Early dawn last Friday a combined team from the Philippine National Police and the Armed Forces of the Philippines armed with a warrant of arrest from Danao City Regional Trial Court judge Sylvia Paderanga arrested a certain Ricardo Bellamia who professed to be a labor leader. That’s what most of them say in their defense.
However intelligence sources say he was the man behind the Dec. 12, 2002 attacks against the 78th Infantry Battalion in Barangay Kaurasan, Carmen, Cebu, where seven soldiers were killed, and another attack in Barangay Calagaan in Tuburan, Cebu on Sept. 17, 2003. He is also held responsible for many other attacks on the military prior to that dramatic announcement that Gov. Gwen F. Garcia made a year ago when she declared an all-out war against the communist underground movement in Cebu.
This arrest proves to us that the Communist insurgency is still very much alive in Cebu. But despite the Governor’s call for all-out war against the Communists, this move has not resulted in the bloodshed that was predicted and propagandized by the militant front organizations, those unabashed sympathizers of the CPP/NPA. Congratulations are in order to the joint AFP-PNP intelligence group for bagging what is tantamount to the biggest fish that was ever caught in Central Visayas in this decades-long insurgency. This goes to show that despite the absence of a real shooting war, the AFP/PNP Intelligence people have not been sleeping on the job.
According to Sr. Supt. Augusto Marquez, Jr. Chief of the Regional Intelligence Division of the PNP, Bellamia is the Secretary of the Regional White Area Committee (RWAC) a legal front of the CPP/NPA and has been tagged as the Deputy Secretary of Cebu Island Command (CIC) and the Front Committee II in Cebu and Secretary of Kumiting Rehiyon sa Sentral Bisayas. That makes Bellamia a member of both a legal front organization and a top officer of the underground movement. This proves that the Communists are running out of people, they are now merging the legal fronts with the NPA, which was not allowed in the past.
Bellamia violated the most basic rule of the underground movement by returning to his residence in Oslob, where he was captured. I heard that this fellow is suffering from arthritis, which is probably why his tired of running in the hills and mountains and decided to return home.
On the propaganda front, that story peddled by the militant group Karapatan that came out of page 2 of the Philippine Daily Inquirer last Nov.1st that soldiers of the 78th IB “kidnapped and grilled” an eight-year old girl in Tuburan proved to be a sheer falsehood! The girl was apparently taken into the temporary custody of Rogelio Barcenal and his wife according to Myrna Romero a rebel returnee. Karapatan’s story boomeranged on them!
This story tells us that newspapers like the Inquirer ought to double check (to prevent being electrocuted) their reports especially when they get it from highly questionable sources like Karapatan whose agenda is to discredit the military. But this has not only embarrassed the Inquirer, it proves once more that the Communist insurgency is fought with innuendoes and lies.
Finally, still on the Communist insurgency, another mass grave has been discovered this time in barangay Sinoron, Davao del Sur, which according to Southern Mindanao Regional Police Director Chief Superintendent Andres Caro III, had the skeletal remains of some 50 people who were summarily executed by the NPA suspected of being “Deep Penetration Agents” or those members of the Communist Party of the Philippines.
These people were either sick or tired of their useless political war waged against the established government of the Philippines or they were really undercover agents of the military, who were executed upon the orders of the politburo, perhaps with the nod of Jose Maria Sison. There were at least four shallow gravesites in this latest discovery in the vicinity of barangay Sinoron. Now those skeletons are demanding Justice!
How did the military come to find those mass graves? Well just like the discovery of mass graves in Inopacan, Leyte last year, they were reported by former NPA members who have since returned to the fold of the law. The mass graves were the result of the great Communist purge in the mid-80’s where thousands of Communist cadres were executed on mere suspicion that they might return to the fold of the law or were merely grumbling against the CPP/NPA leadership for fighting a remote-controlled war from faraway Utrecht in the Netherlands. While I believe that the Communist insurgency is waning down, the NPA still poses a threat in the countryside.