NPA couple released

TACLOBAN CITY – After six months in detention, couple Manuel Pajarito and Juliet Fernandez, both acknowledged members of the New People’s Army (NPA), were freed.

On Wednesday night, the couple was presented to members of the media by Lt. Col. Jonathan Ponce to belie reports that the couple was killed by government troops that arrested them last May 11 in a checkpoint in Pinabacdao, Samar. By their own admission, the couple revealed that they were active members of the NPA, the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP).

The couple was presented by Ponce at a safe house located outside the city’s main center on the day the CPP was celebrating its 39th founding anniversary. “The report then that we were brutally killed, and in my case raped, was far from the truth. It was over-acting,” said the 32-year-old Fernandez, who just gave birth to a baby boy last Nov. 21.

Both said Ponce and his men treated them kindly during their stay inside the camp of the 62nd Infantry Battalion, although in the first two months, they were housed away from each other.

It was during this time that Ponce had extracted “substantial information” from the couple.

Fernandez, who is a native of Dulag but lived in Metro Manila, was the chairperson of the education group of the Samar Front Command and was into mass organization (recruitment) activity, while her common-law husband, Pajarito, 26, was a full-time armed member of the NPA operating in Samar.

Days after their arrest, the National Democratic Front, political arm of the CPP, as well as some human rights groups, issued a press statement to the effect that the two were tortured, raped (in the case of Fernandez) and brutally killed by soldiers of the 62nd IB.

They were arrested around 4 a.m. when the van they were on board was stopped in a checkpoint in Barangay Polangi, Calbiga.

The two and their other companions were on their way to the city of Catbalogan for a mission.

They were brought to the 62nd IB.
 Ponce said that they decided to “release” the two to belie reports that they were killed.

“Aside from being trained in the art of warfare, we were also trained as sons and daughters of God. We respect and value the rights of an individual,” the military official said.