(Last of three parts)
EL SALVADOR, Misamis Oriental -- Fifteen years have passed since Cristy Coloso witnessed her foster parents' murder. Yet she still trembles at the sight of a gun and suffers from chills at the sound of gunshots.
"I cannot forget," she says. "The images of their death just keep coming back."
Lorenzo and Corazon Coloso, the couple who adopted Cristy when she was a little girl, were gunned down in broad daylight in a town seven kilometers from here in 1985. Members of the New People's Army (NPA) suspected them of being military spies.
The Colosos were the first to be executed among more than 4,000 men, women and children in the rebels' "Operation Zombie," a move meant to purge the NPA ranks of informers for the military.
And though the couple's killers were arrested and jailed in the late 1980s, they are now free after being granted amnesty by the government. Cristy is now asking: Where is justice here?
Sen. Aquilino Pimentel, who had personal knowledge of the purge, described Operation Zombie as a "dark period and unfortunate part of history that has left deep wounds which have yet to heal." Although he believes it is not right to reopen those wounds, Pimentel is asking for justice for the victims and a proper burial for them.
The NPA leadership initially refused to acknowledge responsibility for the murders. In reports published in 1985 and 1986, when most of the so-called zombies or suspected military spies were killed, the NPA Front 12 in Mindanao said those found in mass graves in several areas of the island may have been killed either by soldiers or by private armies.
Ma. Luisa Purcray, who headed the front as Commander Meriam, even turned the tables on the government by saying that those found in the shallow graves in this province and in other areas of Northern Mindanao were victims of military operations.
This seeming attempt at covering up the killings of thousands of civilians in Mindanao appears to have begun from the top of the communist hierarchy.
Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) chairman Jose Ma. Sison, in his recent statement, denied knowledge of the purge, saying he was in jail when the alleged killings occurred.
Speaking from Utrecht, the Netherlands where he lives in exile, Sison said stories of the NPA purge were part of the military's smear campaign against the communist movement which he said is again gaining ground in many provinces of the country.
He also accused President Estrada of linking him to the purge to discredit him and the NPA.
But documents gathered from former rebels gave the purge a different backdrop.
One of the documents which The STAR was able to obtain was allegedly issued by Sison himself using his nom de guerre Armando Liwanag. Written in July 1992, the document exhorted the rebels to "reaffirm our basic principles and rectify errors" while strongly criticizing Kampanyang Ahos or the Garlic Campaign which involved the killing of "demons" among the ranks.
"For some time the campaign was deemed correct on the premise that it probably succeeded in eliminating real deep penetration agents," the documents said. "But hundreds upon hundreds of good comrades and innocent people were victimized and killed."
The document did not mention, though, other similar purges done by the NPA in other parts of the country, particularly in Central and Northern Luzon and the Southern Tagalog region.
In Central and Northern Luzon, The STAR learned that the NPAs came up with a campaign they called "Operation Tide Bar," named after a laundry soap and meant to cleanse the ranks of impurities. In Southern Tagalog, on the other hand, the purge was called "Operation Missing Link."
Among those killed in the Central Luzon purge were Aetas who joined the rebels after being promised that they would regain their ancestral lands should the communists succeed in taking over the government.
These Aetas, however, were used only as mountain guides. After serving their purpose, they were killed and dumped in remote areas.
The rebel leadership in Mindanao, meanwhile, has started secretly compensating the families of their victims.
Wives and children of slain farmers in Taglimao, a farming village near the boundary of Misamis Oriental and Bukidnon, said they have each been offered P10,000 by the NPA as indemnification for the murders. But they decided to refuse the offer.
"What we want is justice, not alms," said one widow who, in the past 15 years, has managed to raise her four children all by herself. "We want those who killed our husbands jailed. It is only when we see them in jail can we say that we have received justice."
The rebels, in extending the offer, wrote their victims' families to apologize for "the short period in the 29-year revolution that we cannot hide nor forget."
"This very dark period of sacrifices should have never happened," they said. "There were a lot of victims who were dedicated masses, activists and party members, guerrillas and some allies," they added.
The rebels said they had acknowledged their error since mid 1988. "We are trying our best to extend justice and indemnification to all victims even in a small amount, little by little," they stressed while saying that they were having difficulty in locating the relatives of the victims and that they were also short of funds.
In conclusion, the rebels said the right way to give justice to those killed in the purge is to declare the victims "heroes of the revolution."
"It is not also proper that we punish the living revolutionaries who are still carrying out the struggle. They have already repented for their mistake and they have already dedicated their lives to the revolution," they explained.
"We assure that this tragedy will never happen again We are not like the enemies and other revolutionaries who do not admit mistakes." -- With a report from Benjie Villa
Editor's note: Ritchie Salloman, a former journalist who wrote about the NPA's massacre of farmers in Taglimao, Misamis Oriental in 1986, was erroneously identified in the second part of this series as a son of a slain farmer. His supposed first-person account published in the defunct Metro Manila Times , The STAR learned belatedly, was based on the recollection of one of the victims' relatives. Our apologies for the error.