(Eagle News)–The Communist Party of the Philippines on Sunday, June 17, said President Rodrigo Duterte canceled the scheduled peace talks on June 28 “in consideration” of what it said was the Armed Forces of the Philippines’ “ongoing campaign plan for all-out military offensive.”
“By calling off the scheduled peace negotiations with the (National Democratic Front of the Philippines), Duterte aims to give the AFP more time to complete its military campaign plan for 2018 of mounting bigger offensives under Oplan Kapayapaan in the hope of crippling the NPA and inducing the NDFP to negotiate a surrender,” the CPP said, noting that Duterte’s “narrow pretext” for canceling the talks was a “thin veil that fails to conceal his real aims.”
Peace Secretary Jesus Dureza had said there was a need to consult the public before the talks could push through.
According to the CPP, the AFP “has recruited at least 5,000 troops last year and seeks to add 10,000 more troops until the end of the year.”
“In doing so, Duterte is enabling the AFP to employ Marawi-style tactics of employing an overwhelming force to wage all-out war against civilian populations in order to claim and control their land,” the CPP added.
As it is, the CPP said “the AFP is mounting large-scale offensives nationwide, laying siege on several hundred rural barangays, targeting civilian populations, occupying schools and barangay halls, and unleashing its fascist brute force against unarmed people.”
It alleged the AFP “carries out aerial bombings, artillery shelling, drone flying and other methods of intimidating the masses..Extrajudicial killings and other grave abuses of human rights and international humanitarian law run rampant.”
“Tens of thousands of peasants and national minority groups have been forced to leave their lands,” the CPP alleged.
In Talaingod, Davao del Norte, for instance, “one of the AFP’s ‘focus areas,’ three battalions of army troops swarm the town’s three barangays,” the CPP said.
According to the group, Talaingod in the Pantaron mountain ranges is where the Manobo Lumad are “struggling to defend their ancestral land.”
“With their overwhelming presence, fascist combat troops of the AFP aim to intimidate the people, force them to ‘surrender,’ force them to leave their communities in order to seize control of the people’s land and resources,” the CPP said.
The CPP alleged the AFP’s “other focus areas” were “the Moro areas surrounding the Liguasan Marsh, Quezon town, Bukidnon; Bilar town, Bohol, General Nakar and several towns in Bondoc Peninsula in Quezon.”
“Clearly, Duterte does not want the AFP’s military campaign plan disrupted by the peace talks,” the CPP said.
Duterte canceled peace talks with the Communists last year citing what he said were their abuses and attacks against soldiers despite an ongoing ceasefire then.
The President later, however, ordered his officials to work toward the resumption of peace talks, saying peace deserved another chance.
Communist leader Jose Maria Sison recently announced backchannel efforts by the government had been successful, with both sides agreeing to the June 28 resumption of peace talks.
But Dureza later said the date had been canceled.
