RETRIBUTION finally came after more than four decades to a victim of the atrocities of the CPP/NPA/NDF when the court sentenced the perpetrator or leader of the perpetrators to life imprisonment or reclusion perpetua.
And it couldn’t come in a better time when we are witnessing the collapse and total defeat of the more than 50 years insurgency problem in the Philippines.
A well-known high-ranking official of the Communist Party of the Philippines – New People’s Army – National Democratic Front (CPP-NPA-NDF) was convicted of murder committed over four decades ago.
The accused was sentenced to life imprisonment simply because the Philippines has long abolished the death penalty and not out of any human rights nonsense. But if most folks, especially the next of kin of the victim, it should be the death penalty. A firing squad at dawn would be appropriate, lethal injection is too lame.
Anyway here are excerpts from the June 30, 2022 issue of Panay News:
NDFP peace consultant gets ‘life’ for 1975 murder
A peace talks consultant of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) based in Panay Island was convicted of murder. The case went back over four decades ago.
A Taguig City Court recently found Maria Concepcion “Concha” Araneta Bocala guilty for the death of Metodio Inisa on the night of Sept. 18, 1975 in Sitio Agbanuod, Barangay Panipiason, Madalag, Aklan.
According to the Armed Forces of the Philippines, Bocala was also a ranking official of the Communist Party of the Philippines – New People’s Army (CPP-NPA) in Panay.
The Philippine Army’s 3rd Infantry Division Public Affairs Office officer-in-charge Captain Kim Apitong said Bocala is the deputy secretary of the Regional Party Committee in Panay of the CPP-NPA-NDFP.
“The court finds that the prosecution was able to prove the guilt of the accused Araneta beyond reasonable doubt for the crime of murder,” read part of the 16-page decision of Taguig City Branch 266 Presiding Judge Marivic Vitor dated June 21, 2022.
The judge sentenced Bocala to suffer life imprisonment and was also ordered to pay the heirs of the victim a total of P300,000 as civil indemnity, moral and exemplary damages.
Inisa was said to have been killed in full view of his relatives after he allowed a member of the Philippine Constabulary to temporary rest in his house.
It should be noted that the CPP-NPA is listed as a terrorist organization by the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the Philippines.
The has been formally designated as a terrorist organization by the Anti-Terrorism Council or ATC on June 23, 2021, citing it as “an integral and inseparable part” of the CPP-NPA created in April 1973.
There is no doubt to any discerning Filipino, particularly the natives of Iloilo, that Concha Araneta’s name is synonymous with more than five decades insurgency problem plaguing the country. She is “up there” with the likes of Joma Sison and Luis Jalandoni.
Concha Araneta was married to Reynaldo Bocala, also a high-ranking NPA leader in Panay who was killed in a police operation in Barangay Balabag, Pavia on May 28, 2021.
While for some people politics is their ‘family business”, for Concha Araneta, the overthrow of the government of the Republic of the Philippines by armed and violent revolution is hers.
On a side note, Concha Araneta is not your naïve ordinary “useful idiot”. She comes from a very affluent family of real hacienderos in Negros and is a graduate of the top exclusive school for girls and a university in the Philippines.
I suppose somewhere along the way of “crayons and perfumes”, JS Proms, teach-ins and the 1st Quarter Storm she got radicalized and chose to be a communist insurgent rather than the carefree whimsical life of a university student.
Concha Araneta was arrested by the military in 1985 but she was released from detention at Camp Delgado in Iloilo City as she then was labeled a political prisoner and supposed to undergo house arrest but escaped.
She was again apprehended in August 2015 and temporarily released in 2016 to join the peace talks in Norway supposedly as an NDFP consultant.
When President Rodrigo Duterte terminated the “peace talks” in 2017, she went in hiding and remained at large to this day.
Hence, retribution finally comes albeit symbolic. Unless she is brought to jail all this is just an empty victory./PN
