Reds behind 3 militants’ slays — PNP

Maintaining that there are no government-sponsored killings of militants, the Philippine National Police (PNP) said there is evidence that the New People’s Army (NPA) itself was behind the murders of three activists in Eastern Visayas.

In a statement, the PNP’s Task Force Usig, headed by Deputy Director General Avelino Razon, said the rebels’ Eastern Visayas Regional Party Committee (EVRPC) ordered the executions of municipal agrarian reform officer Paquito "Pax" Diaz, lawyer Fedelito Ducut and Rev. Edison Lapuz.

Masked men shot dead Diaz, Eastern Visayas chairman of the Confederation for the Unity, Recognition and Advancement of Government Employees (COURAGE), in front of his house in Tacloban, Leyte last July 6.

Ducut, regional coordinator of Bayan Muna, was gunned down inside a jeepney in Tacloban on March 14 last year.

Two months later, Lapuz, a former council member of the Promotion of Church People’s Response in Eastern Visayas, was attacked inside his home in San Isidro, Leyte.

According to Task Force Usig, communist leaders had accused the three militants of financial opportunism.

The task force said the EVRPC found Diaz to be allegedly using his position for money-making ventures, including those with local politicians.

Diaz eventually sought police assistance after receiving death threats from the communist movement.

"Diaz’s request for police security bolstered suspicion that he was a police informant and his repeated failure to attend meetings was interpreted as an admission of guilt," the task force said.

Ducut, meanwhile, was reportedly ordered killed because of his role in the purchase of defective equipment worth P1.4 million for terminated sugar workers.

Communist leaders accused Ducut of receiving a kickback of P140,000 and failing to remit the workers’ earnings to the Regional Peasant Alliance.

Lapuz, according to the task force, was accused of juggling funds generated through pledges, donations and solicitations by the National Council of Churches in the Philippines (NCCP).

The task force has begun counter-checking the names in the list of slain militants after Anakpawis member Edwin Alfaro Mascariñas, who was reported killed two years ago, turned out to be alive.

Razon believes that militant groups have bloated the statistics to put the government and the PNP in bad light.

In another development, suspected communist rebels gunned down a police corporal here Saturday night, more than a month after a young Army officer was killed in Calumpit town.

Police said PO3 Roberto de la Cruz, 37, assigned to the provincial intelligence and investigation bureau, was walking toward the town proper to check a videoke machine he had ordered when two motorcycle-riding men blocked his path.

Probers said the backrider tried to shoot De la Cruz but the trigger jammed, giving the policeman a chance to try to grab the firearm.

During the scuffle, the gun went off, with the bullet fatally hitting bystander Rigor Buenviaje, 29.

But the motorcycle driver turned out to be armed himself. He shot De la Cruz, who was killed on the spot.

Before they fled, De la Cruz’s attackers left leaflets from the so-called "Socialist Revolutionary Movement-Marxist Leninist."

The group tagged De la Cruz in the rape-slaying of a saleslady last December.

But Superintendent Sheldon Jacaban, De la Cruz’s superior, and leaders of militant groups doubted if such a group exists.

Jacaban said De la Cruz was serving a six-month suspension in connection with the charges which his girlfriend, a ranking police officer herself, filed against him. — With Dino Balabo