Rest in Peace, Rustico Tan.
Over the last decades, many MSC confreres have chosen to leave the congregation, starting a new life. Sometimes, we are in touch. More often, we lose touch. When those who have shared years of lives die, it is an opportunity to remember them and their lives.
Who knows where our lives lead us?
Rustico Tan was one of the Filipino students who came to Croydon for their theological studies in the late 1950s and through the 1960s. Rustico Tan was at Croydon in the second half of the 60s. He returned to the Philippines in troubled times which had an intense impact on his life when he left the priesthood. Here are two reports, one from the Catholic Asian network, Ucan, and one from the significantly name site, Defiant.
Ucan Report
A former priest and chief negotiator for a Philippine rebel group has been shot dead at his home in Cebu province, police said.
Rustico Tan, 80, was shot several times while he slept in a hammock at his home in the town of Pilar in the central Philippines on May 28.
Tan left the priesthood several decades ago and joined the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP), a coalition of left-wing groups.
He went on to serve as a peace negotiator for communist rebels in peace talks during the administration of president Corazon Aquino and was still serving the rebels as a peace consultant shortly before his death, according to police.
A police spokesman in Cebu denied rumors police may have been involved in the shooting due to Tan’s links to the rebels and their armed wing, the New People’s Army.
“Tan’s killing seems to have something to do with a personal grudge. An investigation is still ongoing,” Sergeant Florente Gorrea said.
Clearly, this killing has the aim of driving terror into the hearts of the people and their revolutionary forces
The Communist Party of the Philippines [CCP], however, blamed current Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, saying Tan’s murder was part of an orchestrated campaign against senior rebel figures.
“The fascists are targeting peace consultants who are in their senior years ... Clearly, this killing has the aim of driving terror into the hearts of the people and their revolutionary forces,” CCP spokesperson Marco Valbuena said in a May 29 statement.
Several figures linked to the NDFP have been killed in recent years.
Peasant leader and activist Randall Echanis was killed in his home in Quezon City in the Philippine capital on Aug. 10 last year.
Anakpawis, a left-wing political party, said Tan was “summarily executed” following a directive from Duterte “to take no prisoners” in quashing communists in the Philippines.
Duterte’s spokesperson said on May 20 that communist rebels would be hunted wherever they were regardless of age. “Justice will catch up with them,” Harry Roque said.
www. Defiant report
The news item was about an alleged high-ranking leader of the New People’s Army (NPA) who was apprehended in Barangay Pasil in Santander last Thursday night. When I further read the news report, this high-ranking NPA leader turned out to be Rustico “Paking” Tan, who was once known as Fr. Rustico Tan. Apparently, because it was too long ago, people forgot this priest-turned-rebel who once represented the National Democratic Front (NDF).
Right after the EDSA Revolt of 1986, when the Communist of the Philippines (CPP) held peace talks with the Philippine government, and thus CPP-NDF-NPA officials roamed free all over the country without fear of arrests, the Rotary Club of Cebu then had Fr. Rustico Tan as our guest speaker. After his speech, which revealed many of the plans of the communists, I asked him during the Q and A: If the CPP would get hold of the Philippine government, would Filipino intellectuals be sent to the countryside just like what they did in Vietnam or China when the communists took over? His answer was a resounding “Yes”!
Given the timing and similarities in circumstances, it won’t be surprising to learn if Tan was killed by agents of the state also. After all, this wouldn’t be the first time the former priest landed himself in trouble with Duterte’s armed forces.
In 2017, Tan was abducted by state authorities only to be resurfaced at a prison facility in Bohol. He was arrested on a dubious charge of 14 counts of murder, an allegation that was never substantiated to begin with.
The trumped-up nature of the charge was vindicated as the Tagbilaran City Regional Trial Court dismissed those charges in October 2019. Unsatisfied, state authorities again filed a fabricated murder charge against Tan in December 2019 which was still ongoing.
Tan’s last hearing was on 27 May, a mere day before his assassination. It is quite clear that Tan was going to beat another falsified criminal case against him, and hell-bent on silencing him, his enemies thought of doing so through extrajudicial means.
Tan was 80 years old, and along with his 74-year old colleague Reynaldo Bocala you have two elderly victims of extrajudicial killings. It is baffling to think that either one of them could be a threat to public safety.
It is also disgraceful that two peace negotiators, who were told in good faith that they would be immune to prosecution or to the belligerence of the state, would be slain in such a fashion. Neither of the two men was a combatant, they did not deserve to be targeted by the state’s armed forces.
The killings of Rustico Tan and Reynaldo Bocala show the Duterte regime’s disdain for the peace process. If you can’t even grant immunity to peace negotiators, how could you discuss peace in good faith?
