LETTER

The AFP is the definite culprit in Balao’s Abduction

Shameful, cowardly and accountable – the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) exemplifies such all at the same time in their recent attempt to pin the blame on the New People’s Army (NPA) for the case of James Balao, legal activist and the Cordillera region’s first desaparecido.

Balao, who was last seen on September 17 in Tomay, La Trinidad, Benguet, was standing waiting for a bus, bound for vacation when a van pulled near and armed men stepped out to forcibly “arrest” him, as one of these men announced according to witnesses, on charges of him being a “drug pusher”. Fact-finding missions, however, failed to find Balao at places where he should rightfully be, assuming that he was indeed arrested – military camps or regional offices of the Philippine National Police.

The pinpointing of this illogical AFP on the NPA is easily refuted by the fact that the revolutionary army is by the people and for the people – a solid fact this puppet Arroyo administration and its lackeys should know. Secondly, the NPA places high value on human rights, vastly enough to cover proper conduct on civilians and prisoners of war - yet another characteristic that the AFP has not, in any way, managed to either learn or simply just ceased to practice.

Thirdly, Balao, with Mountain Province roots, has been significantly active in conducting researches concerning indigenous peoples, and is surely not in any way connected to the armed movement or a possible subject of revolutionary justice as he is obviously serving the masses through legal and legitimate means.

It should therefore be clear that Balao’s disappearance boils down on his active participation on people’s issues – that which deemed by this US-Arroyo regime as a part of the communist insurgency and therefore terrorism. On the record-high cases of human rights violations which includes political killings, surveillance, harassments and enforced disappearances, it has been clear that the government and not the revolutionary movement is accountable.

The Leonardo Pacsi Command ultimately declares the AFP as culprits in Balao’s abduction and condemns the scapegoatism of Arroyo’s pawns. Such attempt to fool the masses is futile as the entire nation already knows such dirty work of the military, as this US-backed Arroyo’s tool in their devious attempts to counter the inevitable uprising.

It is in this light that the LPC challenges the AFP to leave legal, unarmed activists alone and should instead be one with the people in dismantling the fascist, reactionary, puppet regime as perpetuator of oppression. Or instead concentrate in their desperate attempts in liquidating the armed insurgency by 2010 as they claim. Leonardo Pacsi Command NPA Mountain Province