By Pip Hinman
As internal debate within the Philippines Communist Party deepens, the Ramos government is seeking to exploit the situation. Within the first two weeks of 1994, a CPP leader aligned with the anti-Stalinist or "rejectionist" wing was assassinated. A few days later, five members of the Negros Regional Party Committee, who have also declared themselves rejectionists, were captured in Bacolod City, Western Visayas.
On January 2 at 1 a.m., Vicente Martinez, a former member of the Visayas leadership of the CPP, was shot dead in front of his wife and son outside his home in Cogao, Antipolo, on the outskirts of Manila. Three gunmen forced their way into Martinez's house and dragged him outside, where they shot him once in the head and several times in the body.
Martinez, formerly vice-commander of the Visayas New Peoples Army and a member of the Eastern Visayas Party Secretariat, had been captured and released by the armed forces in 1992. He was currently working with the new non-government organisation Philippines Ecumenical Action for Community Empowerment (PEACE) Foundation to set up peasant cooperatives in Visayas.
Sonny Melencio, vice president of Makabayan, a new mass organisation, told Green Left Weekly that the murder of Martinez had all the hallmarks of the military-led death squads. "The military are trying to take advantage of the looming split inside the CPP. They have stepped up their salvaging operations, which started with the murder of so-called criminal elements but have now extended to political activists."
Another reason for the military's recent moves in the Visayas region, Melencio believes, is the Ramos government's plans to turn the Philippines into an Asian tiger by the year 2000. Negros and Cebu have both been earmarked as "development zones" in this grand plan. This helps explain why the military would be concentrating on eradicating "hostile" elements in these islands, Melencio said.
According to Romeo Capulong, a human rights lawyer and consultant to the talks between the government and the National Democratic Front aimed at negotiating a cease-fire, the killing of Martinez could "adversely affect" the peace talks. In an interview in the January 6 Philippines Inquirer, Capulong said that the killing could only have been done by the military or other government troops, having been "so well planned".
The executive director of Peace Foundation, Reverend Leonardo Morads, is quoted in the same article as saying that the killing "puts serious doubts on the government's ability to guarantee the free and full exercise by ex-political detainees of their rights as citizens, including the right to pursue their political convictions in peace".
A statement released by the Alex Boncayo Brigade, the urban partisan group connected to the rejectionist Manila-Rizal party committee, accused the military of being the "direct perpetrator" of Martinez's killing, but also held the Sison faction of the CPP responsible for "opening the door for the military's bloody intrigue".
In reply, the Sison faction has accused the rejectionist wing of carrying out the murder, saying that Martinez had distanced himself politically from them.
This has been denied by Ricardo Reyes, the former secretary general of the CPP, and one of a number of leading CPP officials "charged" and "tried" by a "people's court" set up by the Sison faction.
In true Stalinist style, Sison has slandered dissident CPP leaders, including Reyes, Romulo Kintanar, alleged NPA chief, Felimon Lagman, alleged head of the Manila-Rizal party committee, and Arturo Tabara, alleged head of the Visayas regional party leadership, have been variously accused of "dawn-to-dusk womanising and drinking sprees", "gangsterism", "grave abuse of authority" and "corruption of partisan units and men".
The arrests of the five Visayas CPP leaders, including Tabara for whom the military had offered a 1 million peso reward, did not come as a surprise to Melencio.
"The military have been active in monitoring the opposition", he told Green Left. "They want to nip the left renewal taking place inside the CPP in the bud. The 100,000-strong Bonifacio Day mobilisation showed the potential strength of the reorganised anti-Stalinist left, and the government and the military do not want to see a revitalised left opposition in the Philippines."