Photo by Asian Correspondent
The NDF-Mindanao strongly denounces AFP Col. Isidro Purisima, commanding officer of the 402nd Brigade based in Surigao del Sur, for using the notorious Magahat-Bagani paramilitary group to threaten the lives of journalists who were assigned to cover the CPP’s 47th anniversary celebrations.
By allowing criminal paramilitary groups to issue death threats against members of the press, Col. Purisima has made the mass media a veritable target of state terrorism. This is not only a grave affront to the integrity of the press but an act in outright contempt of press freedom. It violates media people’s right to life and free expression as well as subvert their duty to inform the public, which is a tenet held inviolable even by the 1987 Constitution.
Since Col. Purisima took over the 402nd Bde by mid-2015, direct terror attacks against peasant and Lumad communities in Surigao del Sur and Surigao del Norte have escalated. Under his command, extra-judicial killings perpetrated by his troops and paramilitary groups have intensified, such as the Tabugol murders on August 28, the Han-ayan massacre on September 1 and the killings of two barangay captains. With communities brutally terrorized, thousands have been displaced in the short time that he had held his post, such as those from the 5 towns of Surigao del Sur and from Agusan del Sur. And, reports have it that Purisima’s troops also raped a blind woman in Tago sometime in October.
Apart from these vile acts of terror, Col. Purisima has now conspired with the Philippine Information Agency (PIA), a government-run news ‘media’ agency, and the ANAD, a group formed by the swindler Alcover and the dreaded criminal Palparan, to engineer a brazen deliberate attack against the mass media, guests and the people to discourage them from attending the 47th CPP anniversary celebration in any part of Caraga.
This terrorism is akin to tactics used during Martial Law, later developed and used to the hilt with bloody results even under Corazon Aquino and the regimes that came after. Under BS Aquino III, this is part of Oplan Bayanihan’s brutal methods to suppress intensifying people’s dissent and to render the revolutionary movement irrelevant.
In spite of the Purisima-Magahat-Bagani threat, however, journalists from major cities in Mindanao and even from as far as Cebu were not easily dissuaded from covering the CPP’s anniversary celebration held somewhere in Agusan del Norte. They simply refused to surrender the integrity of the press to the whim of Col. Purisimaís thugs and criminals.
For this, the NDF-Mindanao and the entire revolutionary forces commend members of the press for remaining steadfast in upholding their rights and duty. As journalists, they have displayed an uncommon audacity that will ensure, for years to come, the preservation and defense of press freedom.
Col. Purisima’s vile death threats also targeted CPP’s invited guests and the masses in general. But, despite this, the people also refused to cower in fear, that is why the CPP’s 47th anniversary open celebration in Northeastern Mindanao Region was a success, with more than five thousand people in attendance, and a considerable number of guests graced the event. In other guerilla fronts in NEMR, Party Anniversary celebrations were also successful, and so with all the celebrations in other parts of Mindanao.
Over the last two weeks of December alone, AFP units in Caraga have also repeatedly violated their own ceasefire declaration, which began Dec. 23, 2015 and ends Jan. 3, 2016, by launching military operations in Sitio Han-ayan, Brgy. Diatagon, Lianga and in other municipalities in Surigao del Sur reinforced by cannon fire and by the Phil. Air Force’s indiscriminate bombings. On Dec. 18, five days before their ceasefire declaration, AFP troops burned down houses in Km. 16 also in Brgy. Diatagon.
We call on the people of Mindanao to stand united in vehemently condemning the AFP 402nd Brigade’s Col. Purisima in particular and the US-Aquino III regime in general for brazenly using elements of notorious paramilitary groups, who are in fact wanted criminals, to suppress, with impunity, press freedom and other basic civil liberties. #
(sgd) Ka Oris
Spokesperson
NDFP-Mindanao
http://www.ndfp.org/402nd-brigade-co-purisima-behind-death-threats-against-journalists/
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.