NDF pledges revolutionary justice for Rebelyn’s killers
The National Democratic Front of the Philippines-Southern Mindanao condemns in the strongest possible terms the senseless and violent murder of Rebelyn Pitao.
Rebelyn’s father is Leoncio Pitao a.k.a. Ka Parago, one of the most sought-after commanders of the New People’s Army in Southern Mindanao. But Rebelyn herself was a non-combatant. She was a school teacher, a substitute teacher in a Roman Catholic school in Toril, Davao City. Creating a peaceful niche of her own was her sole contribution to her father’s war.
The 10th Infantry Division-AFP, embarrassed by the NPA’s battlefield victories at their expense and shamed by palpable and repeated proof of their corruption and incompetence, begrudged this small amount of peace that Rebelyn had found. These men decided they wanted a small measure of success against Ka Parago in any way and snuffed out his child’s life as brutally as they could.
Elements of the Military Intelligence Battalion and Military Intelligence Group of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) took her at gunpoint while she was on her way home. They hogtied, tortured, and raped her and threw her half-naked corpse in a ditch.
And then the AFP, the Philippine National Police (PNP), and Malacanang had the temerity to assure the Pitao family that they would find Rebelyn’s killers and mete out justice.
These proclamations not only insult the intelligence of the Pitao family and rub salt to their wounds, they defame the memory of Rebelyn. These promises of justice mock the hundreds of murders, enforced disappearances, and harassment against civilians and hors de combat all over the country who have yet to have a taste of such justice.
These unsolved murders and enforced disappearances that have been perpetrated under the fascist Arroyo regime attest not just to its mere ineptitude in serving justice for the people. It speaks of a systematic state-sponsorship of these dastardly acts through Oplan Bantay Laya, the latest counterrevolutionary campaign with the doomed ambition of crushing the CPP/NPA/NDF by 2010.
Backed by the most rabid anti-communist hysterics of Norberto Gonzales, Romeo Intengan, and carried out by fascist generals like Maj. Gen. Raymundo Ferrer and Maj. Gen. Reynaldo Mapagu of the 10th ID-AFP, Gloria Arroyo is on a blind rampage to defeat the surging People’s War through Oplan Bantay Laya.
For the people and for Ka Parago, Rebelyn’s death and those of 1,000 other victims of extra-judicial killings will only prove the correctness of waging a revolution against this rotten and criminal regime and will serve as an inspiration to carry on.
It is revolutionary justice that the Pitao family and the Filipino people pin their hopes on. And revolutionary justice is what Rebelyn and all the oppressed peoples will attain.
(Sgd) Rubi del Mundo
Spokesperson
National Democratic Front of the Philippines
Southern Mindanao
