Leyte killing field yields four more skeletons

Army troops and police have dug up four more skeletons, believed those of purged communist rebels, from a mass grave in a remote barangay in Inopacan, Southern Leyte.

The discovery brought to 71 the total number of remains recovered from a New People’s Army killing fields located some 370 meters above sea level at a ridge on Mt. Sapang Dako, Barangay Kaulihan in Inopacan.

Around 300 victims of a purge within the Communist Party of the Philippines are believed to have been buried in the killing field called "The Garden" 21 years ago.

Police and military authorities in Eastern Visayas are filing murder charges against exiled communist rebel Jose Ma. Sison, National Democratic Front chief peace negotiator Luis Jalandoni and Bayan Muna Rep. Satur Ocampo this week in connection with the purge.

Sison and Jalandoni, who are living in exile in the Netherlands, and Ocampo reportedly signed the "death warrants" for the victims.

Speaking to reporters at Camp Aguinaldo yesterday, Eastern Visayas police director Chief Superintendent Eliseo de la Paz said the charges would be filed before the Leyte regional trial court in Baybay, Leyte.

On Thursday, troops from the Army’s 802nd Infantry Brigade under Col. Allan Ragpala found 67 skeletons from a shallow grave in The Garden after two days of digging.

De la Paz said military investigators are compiling more documentary and testimonial evidence against Sison, Jalandoni and Ocampo.

Maj. Gen. Rodrigo Maclang, Army 8th Division commander, said residents of barangays within the Mahaplag-Baybay-Inopacan complex, a known stronghold of the NPA’s Evelyn Dublin Command, are helping troops in locating more mass graves.

"The CPP-NPA claim that the recovery of the mass grave was a recycled government propaganda is highly incredible," he said.

"How can we possibly transport all those remains to the area that is 1,000 feet above sea level. The local people themselves have been helping our troops in digging up skeletal remains in the hope of finding their missing love ones."

Army K-9 units were also flown to the site to assist troops in finding more skeletons in The Garden, he added.

Two former NPA commanders and a rebel organizer, who witnessed the killings, faced the media at Camp Aguinaldo yesterday to tell their story on what really happened within the Eastern Visayas Regional Party Committee in 1985.

Zacarias Piedad, former company commander of the NPA’s Southern Leyte Front Committee, said Sison, Jalandoni and Ocampo, then CPP Central Committee members, ordered the launching of Oplan VD (Veneral Disease).

"The central committee ordered us to clean our ranks of the VD, a contagious disease," Piedad said, referring to suspected government spies who were arrested and subsequently killed.

"VD is a germ that if left unchecked is highly contagious that could affect the movement," Piedad said.

Piedad said he personally saw the order signed by Sison, Ocampo and Jalandoni to purge the Leyte Front Committee of infiltrators whom the central committee called "germs."

Asked why he is telling his story only now, Piedad said had he come out before the capture of Glicerio Larona, Southern Leyte Front Committee chief, he would have been dead by now.

"He is a ruthless commander," Piedad said. "He acted as a judge and an executioner."

Larona, also chief of the Evelyn Dublin Command, was captured by Army troops in a clash in a barangay in Padre Burgos town in Leyte last June 4.

Piedad’s allegations against Sison, Jalandoni and Ocampo were supported by another former NPA commander, Leonardo Tanaid, of Barangay Kaulisihan.

Tanaid claimed that as platoon commander of the Evelyn Dublin Command, he and his men secured the "arrested" infiltrators before they were made to face an NPA kangaroo trial.

Tanaid said he witnessed how the victims were tortured before they were hacked or knifed to death.