Foreign News: Guilty, Your Honor

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Luis Taruc, for eight years the head of the bloody Communist Huk revolt in the Philippine hills, strode into Manila's packed City Hall last week to be tried for rebellion and a string of other crimes including arson, murder, kidnaping and robbery. The defense asked the court to drop seven of the 30 counts against him on the ground that a 1948 presidential amnesty absolved these crimes. The prosecution agreed, even though the seventh count—involving the ambush murder of Aurora Quezon, widow of the onetime President—was committed a full year after the amnesty had been granted. Thereupon Taruc's three lawyers waived formal reading of the complaint and Taruc pleaded: "Guilty, Your Honor."

Though he had just acknowledged crimes punishable by death, Taruc appeared unworried as he read a 20-minute statement: "I represent the feelings and sentiments of thousands of militant peasants compelled to take up arms since 1946 as a last resort to defend ourselves [against] calculated persecutions." Then he went on to attack his own Communist leadership, in Communist lingo, for having followed "a criminal adventurist policy of armed seizure of power through national uprising." He even praised the "U.S. Government and farsighted Filipino leaders [who] boldly decided to seize the initiative by compelling reform," and saluted President Ramon Magsaysay's "bold new program." He patted the West on the back: "The democratic camp in general, faced by the atomic age and the critical world situation. has come to realize that the only way to stop the advance of Communism is to sincerely and determinedly make complete restitution and amends for past undemocratic commissions."

Whether this doubletalk meant that Taruc was a changed (though unrepentant) man or was simply proclaiming a new tactical retreat of the party was hard to determine from his speech. The one-time Huk leader never once referred to his surrender (TIME, May 24), instead preferred to say that he "came down" to Manila. It was plain that the Magsaysay government was happy to have him in its hands instead of on its hands : the campaign against the Huk hideouts is going well, but is also costly.

Significantly, the government did not ask the death sentence for Prize Prisoner Taruc, instead demanded life imprisonment.