EDITORIAL - Beyond amnesty

Human rights advocates welcomed President Marcos’ grant of amnesty on Friday to former communist and Islamic separatist rebels. It was the fulfillment of a promise he had made in his second State of the Nation Address last July.

The amnesty was particularly significant because the dictatorship under the President’s father and namesake was seen as the best recruiter for the Communist Party of the Philippines and its military arm the New People’s Army. The Moro National Liberation Front was also founded in 1972, the same year the elder Ferdinand Marcos placed the country under martial law.

From 1984 to 1986 alone – the years following the assassination of opposition leader Benigno Aquino Jr. until the people power revolt that toppled the Marcos dictatorship – the number of NPA members was estimated to have grown to 24,000.

In September last year, the Armed Forces of the Philippines declared “strategic victory” over the CPP-NPA, whose members the AFP placed at just 1,800. In December, CPP founding leader Jose Maria Sison died in exile in the Netherlands.

The government has forged peace agreements with the MNLF and the MILF, granting the separatist groups authority over autonomous regions. But the Marcos administration has shown no interest in resuming peace talks with the CPP, NPA and their political arm the National Democratic Front.

The amnesty does not cover those who committed massacre, genocide, war crimes, torture, enforced disappearances, rape, ransom kidnapping, drug offenses and crimes committed against chastity or for personal ends. Also excluded, however, are those who committed terrorism, whose definition by the state can be highly subjective under the Anti-Terrorism Act of 2020. This could exclude several of those behind bars.

President Marcos had said that the amnesty was needed for the full reintegration of former rebels into the social mainstream. In the absence of a final, formal political settlement with the communists, the Marcos administration will have to intensify efforts to eliminate social injustice and other root causes of rebellion. As long as the causes remain in place, even those granted amnesty may return to armed struggle.