On Dec. 12, the Regional Trial Court Branch 51 in Puerto Princesa City delivered a guilty verdict for six suspected communist rebels, known as the Palawan 6, on charges of illegal possession of firearms and explosives. Domingo Ritas, the seventh accused, succumbed to cancer three years ago. Trumped-up charges against human rights workers, the accused and their friends cried. For the government, however, the conviction concludes a successful campaign against the communist insurgency in Palawan.
The group of seven was apprehended at a checkpoint in Palawan’s capital city on Oct. 4, 2019. Authorities were looking for Ritas, a lower-ranking commander of the NPA in Palawan. Ritas’ companions at the time were a former secretary general of Karapatan Southern Tagalog, the Palawan coordinator of the College Editors Guild of the Philippines and Kabataan Partylist Party, an organizer of Pamalakaya Palawan chapter, two members of the local affiliate of Katribu Southern Tagalog, and the wife of the top NPA commander in Palawan. Yes, Jenny Ann Bautista, a volunteer staff member of Karapatan, also happened to be the wife of Alimar Libuna Toting — the then-commander of NPA Palawan — and mother of his child. A month after Bautista’s arrest, Toting surrendered with seven of his men.
The arrested persons and their supporters have consistently insisted that the late Ritas was Antonio Molina, a local peasant leader. But whether Ritas or Molina, he was identified as Ka Tino by, among others, former rebel “Shin.” Her handlers entrusted her to Ritas’ group when she was 14, two years after her mother passed away. Her father, Eddie Gumanoy, was murdered by government forces when she was 3.
According to “Shin” (who didn’t surrender but simply walked out of the rebel camp), Glendhyl Malabanan (the former Karapatan Southern Tagalog secretary general arrested with Ritas) in 2008 took her, her mother and two brothers from Luzon to Palawan where they would live under false identities. This “relocation” happened after Shin’s two older sisters, one a captured rebel, had sought the assistance of the AFP to escape the communist movement.
Ronces Paraguso, also of the Palawan 6 and affiliated with CEGP and Kabataan Palawan chapters, was found guilty by the RTC of Brooke’s Point (in southern Palawan) of engaging in recruitment activities and other activities for the CPP-NPA and Kabataang Makabayan (KM). KM is the underground youth organization of the national democratic movement. Incidentally, the Facebook of CEGP features photos of KM’s Dec. 16 march in Manila. CEGP stressed KM’s point that “the youth can only champion nationalist and democratic change when they take up arms and join the people’s revolution.” Or, as expressed in an article posted on the CPP-NPA-NDF website: Through activities by their university and community-based chapters in various cities and provinces, “KM emphasized their call to the youth to join the [NPA].” The photo of masked marchers accompanying the article has no attribution but is a trimmed version of one found on CEGP’s FB page.
The Palawan 6 were convicted in what may have been a rare win for the government. In Negros Occidental, for instance, several similar cases have seen the accused walk free. Carmen Jonahville Matarlo and Michael Tecson, who were arrested in Himamaylan City, Negros Occidental, on March 18, 2022, were found not guilty of possession of firearms and explosives. High-ranking CPP-NPA leader and “NDF peace consultant” Ramon Patriarca, in whose company Matarlo and Tecson were when they were arrested, is still in jail. He is reportedly facing 10 cases of murder before the Tagbilaran City RTC. Matarlo was a Kabataan party-list coordinator for Cebu and Central Visayas after graduating from UP Cebu. Tecson, on the other hand, is the son of Alberto Tecson, Pamalakaya Guihulngan City chair, who was brutally murdered by vigilantes on July 24, 2017. He was one of several victims of revenge killings following the unprovoked massacre by the NPA of the Guihulngan City police on July 21, 2017. The NPA murdered seven persons, six of whom were policemen.
There are inconsistencies as to what Tecson and Matarlo were doing in Himamaylan. A news report says they were campaigning for a political party (Kabataan, presumably). But at the time of their arrest, the official line was that they, with Patriarca, were doing peace talk-related research on the plight of the local farmers even if the peace talks had long been called off by then.
Inconsistencies or not, and I myself am probably guilty of being inconsistent, I am happy for the young couple. Michael Tecson saw his own father murdered in retaliation against what was indeed a horrendous crime but a crime that the older Tecson had no hand in. He was just a convenient and easy target. There was no justice for the Tecson family as there has been no justice for countless other victims of insurgency-related violence perpetrated by both sides in Negros and elsewhere. There can be no real peace without at least a measure of justice.
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This column was first published in The Manila Times today, January 6.
