TRIBUTE TO COMRADES EUGENIA MAGPANTAY AND AGATON TOPACIO
By Jose Maria Sison, Founding Chairman, Communist Party of the Philippines
and Julie de Lima, Interim Chairperson, NDFP Negotiating Panel
December 1, 2020
Julie and I wish to convey the deepest condolences to the children, grandchildren and entire family of Comrades Eugenia Magpantay and Agaton Topacio. At the same time, we pay the highest tribute to them for their martyrdom. Their supreme sacrifice crowns the decades of service that they rendered to the revolutionary cause of the Filipino people, especially the oppressed and exploited toiling masses of workers and peasants.
Having served the people and the revolutionary movement as outstanding patriots and communist fighters, they became members of the CPP Central Committee and Comrade Magpantay was also a former member of the Party Political Bureau until their retirement due to their illnesses. They made significant contributions to the building of the CPP and the NPA, especially in Central Luzon.
In the strongest terms, we condemn the Philippine National Police (PNP) for the cold-blooded murder of Comrades Magpantay and Topacio. As NDFP peace consultants, they were entitled to the safety and immunity guarantees in accordance with the Joint Agreement on Safety and Immunity Guarantees (JASIG). They were in their late 60s and had retired from active service in the revolutionary movement due to health problems.
They were unarmed and were fast asleep at 3 a.m. when the armed minions of the Duterte regime in superior number and under cover of darkness stealthily raided the home of the couple. The cowardly raiders are patently lying by claiming that their victims resisted arrest and their home was loaded with so many weapons that actually belonged to the raiders and planted by them in the notorious Duterte-style of killing people extrajudicially.
The murder of the couple is in brazen violation of the right to due process, the JASIG, the Comprehensive Agreement on Respect for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law and the international law and standards of human rights and humanitarian conduct in war. The barbaric methods used in the mass murder of so many thousands of victims in Oplan Tokhang are being employed in the anti-communist campaign of state terrorism.
The murder of the Topacio couple is similar to the murders of Comrades Randy Felix Malayao, Julius Giron, Randall Echanis and others who have been targeted in the anti-communist campaign of state terrorism. The CPP has strong grounds for holding Duterte, his National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) and PNP Chief Debold Sinas as the masterminds behind the murder of the couple.
Duterte has deliberately terminated the GRP-NDFP peace negotiations, has designated the CPP and the NPA as “terrorist” organizations and has gone on an anti-people, anti-communist and counterrevolutionary killing spree in Metro Manila and the provinces in order to propel his drive for fascist dictatorship. In fact, he has already obtained the so-called Anti-Terrorism Law as the tool for realizing fascist dictaorship even without the formality of declaring nationwide martial law.
Duterte claims to have obtained the license from the outgoing US President Trump to apply the “Djakarta method” and go on an anti-communist killing rampage and he has also boasted of being able to renew the same license from the incoming US President Biden. By all indications, Duterte intends to stay in power as a fascist dictator beyond 2022 or install his presidential proxy by rigging the 2022 presidential elections as he did in the 2019 mid-term elections.
The fast growing number of victims of the Duterte murder machine should alert the entire Filipino nation to further crimes that the tyrannical, traitorous, murderous, plundering and swindling regime is hell-bent on committing in order to keep his ruling clique in power. The Filipino people and their revolutionary have all the just reasons for intensifying their revolutionary struggle for national liberation and democracy against the imperialist and the local reactionaries.
The long revolutionary service of the Comrades Magpantay and Topacio and their martyrdom will inspire the people to fight ever more resolutely and militantly against the the evil Duterte regime and the unjust ruling system. Their martyrdom cries out for justice. Those who are in power and commit crimes think that they can always do so with impunity. But the crisis of the ruling system is rapidly worsening, aggravated by the cruelty and corruption of the Duterte regime and the consequences of the pandemic and the natural disasters.
The conditions are extremely favorable for the advance of the revolutionary movement. As the crisis worsens, it will increasingly make impotent all the brutality and mendacity that the Duterte regime is capable of unleashing. The crimes of this regime are driving more and more people to take the road of revolutionary resistance.
Long live the memory of Comrades Magpantay and Topacio!
Justice to them and all the victims of the Duterte regime!
Intensify the people’s resistance to this evil regime!
Advance the revolutionary struggle for national liberation and democracy!
Long live the Filipino people!
