A PROTÉGÉ of retired Maj. Gen. Jovito Palparan Jr. is reportedly taking charge of military’s anti-insurgency campaign in the Bicol region, a chapter of the human-rights group Karapatan reported.
Army Col. Ricardo Visaya has reportedly taken charge of the military’s counter-insurgency campaign in the Bicol region as the chief of the regional Armed Forces Peace and Development Council. He is reportedly focusing on the urban barangays of Legazpi City, Albay.
The group fears that the campaign will lead to harassment of activists, or worse, the commission of human-rights violations similar to that experienced by activists targeted during Palparan’s stint.
Karapatan-Bicol media information officer Paul Vincent Casilihan said Visaya allegedly possesses the same “brutal quality” and “fascist mindset” of Palparan.
They suspect that Visaya is set to spread state terror in the heart of Bicolandia as head of the military’s peace and development council in the Bicol region.
Karapatan said that so far, Visaya has placed at least eight barangays in Legazpi City, where progressive organizations and party-list groups are based, under tight military watch.
Casilihan lamented that the Commission on Human Rights (CHR-Bicol) had given the go-signal for Army troops under the command of Visaya to use barangay halls, day- care centers, chapels and other public edifices for the counter-insurgency campaign in the urban areas of Legazpi City.
Casilihan said Visaya is Palparan’s alleged partner during the time that extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances of left-wing activists between 2004 and 2010 under Oplan Bantay Laya were at its all-time high.
This, the group said, can happen again, now that Visaya is the chief executive officer of urban militarization in Legazpi City.
“The Internal Peace and Security Plan Bayanihan of President Aquino has commissioned the service of the Palparan-trained Visaya, a veteran of Oplan Bantay Laya during the administration of former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo,” Casilihan said.
Karapatan-Bicol said Visaya was also implicated in other human-rights violations during his stint as commander of Civil Military Operations Battalion in Metro Manila from February to September of 2007.
Karapatan also noted the the Commission on Trade and Human Rights, a labor-based human-rights group, had implicated Visaya in cases of harassment and the vilification campaign carried out by the 27th Infantry Battalion in Polomolok, South Cotabato.
However, military sources said that Palparan, who is now in hiding after being ordered arrested in connection with the disappearance of two University of the Philippines students, was made the “face” of human-rights violation because he succeeded in preventing the Communist Party of the Philippines-New People’s Army from taking over Mindoro Island several years ago.
A senior military official said that “Palparan did not only pushed back the five-year timetable of the CPP-NPA to take over Mindoro. He prevented it from happening.”
Palparan once commanded the Army’s 202nd Infantry Brigade that is battling communist guerrillas in Mindoro.
“The left hates him [Palparan]. They will say anything to discredit him,” the officers said, adding that the CPP-NPA “planned to make Mindoro the Cuba of the Philippines.”
Karapatan is a CPP-associated human rights front organization with chapters active nationwide including the Bicol region. Karapatan assertions concerning COL Ricardo Visaya are clearly meant to discredit him and the highly successful Bayanihan Internal Peace and Security Plan by associating them with BG Jovito Palparan.
ReplyDeleteCommie fronts have conducted a sustained propaganda effort in which they have elevated BG Palparan as the poster boy for military human rights abuses.