NDF consultant Baylosis arrested in Quezon City

MANILA, Philippines — Security forces arrested a ranking communist leader in the first operation against the rebel leadership since President Duterte ended the peace talks last year.

Rafael Baylosis and his companion, Guillermo Roque, were arrested on a tip at a busy intersection in Quezon City on Wednesday in a joint operation of the police and military intelligence, Philippine National Police (PNP) spokesman Chief Supt. John Bulalacao said.

Baylosis headed the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) during the 1980s at the peak of the insurgency against the Marcos regime.

Bulalacao described the 69-year-old Baylosis as the “acting secretary” of the CPP’s guerrilla wing, the New People’s Army (NPA).

Police said the two rebels yielded automatic pistols tucked in their waists when they were arrested by a team of police and military operatives.

Baylosis was the first ranking rebel leader to be captured since the government ended peace talks with the CPP-NPA late last year.

Baylosis was among 18 rebel leaders freed on bail in August 2016 and allowed to travel to the Netherlands as peace consultants of the National Democratic Front (NDF), the political arm of the CPP-NPA negotiating peace with the Philippine government.

Among the freed rebels were the couple Benito and Wilma Tiamzon, the suspected top leaders of the NPA.

Baylosis is facing murder charges after the military discovered the mass grave of 15 suspected government spies in 2006 who were killed in Southern Leyte province.

Duterte ended intermittent peace talks with the CPP-NPA in November and declared them “terrorists,” citing bad faith from the rebels while negotiating peace with the government.

Duterte ordered security forces to rearrest the freed rebels following the collapse of the peace talks.

The NDF described the arrests as “illegal” and a “flagrant violation” of safety guarantees, saying Baylosis was a peace talks consultant.

“This illegal arrest and detention of NDF consultant Rafael Baylosis is a flagrant violation of the Joint Agreement on Safety and Immunity Guarantees (JASIG),” NDF national executive committee member Luis Jalandoni said. ?Militant groups led by Karapatan and Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU) also slammed the arrest of Baylosis.

“The trumped-up charges must stop. Rather than persecute peace consultants, Duterte should resume peace talks on the most important substantive agenda,” said Renato Reyes, secretary-general of the activist group Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (Bayan).

KMU secretary-general Jerome Adonis said the arrest of Baylosis quashed the possibility of the NDF resuming talks with the government and achieving peace in the country.

Officials, however, said Baylosis lost his immunity under the JASIG following the breakdown in peace talks.

“The JASIG is useless now because there are no more peace talks. Why are they citing JASIG now?” presidential spokesman Harry Roque said.

Roque also denied that the arrest violated the Comprehensive Agreement on Respect for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law. 

“If a person is facing charges, if he has a warrant of arrest, he has to be arrested. If he is not arrested, it would constitute a dereliction of duty,” Roque said. 

“If they think the arrest is illegal other than on the basis of JASIG, they can file (a petition for writ of) habeas corpus. After all, there is no martial law in Luzon,” he added. 

Roque also defended the security forces in arresting Baylosis, saying they were executing an arrest warrant for the rebel leader over a series of 1985 purges for which he and several other top NPA leaders were charged with murder.

Baylosis pleaded not guilty to the charge in 2016 and posted bail, after which the NDF said he acted as a consultant in the peace talks.

PNP chief Director General Ronald dela Rosa said the lawmen were just doing their job in arresting Baylosis and Roque. Both rebels were charged for illegal possession of firearms upon their arrest.

“He was carrying a firearm. He is a known personality from the other side,” Dela Rosa said. “We were monitoring him, he was seen carrying a firearm and was arrested.

“This is a problem about insurgency. This is not about politics,” Dela Rosa stressed.

A top security official, however, stressed the arrest of Baylosis is likely to drive some of the freed communist rebels to go underground.

“That’s the problem now. There’s an arrest order for the Tiamzon couple. With Baylosis’ highly publicized arrest, the couple could have already gone into hiding by now,” the security official said.

Security forces are also trying to locate Tirso “Ka Bart” Alcantara, the top NPA commander of Southern Tagalog, the official said.

The military said they are tracking down the Tiamzon couple but declined to discuss the details of their ongoing operations. – With Jaime Laude, Alexis Romero, Emmanuel Tupas, Mayen Jaymalin, Artemio Dumlao, Jose Rodel Clapano, Rhodina Villanueva, Reuters, AFP