NEWSFLASH

JOMA DISOWNS MINDANAO KILLING FIELDS, FACES MURDER CHARGES

Cagayan de Oro City, Jan. 19, 2000 Seven former NPA combatants have come forward and agreed to testify in court against Communist Party of the Philippines founding chairman Jose Ma. Sison and three others for the massacre about 14 years ago of at least 60 rebels in Barangay Taglimao here. Multiple murder charges will be filed against Sison and three others, police authorities said yesterday. To face charges with Sison are Maria Luisa Purcray, Loreto Cagals, and Sammy Buntag who are said to have been officials of the New People’s Army in Misamis Oriental at the time of the killings.

Cagayan de Oro police director Supt. Cesar Ouano said the witnesses, many of whom took part in the 1986 genocide, alleged that Purcray, Cagals, and Buntag carried out the killings on orders of Sison.

“Their testimonies all point to Joma (Sison) as the mastermind,” said Ouano.

Purcray, also known as Ka Meriam, was chief of the NPA’s Front Committee 12 operating in western Misamis Oriental in 1986. She had availed of the government’s amnesty program in the early ’90s but went back to the hills.

Cagals and Buntag have also availed of the amnesty program and are said to be working in a poultry farm in Gitagum, Misamis Oriental.

Despite the amnesty, Supt. Ouano said Purcray, Cagals and Buntag are not immune to criminal charges, because they kept the amnesty board in the dark about the Taglimao massacre, Ouano told The Manila Times.

Police said at least eight of the 60 victims have been identified by their relatives through their personal belongings dug from the mass grave. On Saturday, police exhumed the skeletal remains of some 60 NPA rebels from mass graves in Sitio Nabitay of Barangay Taglimao, following a tip from a self-confessed former communist guerilla.

Ouano also cleared Benjamin de Vera, director of the Department of Agrarian Reform in Northern Mindanao, Nathan Quimpo, and Ricardo Reyes, said to be former communist leaders in Mindanao and who were linked by Sison to the Taglimao massacre.

In an interview via overseas phone with a local radio station, the Netherlands-based Sison declared his innocence, saying he did not hold any CPP position at the time of the killings. Sison also condemned the Taglimao massacre and said the CPP has long condemned erring rebels responsible for what he described as “unjust killings.”