MANILA: A Philippine couple who led one of the world’s longest-running Maoist insurgencies was killed several months ago, communist rebels and security officials said on Thursday.
Communist rebel leaders Benito Tiamzon and his wife Wilma Tiamzon had been on the run since 2017, a year after they were freed on bail to help talks in Norway to end a conflict that has killed tens of thousands.
Then president Rodrigo Duterte shelved the peace talks, alleging the duo were not interested in making peace, and signed an order declaring the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and its armed wing “terrorist organisations”.
The CPP’s New People’s Army, which the Tiamzons allegedly led, has been fighting for more than 50 years to overthrow a system it says has created one of the largest rich-poor divides in Asia.
The CPP said in a statement on its website that its central committee had concluded that the Tiamzons and eight others had been tortured and killed by the military in August.
Capt Jefferson Mariano, a spokesman for the 8th Infantry Division of the Philippine Army, said the 10 rebels were killed in a firefight at sea off the central city of Catbalogan in Samar province.
“Their boat was about to be apprehended by our troops when they fired back. Then for whatever reason, the boat suddenly exploded,” Mariano told AFP.
He said those killed could not be identified but described them as “high-value targets”.
The CPP, however, said the group had been travelling unarmed on a highway in Samar when they were apprehended.
“According to the information gathered by the Central Committee, the Tiamzons suffered severe beating in the hands of their captors,” it said.
Secretary Eduardo Ano, the Philippines’ national security adviser, said officials had long suspected the Tiamzons were dead.
“Finally, the terrorists have been forced to admit what many of us have suspected many, many months ago,” Ano said in a statement.
In 2020, a Manila court sentenced the couple in absentia to 40 years in jail for abducting four soldiers near Manila in 1988. The soldiers were released unharmed.
The NPA is one of the deadliest armed groups in the Philippines but the military estimates its strength is down to about 2,000 members from a peak of 26,000 in the 1980s.
President Ferdinand Marcos said in March the battle with communists was “coming to an end”.
