The Regional Committee of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and the Regional Operational Command (Chadli Molintas Command) of the New People’s Army (NPA) in the Ilocos-Cordillera Region (ICR) vehemently condemn the ruthless murder of Comrades Julius Soriano Giron, Ma Lourdes Denero Tangco, and Arvie Alarcon Reyes. Such cold-blooded carnage by Philippine state security forces is a war crime and a clear violation of the articles of war and the Comprehensive Agreement on the Respect of Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law (CARHRIHL), signed by both the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP) and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) Negotiating Panels on March 16, 1998, and approved and signed by both Negotiating Panels’ corresponding principals, NDFP Chairperson Mariano Orosa and GRP President Joseph E. Estrada on April 10, 1998 and August 7, 1998, respectively. Hence, the revolutionary mass movement petitions urgently the creation of an international fact finding mission to investigate the heinous butchery as an added case to the war crimes against humanity already filed to the International Criminal Court (ICC) against President Duterte and his lawless army and police commanders.

The three (3) unarmed comrades were mercilessly slaughtered by the joint operatives from the Philippine Army (PA) and the Philippine National Police (PNP) forces inside a residential house at 3:30 AM, March 13, at Hamada Subdivision in Barangay Queen of Peace, Baguio City. To cover up their war crimes, the army units from the Northern Luzon Command (NOLCOM) and the PNP troopers – who came from the National Capital Region Police Office (NCRPO), the Police Regional Office Cordillera (PROCOR), and the Baguio City Police Office (BCPO) – created an imaginary story, well publicized in print media and broadcasted in TV channels and radio stations nationwide. They deceitfully claimed that they were serving arrest and search warrants from the National Capital Judicial Region, signed by a certain 2nd Vice Executive Judge Ferdinand Baylon. They added a byline lie that the 3 resisted arrest, ensuing a firefight that resulted to their death.

However, the Baguio General Hospital (BGH) medico-legal crew and the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) initially told that the 3 were fired at close-range. Comrade Julius had 7 wounds and the most fatal shots were on his head. Comrade Ma Lourdes got 6 bullets, again with gunshots that cracked her head. And Comrade Arvie had 4 bullets on his chest.

Comrade Julius Soriano Giron is the second NDFP peace consultant, cold-bloodedly butchered by the US-Duterte Regime (USDR). The first was NDFP peace consultant Randy Felix Malayao, shot dead by Duterte’s assailant inside a bus in Aritao, Nueva Vizcaya at 2 o’clock in the morning of January 30, 2019. These slaying episodes concretely prove the insincerity of autocrat Duterte as regards the peaceful resolution to the armed conflict.

In reality and through Executive Order 70, signed on December 4, 2018, dictator Duterte has already killed the peace talks between the GRP and the NDFP by directing his pro-US imperialist army and police forces to implement his “Whole-of-Nation Approach” (WONA) whose main objective is to “End Local Communist Armed Conflict” (ELCAC). But like other counter-insurgency operation plans by past fascist regimes, WONA-ELCAC will certainly fail again because it does not at all and will never address the root causes of the intensifying armed conflict. It outrightly conceals the fact that US imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism are the continuing three (3) root causes of the people’s war being launched nationwide by the NPA, the revolutionary army of the exploited and oppressed Filipino people.

Tyrant Duterte’s WONA-ELCAC is definitely enflaming the Filipino masses to arm themselves and join the NPA in the intensifying people’s war for national liberation and people’s democracy. The exploited and oppressed classes more and more realize that armed revolutionary resistance is necessary, just and legitimate to liberate themselves from Duterte’s rampant fascism, corruption, plunder, repression and abuses in order to achieve a just and lasting peace. They more and more recognize that just and lasting peace can only be attained by firming up the people’s democratic power to overthrow the USDR and establish a truly democratic government that genuinely serves the Filipino people’s interests and advances the agrarian revolution and national industrialization in order to lay the foundations of a Philippine socialist society.

The deaths of some revolutionaries due to the murderous fascist state – like what has happened to Comrades Julius Soriano Giron, Ma Lourdes Denero Tangco, and Arvie Alarcon Reyes – do not lead to the death of the Philippine revolution, but rather nourish the seeds of revolution to grow to plenty of gigantic trees for the unceasing creation of a robust forest among the Filipino masses. SOME TREES MAY DIE BUT THE FOREST CONTINUES TO GROW WIDER AND LIVE FOREVER!