Military readying raps vs activists

MANILA, Philippines — The National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) and Philippine Army are preparing to file criminal charges against environmental activists Jonila Castro and Jhed Tamano.

Both will be facing perjury and other possible cases for allegedly betraying the country’s legal system by executing affidavits that they are members of the New People’s Army (NPA) and its allied groups and that they are voluntarily surrendering to the military, only to recant during a live press briefing in Plaridel, Bulacan last Tuesday.

James Clifford Santos, associate solicitor of the Office of the Solicitor General and spokesman for NTF-ELCAC’s legal cooperation cluster, said what happened forms part of the demolition tactics of the communist rebel movement.

Santos described the incident as “a grand scheme to hoodwink the government” – undermining its efforts to offer better and more peaceful lives to former NPA members – and support the left’s ultimate goal of impairing the public trust.

One of the immediate remedies, he said, would be the filing of perjury charges based on how Castro and Tamano made a “willful and deliberate assertion of a falsehood.”

The NTF-ELCAC, at a virtual press briefing yesterday, noted that photo and video evidence showed a surrender to two mayors in Bulacan and the 70th Infantry Battalion of the Philippine Army and witnessed by Castro’s parents, the Commission on Human Rights in Region 3 and the Public Attorney’s Office.

Castro even admitted on video that she is an NPA member, who became a combatant of the Lino Blas Command, while Tamano admitted to being a member of the Kabataang Makabayan.

Undersecretary Ernesto Torres Jr., executive director of the NTF-ELCAC secretariat,