Reds 'desperate' to keep Joma Sison relevant —Esperon

National Security Adviser Hermogenes Esperon Jr. on Tuesday said the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) is "desperate" to keep communist leader Jose Maria Sison relevant.

In a statement, Esperon said the NDFP's tirade "against me and other government officials are desperate attempts to keep Jose Ma. Sison relevant in the midst of the CPP/NPA/NDF's immense decline."

Last Saturday, NDFP negotiating panel chair Fidel Agcaoili rebuked Esperon for supposedly insinuating that Sison, on self-exile in the Netherlands,  was seriously ill.

He also claimed that Prof. Philip Alston, former UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions, had disproved Esperon's claims that the alleged mass murder of communists in the 1980's was part of "internal purges" of the New People's Army.

Alston supposedly said, "There is no reasonable doubt that the military is responsible for a significant number of the killings and that subsequent evidence points to the continuing nature of that practice.”

Esperon, a former Armed Forces chief of staff, repeated his stance from 2007 and denied Alston's assessment, saying the former rapporteur "did not go to Inopacan nor did he consult the courts where the cases against the CPP/NPA/NDF personalities involved in the purges were lodged."

The rumored purges supposedly took place in the 1980's in the Visayas and in Mindanao, where 1,000 CPP-NPA rebels were killed and 1,500 others tortured and arrested; in Bicol where 2,000 were slaughtered; and Northern and Central Luzon where 3,000 were slain.

"The leaders of the CPP/NPA/NDF responsible for these  killings should account for their atrocious crimes," Esperon said. —Rie Takumi/KBK, GMA News