Anakbayan chairman Vencer Crisostomo at a rally (photo from http://thepoc.net/commentaries/18422-facing-repression-aquino-govt-intensifying-attacks-vs-activists-critics.html)
The chairman of the activist youth group Anakbayan has raised the alarm over what he said were “several incidents of suspected military surveillance and harassment against me.”
In a blog entry in the Philippine Online Chronicles, Vencer Crisostomo said he was preparing to leave his Quezon City home to join Labor Day protests on May 1 when, “at around 9 in the morning, a neighbor reported that a blue van was spotted slowing down in front of our house … seemingly doing surveillance.”
“At least four men were inside the van. (The neighbor) said that at least one wore camouflage pants and military jackets were hanging at the back of the van, visible through the rearview mirror,” he added.
Crisostomo said the neighbor reported the van to security guards of their housing village who confirmed that the driver “identified himself as MSgt Federico Sagun Tambacao, Jr. and presented an military ID card.”
However, Crisostomo said the men in the van “did not know and could not tell the guards the exact address of their destination,” which prompted a guard to follow the vehicle and eventually ask them to “turn back and leave the village.”
After the May 1 rally in Mendiola, Crisostomo said he was talking to a colleague when “I noticed a man holding a cellphone who kept looking at me from a few feet away.”
Suspecting the man was tailing him, the Anakabayan chairman said he approached the rally stage to get out of his follower’s line of sight and then jumped onboard a jeepney ferrying other youth activists away.
The man he suspected of following him stood up, “anxiously searching, and looking at the direction where I initially went,” Crisostomo said.
“This incident is the latest among the many cases of suspected military activities targeting me and other activist youth leaders,” he said. “A few months ago, suspected military agents broke into the venue of our youth leaders’ meeting in the middle of the night and stole all our laptops and gadgets.”
He also cited “more than a dozen other cases of military attacks against the youth.”
Crisostomo said the government’s recent moves to terminate peace talks with communist rebels “could also be an indication that it is planning to intensify military offensives and step up its attacks against activists.”
Citing records from the human rights group Karapatan, Crisostomo said there have been 137 extrajudicial killings, 72 incidents of torture, 498 illegal arrests, and 30,260 victims of forced evacuation under President Benigno Aquino III.
http://www.interaksyon.com/article/60983/activist-youth-leader-bares-alleged-military-surveillance-harassment
Vencer Crisostomo is an example of how a CPP activist rises through the ranks of various CPP front organizations. Back in 2008 he was the president of the radical CPP student front, the League of Filipino Students (LFS), an organization active at a number of Philippine colleges and universities. Since then he as risen to become a key officer in both the sectoral front organization Anakbayan (Children of the Nation) and the CPP-linked party-list political party, Kabataan (Youth).
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