rich and famous conduct regular drug sessions. They felt they were “untouchables” until the Rodrigo Duterte government came.

Suddenly, the law enforcement operations against these drug syndicates have been sensationalized. True, there were some who were innocent victims for “statistics” or “accomplishment” but they suddenly have to bloat the figures of those killed in the drug war to 27,000. Where did that figure come from? From fabricated reports of these CPP propaganda machinery whose objective is to project the administration as a human rights violator.

This is the same story line that they tried to project during the Simultaneous and Coordinated Law Enforcement Operations last March 7. As if in chorus, all these front organizations of the CPP, including the usual critics of the government were quick to declare that those arrested or “murdered” were activists: union worker, labor leader, fisherfolk, peasant farmer, whatever. Not to be left behind are their contacts in the UN and the International League of Peoples Struggles led by its chairman emeritus, Jose Ma Sison. The same condemnation was heard from many sectors, including the Church.

But thanks to social media, almost at the same time when Karapatan was sending messages to the media, accusing soldiers of blocking the relatives of the dead from retrieving the cadaver of the four “activists” in Antipolo funeral homes, there was also a video circulating clearly showing Karapatan members violently banging the gates of the funeral home, creating alarm and scandal which is a clear violation of the law, until the police arrived. It was later learned that the real relatives were actually inside the morgue, with the dead and some security personnel, and could not leave because they were being blocked inside by the Karapatan members. The latter also barred Department of Social Welfare and Development officials from entering the compound and prevented them from talking with the relatives and providing assistance. In short, these violent Karapatan members were trying to retrieve the bodies, use them for their propaganda, and prevent the government from providing support to the relatives.

This tactic of Karapatan is not new. This is what they do, react (quick reaction team of CPP) every time there are members of the New People’s Army (NPA) killed or captured by the government. Do they care about the human rights of other ordinary individuals hurt in some way during skirmishes? No. This tactic is in fact the main indicator or gauge we have learned in the AFP to confirm whether the casualties in an armed engagement are indeed NPAs. We never miss.

Going back to the CPP propagandists’ claim that the police targeted simple activists and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights’ (OHCHR) prejudgment that it was a crackdown on legitimate dissenters after being red-tagged by the government, the noise was literally everywhere. But thanks again to the social media, the great equalizer, and lo and behold, some of these pictures and videos of the fallen suspects started circulating, clearly establishing that indeed they were not activists. They were combatants wielding high-powered armaments. And then there was silence, an eerie silence from Cristina Palabay, the secretary general of Karapatan who accused me of being a murderous criminal. Did she just accuse me of ordering the killings? It’s a serious imputation, Miss Palabay, and I really hope you have evidence. You can get away with alarm and scandal, but you cannot get away with those libelous claims.

Meanwhile, we ask Miss Palabay and other detractors to comment on the evidence circulating in the social media. In this battle called information warfare, those who possess the facts and wield the truth win. How then can Cristina Palabay and Karapatan dispute that their members are very much involved in the armed group NPA, with those pictures and video of Palawan sec-gen Glendhyl Malabanan during her NPA training? How can Nimfa Lanzanas refute the fact that they are a family of NPAs? What about Ariel Evangelista Padua, the “fisherfolk” with an M203 grenade launcher? And the others which the courts, by the way, had an easy time issuing the warrants because of the preponderance of evidence and testimony that they indeed possess arms and explosives?

But thanks to the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict, we have now have a quick statement from our UN permanent mission to Geneva delivered by Second Secretary Enrik Revilla which invoked our right to reply and appealed to our international stakeholders and to the OHCHR to stop making sweeping prejudgments on incidents in the Philippines without first verifying facts on the ground. Indeed, this violates the principles of objectivity and non-discrimination that the council upholds. In our reply, biased statements by the UN called the police operations as arbitrary killings. The nine killed were “presented as activists, that is, until more information surfaced about firearms, ammunition, and explosives in their possession, and for some of them, proof of their identities as combatants of the NPA. Statements were later recalibrated, but not before their dangerous consequences were unleashed.”

The statement reminded the UN of the allegations in 2010 of the Morong 43 whom they claimed were health workers, only to figure later after their release, in bloody encounters with government troops as NPA combatants. In June 2020, Lorelyn Saligumba Farah was killed in another firefight with troops in Baco, Oriental Mindoro, making her the 21st of the 43 alleged “health workers” to be killed or captured by government forces.

So when will these lies and propaganda of the CPP end? Until the people are enlightened enough and declare that the 52 years of CPP’s deceit and violence are simply too much for us to swallow.

(Original article from The Manila Times)