The New People’s Army (NPA) has denied having a hand in the mass grave discovered last July 22 in a rice field in Barangay Pagsangahan in San Francisco, Quezon province, which contained 40 human remains, as it turned the tables on the military for making up the issue to prop up propaganda against the communist group.
In a statement, Armine de Guia of the NPA’s Apolonio Mendoza Command in Quezon province, said
“the issue of mass grave is not new. This is part of the arsenal of propaganda that the AFP (Armed Forces of the Philippines) repeatedly use(s) against the NPA whenever it runs out of propaganda issues. This has been used several times in the past and it will be use(d) in the future.”
De Guia asserted that “the bones and skeletal remains discovered in the supposed mass grave are either victims of military’s brutality or those stolen by them from public cemetery.”
She said the issue of mass graves was the military’s way of “wash(ing) its hands and cover(ing) the victims of its brutality in Quezon.”
Farmer Rommel Malinao of Barangay Pagsangahan accidentally discovered the mass grave while tending his rice field. He subsequently reported it to the Army’s 74th InfantryBattalion (IB), which has jurisdiction over the area.
Further diggings yielded some 40 human skeletal remains in the grave site.
The military branded the site an alleged mass grave of victims of the NPA’s purging of its ranks in the 1980s and early 1990s.
In the 1980s, the military uncovered the NPA’s “Oplan Missing Link,” the alleged mass purging implemented by the NPA in an attempt to cleanse its ranks of suspected deep penetration agents (DPAs).
On August 2006, a mass grave was also discovered at Sitio Mount Sapang Dako, Barangay Kaulisihan, Inopacan, Leyte.
From 2009 to 2012, several mass graves were discovered by the soldiers of the 9th Infantry Division in Gubat town in Sorsogon, Barangay Taplacon in Camalig, Albay and in Labo, Camarines Norte in Bicol Region.