SORSOGON CITY, April 3 (PNA) – The Philippine Army (PA) conducting anti-insurgency activities in Sorsogon, a highly communist rebel-infested province southeast of Luzon, has accused the New People’s Army (NPA) of killing a 37-year-old widow human rights activist here.
The Celso Minguez Command (CMC), the local unit of the NPA operating in the area, on the other hand, said in press statement that the death squad of the PA was behind the assassination.
Adelina Jeruz, a member of the Hustisya Sorsogon was fighting for justice for her husband killed two years ago but was herself shot dead by unidentified motorcycle-riding gunmen inside her residence in an outskirt village here Tuesday morning.
At the time of her death, Jeruz was in the process of seeking justice for the gunslaying on April 16, 2007 of her husband Willy Jeruz, a local leader of the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas, an activist group of peasants.
She died instantly from four bullets of cal. 45 pistol pumped into her chest by the suspects who attacked her in broad daylight while she was tending to her sari-sari store at the family residence in Barangay San Juan, some two kilometers from the city proper.
The untimely and savage death of the couple from the hands of ruthless killers orphaned their two young children — Jose Nathaniel, 10 and Adrian, 9.
Lt. Pol Ramos, spokesman of the PA’s Scout Ranger Battalion operating in the province, said the NPA Sparrow Unit perpetrated the killing of the widow human rights activist as well as that of her husband two years ago.
The couple had a grudge against the local NPA rebels and their deaths were punishments based on the “law of the jungle,” Ramos said.
The widow’s execution was also part of the NPA plot to sow terror as it resisted the conduct of the Balikatan Joint RP-US military exercises that formally started Thursday in Bikol particularly the provinces of Sorsogon, Albay and Masbate, all insurgency-infested areas in the region, he said.
The NPA has vowed to conduct all-out offensives to show resistance to the Balikatan activities and possibly thwart the exercises, saying it is part of the government’s anti-insurgency campaign being assisted by the US military.
NPA CMC spokesman Samuel Guerrero, on the other hand, said in a press statement released Wednesday that the liquidation squad of the military was behind the crime as part of the implementation of “Oplan Laya” an alleged plot of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) to eliminate human rights activists in the province.
Guerrero said the widow was key witness in the killing of her husband which was also initiated by the military’s liquidation squad. (PNA)