Tiamzon Couple Among Casualties In Samar Clash?

TACLOBAN CITY – The government is verifying reports that Benito Tiamzon and his wife Wilma Tiamzon, chairman and secretary general, respectively, of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) were killed by military forces in Eastern Visayas, after the pump boat they were riding in exploded and sank in the waters off Catbalogan City in Samar on Monday, Aug. 22.

Joint Task Force (JTF) Storm Commander Maj. Gen. Edgardo de Leon has yet to confirm reports that the Tiamzons were among those who died in the sea craft that was headed south to Buri Islands at dawn.

“As of now, we’re still trying to find out who our troops encountered out there,” he said in a statement in Filipino.

“We really monitor the shorelines in support of the anti-illegal fishing campaign and criminal gangs eluding arrest. This is also used as a mobility corridor by the CPP-NPA (New People’s Army) to transport personnel, guns and anti-personnel mines. This was revealed to us by their former colleagues who’ve gone back to the fold of the government,” he added.

JTF Storm public affairs office chief Capt. Ryan Layug said a tipster sent information that a group of armed individuals boarded a motorized boat with boxes from a shoreline north of Catbalogan.

The spot report of the military stated that troops from JTF Trident and the Team Intelligence Service of the Armed Forces of the Philippines spotted the pump boat – allegedly with the Tiamzons and eight other armed persons – cruising the seas from somewhere in the north and gave chase.

Upon approach, a soldier used a megaphone to communicate with the pump boat and advised the passengers to submit to a plain view inspection.

However, Layug said while the soldier on the megaphone was talking, passengers from the pump boat fired shots at the government troops.

A chase between the pump boat and the army’s two scout boats and two speedboats ensued.

“During the gunfight, for reasons still being determined, the hostile boat suddenly exploded,” he said.

The explosion resulted in the pump boat sinking.

A military officer, who asked not to be identified, told media that the troops immediately scoured the area to search for any signs or bodies of the Tiamzon couple and their comrades.

He said that as of press time, they found no bodies yet but concluded that, with the kind of explosion, no one on board could have survived, prompting the military command to declare that the Tiamzons have been “neutralized.”

The Tiamzon couple, who were facing several standing warrants of arrest for various crimes, reportedly came from Batangas City, out of hiding, to conduct lectures about CPP leader Jose Maria Sison’s writings titled “Reaffirm Our Basic Principles and Rectify Our Errors.”

The Tiamzons couple were arrested on March 22, 2014 and detained at Camp Crame. They were granted bail two years later to enable them to participate in the National Democratic Front’s resumption of peace talks with the Duterte administration. The peace talks, however, collapsed in 2017, but the couple went into hiding and refused to surrender.

The government said that on Nov. 27, 2020, the Tiamzon couple were tried in absentia and convicted for the kidnapping and serious illegal detention of Lieutenant Abrahan Claro Casis and other soldiers in Quezon province in 1988. The couple were meted with a 40-year prison sentence.

Among the existing arrest warrants against the Tiamzon couple were for 15 counts of murder issued by the Regional Trial Court Branch 32 in Manila, and another for frustrated murder and for murder both issued by the RTC in Laoang, Northern Samar.

Search operations for the remains of the Tiamzon couple and their comrades at the explosion site are ongoing.