By Christine F. Herrera

A SURVIVOR claims a militant lawmaker is one of the brains behind the killing of more than 2,000 cadres by the Communist Party of the Philippines and its armed wing, the New People?s Army, in the 1980s.

Robert Francis Garcia says Satur Ocampo, a representative of the Party-list group Bayan Muna, was a member of the Communist Party?s central committee that ordered Oplan Missing Link, the ?nationwide cleansing or purging? of the communist ranks to rid the movement of alleged government spies.

Garcia also named Ocampo?s wife Carolina ?Bobbie? Malay, party founder Jose Ma. Sison, couple Wilma and Benito Tiamzon, Alan Jasminez, Jose ?Pepe? Luneta, Gregorio Rosal alias Ka Roger, Danilo Borjal, and Medardo Buncayo as among those involved in the killings.

The communists have been fighting to overthrow the government for 40 years. Their ranks ballooned during the rule of the strongman Ferdinand Marcos, but it is claimed that its top leadership ordered a purge in the 1980s to rid them of alleged government agents. The purge was said to have led to the death of more than 2,000 communist cadres, and thousands more to leave the movement out of disillusionment.

Garcia says he and fellow survivors have formed a group, Peace Advocates for Truth, Healing or Justice, to document the communists? ?atrocities? and bring them to justice, among other things.

?I saw Ocampo, Bobbie Malay, the Tiamzons, Jasminez, Luneta, Buncayo, Danny Borjal and Amando Teng, all CPP central committee members, in the same camp [in the Sierra Madres] where I was interrogated and tortured,? Garcia said.

?The torture, killing and purging of more than 2,000 communist cadres were ordered by the top leadership of the CPP,? Garcia said. By contrast, the communist leadership has maintained that it was the military, big business and the ruling elite that were behind the murders.

Reached for comment, Ocampo neither confirmed nor denied Garcia?s claims. Instead, he lashed out at National Security Adviser Norberto Gonzales and former Philippine National Police Chief Avelino Razon for inventing the ?malicious yarn.?

Ocampo says the Supreme Court has cleared him of all charges connected with the purges that New People?s Army had allegedly committed from 1969 to 2006. Gonzales and Razon are on a ?fishing expedition? to pin him and Sison down, he says.

(Gonzales says the communists would field Ocampo as their senatorial candidate in the 2010 national elections. ?The CPP is already positioning themselves,? he said. Ocampo says various sectors are indeed offering to finance his candidacy for the Senate, but the CPP is not one of them and he has not yet agreed to the idea. ?It is malicious for him [Gonzales] to cite the CPP as behind the idea,? he said.)

Garcia says only about 10 percent of the victims of the communist purge were found to have been government agents, but the innocents died just the same and only around 46 survived.

?Collectives after collectives were arrested and tortured, the best and the brightest cadres and leaders were killed,? he recalled.

?My seven-man collective was not spared. All of us were tortured, but all of us were cleared of the charges after months of brutal interrogation.?

Garcia says some of the victims were armed urban partisans and unarmed political cadres and student organizers operating in Metro Manila. All were brought to the Cordilleras for torture and execution.

?Judging from the creeping paranoia that gripped the leadership, I thought it was just a matter of time before my team came next,? said Garcia who was arrested and tortured from Nov. 1, 1988 to Dec. 1, 1988. He was then in his early 20s.

Garcia says it was Ocampo and Malay who faced him and reviewed his case while he was being held for torture. Wilma Tiamzon and Teng faced Rogelio Navarro, another survivor. Navarro says Ocampo and Malay escorted him out of the guerrilla zone when he was finally freed in December 1988. He says Rosal and Luneta, who now lives in Minden, Germany, and has long been seeking political asylum in that country, had participated in the torture of the suspects.

?All the arrests, torture and killings were blamed by the CPP leadership on the military. Families of the victims were made to believe that their loved ones were heroes as they died for the revolution during military encounters and ambuscades,? Garcia said.

?The lies they have perpetrated remain to this day. The CPP leadership remains arrogant.? With Joyce Pangco Pa?ares