How, how de carabao? (suspeced rebels charged with common crimes)

Last November 12, there are was a clash between the police forces in Ifugao and suspected NPA rebels. Four, two women and two men, were arrested while the rest of the group, presumably, managed to live (and fight ) for another day.

On research, their charge sheets (if that’s what you call them) contain a collection of sworn statements from police officials who related the events leading up to the eventual arrest of the four and an inventory of items that were confiscated at the scene. The inventory included personal items such as t-shirts, underwears, beddings and toiletries. It also has a list of food items like noodles, salt, dried fish, and some sort of a first aid kit which included a first-aid handbook, gauze bandages, betadine solution and cotton. Most importantly, it contained numerous plastics with revolutionary writings probably used as a teaching aid, a notebook with revolutionary songs and poems, and other subversive documents, as well as high-powered firearms like a baby armalight and carbine.

With these pieces of evidence obtained from the backpacks that were in the site where the early morning clash happened, the four are most probably the rebels the Consitution was referring to. But their charge sheet contains no conclusion that they are indeed rebels inspite of very incriminating pieces of evidence, and instead they were treated as common criminals and were charged as such.

Instead of a REBELLION charge which is a political crime, these four suspected NPA rebels were charged with ILLEGAL POSSESSION OF FIREARMS with no recommended bail. For thoses not entirely familiar with the NPA or New People’s Army, it is the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines which has been waging a protracted war, as per its Marxist-Leninist-Maoist ideology, for over 40 years to overthrow the government. They are far from the sinister warlords of the Ampatuan Clan who perpetrated the day-time murder of no less than 57 people, including women, journalists and human rights advocates, devoid of any obvious ideology, making the crime a criminal, not political, one. The Ampatuans are currently being packaged as “rebels” and the Arroyo government is bending over backwards to make sure they get what they deserve as such.

Once again, my feeble mind cannot grasp , or rather, does not find acceptable, the logic behind this move. How, how de carabao, indeed?!

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