NPA forming urban hit squads, CPP confirms
BAGUIO CITY, Philippines — The New People's Army is forming urban hit squads, Communist Party of the Philippines Central Committee information officer Marco Valbuena confirmed just before the New Year.
This, after the communist rebels hinted of reviving teams that targeted police officers, soldiers, government agents and even politicians over "blood debts".
Valbuena said that "there is a standing order for the NPA to form partisan teams to mete out punishment against enemy units and officers who have committed bloody crimes against the people."
He cited as an example the recent "punishment by partisan teams of the NPA some notorious fascist criminals, including Jumar Bucales, who heads a local paramilitary vigilante group responsible for the 2015 Lianga (Surigao del Sur) massacre."
He said that "in due time, the NPA will be able to form more partisan teams who can carry out punitive actions in the cities or close to the cities," adding regional NPA commands have been instructed to form Special Operations Groups for those operations.
Bucales was linked to the paramilitary Magahat-Bagani armed group blamed for the massacre. Despite investigations and Senate hearings into the 2015 murders of Manobo leaders Dionel Campos, Aurelio Sinzo and ALCADEV school director Emerico Samarca, no charges were filed.
CPP founder Jose Maria Sison, in self-exile in The Netherlands, responding to a supposed "popular demand" for the return of the armed city partisans to fight back at "assassinations and impunity by the Duterte regime" claimed during the 52nd founding anniversary of the CPP that there is basis "to conduct armed partisan operations in the cities to mete out revolutionary justice against Duterte's terrorist forces based in the urban areas."
Sison, now chief political consultant of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines, said that "this is up to the leadership of the revolutionary movement to decisively undertake." Although Sison is now called a consultant, he is still referred to by many — including the government — as the leader of the communist insurgency.
The Anti-Terrorism Council has designated the CPP and NPA has terrorist groups, a delcaration that allows the Anti-Money Laundering Council to freeze accounts believed to be being used by the groups.
READ: CPP-NPA designated as terrorist group
Ma. Lourdes Barros of the NDFP International Information Office in Utrecht said in late December that there have been calls "for punitive justice and calls to fight the fascist attacks against unarmed activists and civilians in urban areas by Duterte’s death squads."
The NPA's Special Partisan Units (SPARUs, also referred to as "Sparrows") were first seen in the 1980s, which also saw the rise of the Alex Boncayao Brigade that later split from the CPP-NPA over ideological differences.
Sison said, however, that "there is no need for the revolutionary movement to shift to 'urban insurrectionism'." The CPP-NPA believes in strengthening guerrilla fronts in the countryside to surround urban centers.
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