Arrest of NDFP Consultants Porferio Tuna and Simeon Naogsan violates JASIG, undermines prospects for peace

Published: 21 October 2024 21 October 2024

The arrest of NDFP peace consultant Porferio Tuna by the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) on October 2 in Tagum City and the arrest of Simeon “Ka Filiw” Naogsan in Ilocos Norte this October 21 are clear violations of the Joint Agreement on Safety and Immunity Guarantees (JASIG). Their illegal arrests raise concerns about the government’s sincerity in pursuing a resolution to the decades-long armed conflict in the Philippines. JASIG is a crucial agreement borne out of the peace negotiations between the NDFP and the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP). It ensures the safety of those involved in the peace negotiations.

Ka Filiw is the spokesperson of the Cordillera People’s Democratic Front (CPDF), an allied organization of the NDFP. Ka Filiw actively pushed for genuine autonomy and self-determination of the Cordilleran peoples, opposing big mining concessionaires and infrastructure businesses that are encroaching the mountains and rivers of the Cordilleras.

As NDFP consultant especially during the 2016 negotiations, Tuna provided crucial insights on the conditions of peasants, plantation workers, and national minorities in Southern Mindanao. His contributions helped shape the NDFP’s draft Comprehensive Agreement on Socioeconomic Reforms (CASER), which aims to address the root causes of armed conflict, including by resolving landlessness, exploitation, poverty and the lack of employment and national industries.

By detaining Tuna and Naogsan, the Marcos administration effectively obstructs the path to meaningful socioeconomic reforms in the peace process. Tuna and Naogsan’s arrests are a clear act of reprisal. The charges filed against them are all trumped up cases, which directly contradicts the guarantees provided by JASIG. Signed in 1995 by both representatives from the GRP and the NDFP, the JASIG explicitly guarantees that peace negotiators and their personnel will be free from arrest, detention, or harassment to ensure the continuity and integrity of the peace talks.

Inside jail, reports indicate that Tuna is being subjected to intense psychological torture, coerced by military officers and turncoats working for the US-Marcos regime. Such inhumane tactics highlight the brutal strategy of the GRP, which has long used political imprisonment, harassment, intimidation, abductions, and torture to silence critics and dissidents.

This is also not the first time that the GRP violated the JASIG and other peace agreements in the past years. The arrest of Naogsan and Tuna form part of a disturbing pattern of the GRP’s utter disregard for agreements made in the negotiating table. The killing of NDFP peace consultants Wilma and Benito Tiamzon in August 2022 stands as a glaring example of the GRP’s disregard of JASIG, the Comprehensive Agreement on Respect for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law (CARHRIHL) and other peace agreements. The Tiamzons, senior NDFP officials, were reportedly captured, tortured, and summarily executed by the AFP. The case of Concha Araneta, an NDFP peace consultant and member of the Joint Monitoring Committee based in Panay Island, follows the same deadly pattern. Araneta, a prominent figure in the peace talks, was also assassinated by state forces on August this year. Similarly, the extrajudicial killing of peace consultants Randall Echanis and Ericson Acosta in 2020 and 2022 respectively, highlights the government's continued campaign of violence against those involved in the peace process.

Beyond these high-profile killings, countless other NDFP peace consultants have been arrested, abducted, and forcibly disappeared in recent years. Many remain missing, their fates unknown, in what amounts to a systematic attack against the NDFP negotiating panel, its negotiators and consultants. If the Marcos regime is really serious about resolving the armed conflict in the Philippines, it must stop the state-sponsored attacks on peace consultants, uphold the JASIG, and demonstrate its commitment to the peace process by immediately releasing Porferio Tuna, Simeon Naogsan, and all other political prisoners.

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