39th founding anniversary of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP)

Press Statement
24 April 2012

PERSEVERE IN ADVANCING THE NDFP 12-POINT PROGRAM, THE ONLY VIABLE ALTERNATIVE TO THE ANTI-PEOPLE PROGRAM OF THE US-AQUINO REGIME

On the occasion of the 39th founding anniversary of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP), today April 24, the NDFP-Mindanao congratulates all the revolutionary organizations and personalities under the NDFP umbrella organization for their revolutionary victories. We honor our revolutionary martyrs who unselfishly offered their lives for the highest interest of the Filipino people.
Nationwide, there are now 17 revolutionary organizations under the NDFP that include the Communist Party of Philippines (CPP) and the New People’s Army (NPA). This united front organization strongly supports our protracted people’s war that is now in the later part of the strategic defensive stage and advancing towards the strategic stalemate stage. Mindanao is marching in step with the overall advance of the people’s war nationwide.
As we celebrate the 39th anniversary of the NDFP, it is most timely to put forward once again the NDFP 12-Point Program, and give a brief appraisal of its level of development in Mindanao:

1.    Unite the people for the overthrow of the semicolonial and semifeudal system through a people´s war and for the completion of the national democratic revolution.  Under the correct political guidance of the Communist Party of the Philippines, we have already established the basic alliance of the workers and peasants; the progressive alliance that includes the middle class; and the patriotic alliance that includes the left wing of the upper class. In Mindanao, our political influence is fast expanding, with a mass base numbering more than a million of the population, hundreds of thousands of which are directly under the different revolutionary organizations.

2.    Establish a people´s democratic republic and a democratic coalition government. In Mindanao, we have already established organs of political power in many barangays, including a few section or municipal levels, functioning as a real people’s government.  In the formative stage of the local revolutionary government, the Party branches and mass organizations exercise some interim governmental functions.

3.    Build the people´s revolutionary army and the people´s defense system. In Mindanao, we have already established 42 company and platoon-sized fronts, and thousands of local People’s militia and self-defense corps.  In the last 16 months, these have launched more than 600 tactical offensives, and annihilated a total of over a battalion of enemy troops.

4.    Uphold and promote the people´s democratic rights. The revolutionary armed struggle and mass movement in Mindanao focus against the brutal “Oplan Bayanihan” suppression campaign of the US-Aquino regime and against those multi-national companies that prevent the people from realizing their aspiration for agrarian reform and national industrialization.

5.    Terminate all unequal relations with the United States and other foreign entities. These one-sided agreements, such as the onerous policies imposed by the IMF-World Bank, the Mutual Defense Treaty, the Mining Act of 1995 that allows 100% foreign ownership, and others, must be scrapped.

PRESIDENT AQUINO. The human face of Hacienda Luisita

6.    Implement genuine agrarian reform, promote agricultural cooperation, raise rural production and employment through the modernization of agriculture and rural industrialization and ensure agricultural sustainability. In Mindanao, more than one million peasants have already benefited from the victories of our minimum and maximum land reform program in the countryside, and these victories are expanding faster in other areas.

7.    Break the combined dominance of the U.S. and other imperialists, big compradors and landlords over the economy. Carry out national industrialization and build an independent and self-reliant economy. In Mindanao, we are gradually establishing a self-reliant economy in our base areas. We have launched punitive actions against plundering and environmentally destructive large-scale mining, logging and agri-business companies of the imperialist and their local lackeys.  These are mainly raw material extracting companies that block national industrialization, and are land monopolists preventing the implementation of genuine land reform.

8.    Adopt a comprehensive and progressive social policy. In Mindanao, education, health, production, and other social services are top priorities in our base areas.

9.    Promote a national, scientific and pro-people culture. Along this line, we are launching campaigns for literacy, education, cultural and other such activities.  We have eradicated the problem of illegal drugs and other anti-social activities in our base areas.

10.    Uphold the rights to self-determination and democracy of the Moro people, Cordillera peoples, Lumads and other national minorities or indigenous peoples. In Mindanao, we have established the Moro Resistance Liberation Organization (MRLO) and the Revolutionary Organization of the Lumad (ROL).  We reiterate our commitment and extend our support to the MILF and other Moro revolutionaries in their struggle for the right to self-determination.

11.    Advance the revolutionary emancipation of women in all spheres. In more than 2,000 barrios and in urban communities in Mindanao, we can find women involved in the struggle for their social emancipation. They are the members of MAKIBAKA, the revolutionary organization of women; many of them are heads of territorial Party committees, political officers of NPA units, Red Fighters and those performing other revolutionary tasks.

12.    Adopt an active, independent and peaceful foreign policy. We are at the forefront in the world-wide struggle against imperialist domination and oppression. The US-sponsored Balikatan exercises and China’s incursion in the West Philippine Sea are clear cases of foreign intervention worthy of our condemnation.

Thus, on the occasion of the 39th NDFP founding anniversary we call on all the people of Mindanao and the whole country to rally around the NDFP 12-Point Program; unite, support and advance the people’s war against imperialism and its local puppet; and, achieve national liberation and genuine democracy.

(Sgd.) Ka Oris
Spokesperson
NDFP-Mindanao

GLOBAL LANDGRAB IN FAR SOUTH MINDANAO MEANS LANDLESSNESS FOR THE PEASANTS AND A SERIOUS THREAT TO FOOD SECURITY

Statement on Earth Day 2012
22 April 2012

In line with our commitment to defend the people and protect the environment, the NDF-FSMR expresses its utmost concern on the aggressive and unbridled expansion of the export crop industries on the rich agricultural areas of Far South Mindanao Region. This expansion is very detrimental to thousands of farmers and lumads who are losing their lands and livelihood, and as a consequence will exacerbate the food crisis we are experiencing now and especially in the years to come.

“How can we produce food when we have no land?” thus bewails a farmer from Malungon, Sarangani Province who will soon lose his cornfields to  a giant agribusiness company which is putting up a 30,000 hectare castor oil and palm oil plantation in this municipality.  His concern is no different from those of the peasants in South Cotabato, North Cotabato and Sultan Kudarat whose lands were taken by Dole-Stanfilco and SUMIFRU for their vastly expanding pineapple and banana plantations

At present, at least 300,000 hectares of prime agricultural lands in Mindanao are in the hands of the multinational agribusiness companies—like Dole-Stanfilco, Sumifru, Filinvest, DelMonte, Goldland Dedoro Philippines, Kenram, Cojuangco and Alcantara – producing export crops and creating billions of dollars in profit for these companies. Not content with their landholdings, these companies continue to expand aggressively, using schemes such as growership, leasehold, leaseback, Voluntary Offer to Sell, and many other forms of legal land grabbing which the state itself has provided the big comprador landlords and their imperialist masters. The military and police, the coercive instruments of the state, are also used to facilitate the smooth entry of agribusiness.

While the Filipino nation goes hungry, the agribusiness companies with the big landlord-compradors continue to produce high value crops for the imperialist nations. Included in the “land bank” of the Philippine Agribusiness Development Cooperation Center (PADCC) are some 6 million hectares allocated for the production of cash crops and two million hectares for agribusiness development.   In Mindanao, the 300,000 hectares export crop plantations could have produced at least 60 million sacks of rice and corn annually! This would have been enough to feed not only Mindanao but the country’s population as well!  And yet, this landlord-dominated regime has not done a single serious program to address the growing threat of rice crisis, much less to look into the plight of the Filipino farmers.

The government’s CARPer, which is nothing but lip service to agrarian reform, has further reconcentrated the lands to a few families: only 1% of the entire Philippine population still own almost 20% of the country’s total agricultural lands while 2 million farmers are left to divide another 20% among themselves.

The people’s war is a peasant war – a life and death struggle for the majority of our people to take back what is rightfully theirs – their lands and their rights.  Only through a genuine land reform under the people’s democratic government shall we be able to satisfy the legitimate interest of the peasantry – the right to till the land without fear of eviction, exploitation or oppression.

Thus, on the occasion of Earth Day, NDF-FSMR reiterates its commitment to the broad masses of the people  to exercise punitive measures against those “landlords with blood debts, all the human rights violators, the plunderers and operators of enterprises that ruin the environment, agriculture and livelihood of the people. The just exercise of the people’s power will continue to strengthen the revolutionary movement and weaken the ruling system.”

Furthermore, in accordance with the movement’s national policies, “…certain enterprises may be dismantled, such as those that grab land from the peasants and indigenous people, limit the land for land reform, destroy the environment and agriculture, export non-renewable resources, prevent industrialization or engage in extreme exploitation of the workers. These include plantations, mining and logging enterprises that produce for export.”

KA EFREN
Spokesperson

National Democratic Front of the Philippines
FarSouth Mindanao Region

Globe, Smart rapped for derailing Davao City peace and order

Telecom giants Smart and Globe not only insulted the Davao City government and the Dabawenyos when they tinkered with the phone number, 911, that is the public’s access to Emergency Response Center Central 911.
They also derailed our peace and order, a fuming Vice Mayor Rodrigo Duterte said on television. He said City Hall and the public were not informed about the move.
Duterte said he would ask the Davao City Council to summon Smart and Globe to answer public complaints that 911, the number that links to the Central 911, no longer works or has been changed.
He said he would go to court to charge the telecoms with “contempt of legislative authority” if they fail to respond to the summon.
Smart and Globe telecommunications made changes in accessing the 911 which is apart from the original agreement that the contact be simplified by directly dialing 911, said Duterte in the Gikan sa Masa Para sa Masa television program on ABS/CBN.
He said he received complaints from Dabawenyos that Central 911 can no longer be reached through the cellular phone.
Duterte said Smart added an asterisk before 911 while Globe no longer recognizes the number.
He moaned that the ‘discourtesy’ about not informing the local government on the changes came despite help he extended to the telecoms in relation to their problems with communist rebels.
Elsewhere in the Davao Region, the New People’s Army had the habit of torching transmission facilities of the two telecoms.
These companies asked me to appeal to the communist New People’s Army not to burn their transmission towers and they saved millions of pesos, he said. ROGER M. BALANZA

MAYOR Sara Duterte to NPA spokesman: If I am stupid, you are rabid and vile

BY ROGER M. BALANZA

After being called ” stupid” by a spokesman of the comunist New Peoples Army (NPA) for her call on rebel leaders to give up their arms and surrender to government, Mayor Sara Duterte has returned the complement in more acerbic, hard-to-swallow language.
If I am stupid, you are rabid and vile, said Mayor Duterte in reaction to Rigoberto Sanchez, the phantom spokesman of the NPA in Southern Mindanao, during her regular Monday press forum at City Hall.

inFRONTPAGE PUBLISHED IN THE DURIAN POST NO. 88,

Dec. 12-18, 2011

Earlier, Duterte appealed to NPA rebel leaders Leoncio “Ka Parago” Pitao, the leader of the NPA First Pulang Bagani Command operating in farflung Paquibato District, and another rebel leader she identified only as Ka Oda, to lay down their arms and talk peace with the government.
Her call came on the heels of the killing of three troopers of the Army 69th Infantry Battalion (69th IB) during a clash with the rebels in Paquibato.
“Power has gone to the head of Mayor Duterte who recently issued a stupid call for Ka Parago and Ka Oda to lay down their arms and surrender to the reactionary government, ” said spokesman Rigoberto Sanchez of the NPA Merardo Arce Command, Southern Mindanao Regional Operations Command, in a statement emailed to the Durian Post.
Sanchez also assailed Duterte for what he claimed were previous anti-revolutionary statements against the NPA of the mayor.
“Her pronouncements against the NPA and the revolutionary movement have been consistent throughout this year:  malicious and a thorough disservice to the people of Davao City.  While the Merardo Arce Command-Southern Mindanao Regional Operations Command-NPA has so far discounted her previous statements as merely reckless and naive, the NPA can now actually conclude that the mind and stance of Sara Duterte has bordered on being counterrevolutionary or reactionary,” said Sanchez.
“By arrogantly challenging (to) surrender NPA leaders like Ka Parago and Ka Oda, Sara Duterte has shown that she is utterly unacquainted with the fact that the NPA is a revolutionary army engaged in defending the masses from the fascist and atrocious AFP, ” said Sanchez, the faceless rebel spokesman who signs NPA press releases sent out to media.
Duterte is unfazed.
The NPA reaction only showed their true colors, she said at the City Hall presscon.
Let’s talk peace instead. I was not reactionary but conciliatory, she said.
By calling on Parago and Oda to surrender, she was acting as a chief executive seeking peace with rebels, she said lamenting that Sanchez’ reaction showed that the NPA does not want to talk peace.
They want war not peace, she said, adding her call on rebel leaders to lay their arms was a ploy to test where the NPA stands on peace.
“I just wanted to show to the people the reaction of the rebel movement on the call for peace and they took the bait. It is their reaction that is rabid and bile, we are talking about peace and sustainable development here,” she said.
Duterte dismissed claim by Sanchez that she is anti-NPA.
If I am I will just send five battalions or one division of soldiers to Paquibato District to hunt down Parago, she said. The elusive Parago, who is flesh and blood to local media unlike Sanchez, has been operating in Paquibato for more that two decades.

COMMUNIST REBELS SLAM DAVAO CITY MAYOR SARA DUTERTE FOR BEING COUNTER-REVOLUTIONARY

Press Statement

4 December 2011

Mayor Sara Duterte’s surrender call:

A stupidity; reveals her reactionary character

Power has gone to the head of GPH local mayor Sara Duterte of Davao City who recently issued a stupid call for Ka Parago and Ka Oda of the New People’s Army (NPA) to lay down their arms and surrender to the reactionary government.  Ridiculously still heady with her international “punching” stature, Sara Duterte has spewed a blatant disinformation and psywar campaign to defend the 69th Infantry Battalion-10th Infantry Division-Eastern Mindanao Command of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) in connection with an NPA ambush, November 29, in Paradise Embac, Paquibato District, Davao City.  Injudicious and revealing her reactionary character, Sara Duterte apparently wants what the military and the past regimes from the time of Marcos up to now have failed to do, for Ka Parago to abandon armed struggle and the revolutionary movement.

The ambush by the 1st Pulang Bagani Company-NPA killed three soldiers of the 69th IB-AFP who were masquerading as peace and development teams in Sitio Guinobatan, Barangay Paradise Embac.  Red fighters also confiscated an M203 rifle.

Sara Duterte has made a sweeping call not even made by her father, longtime Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte, who has not dared to disparage Ka Parago and the NPA in such a way in the former mayor’s more than two decades at the helm of the reactionary Davao City politics.

VICE MAYOR rodrigo Duterte visiting Kumander Parago in his mountain hideout in hinterland Paquibato district

While her father has, in some ways, cooperated and recognized the cause of the revolutionary struggle, Sara Duterte has been consistently and obstinately, profuse in praises for the AFP while rabid and full of counterrevolutionary fervor towards the NPA and the revolutionary movement.

LT. COL. MAYOR INDAY. Mayor Sara Duterte earning the promotion in the Army Reserve Corps during a simple ceremonylast year at City Hall presided by Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin, left, and Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) Chief-of-Staff General Ricardo David Jr. BERT TOMAS

Her pronouncements against the NPA and the revolutionary movement have been consistent throughout this year:  malicious and a thorough disservice to the people of Davao City.  While the Merardo Arce Command-Southern Mindanao Regional Operations Command-NPA has so far discounted her previous statements as merely reckless and naive, the NPA can now actually conclude that the mind and stance of Sara Duterte has bordered on being counterrevolutionary or reactionary.

She first accused the NPA of targeting her during a successful military action against a supply and reconnaissance team in Paquibato last January.  She called the arrest of GPH Lingig Mayor Henry Dano and four BJMP personnel as kidnapping and plain banditry and scoffed calls by civil libertarians for the release of political detainees saying that the latter face legitimate criminal charges.  She defended, with gusto, the stay of the 69th IB-AFP detachment near a school in Paradise Embac despite it being an IHL (international humanitarian law) violation and despite the popular clamor by the masses and even by human rights advocates from the Davao City local government unit.  In defending the 69th IB-AFP, she called a September 17 NPA attack in Paradise Embac as counter-productive.  The series of NPA attacks against the 69th IB-AFP are legitimate military actions against a grossly abusive AFP unit.

All in all, Sara Duterte wants to sweep under the rug the atrocious SOT operations and fascist character of the Oplan Bayanihan operations of the 69th IB-AFP in Paquibato and other parts in Davao City and Davao del Norte.  The 69th IB-AFP’s offensive combat and psywar SOT operations have victimized thousands of peasant masses of Paquibato and in Panabo, with cases ranging from intimidation, grave threats, usurpation of civilian auspices like schools, civilian houses, barangay halls; attempted rape, molestation of women and harassment of youth and children, forced surrenders, military checkpoints manned by drunk and abusive soldiers, forced recruitment of Cafgus, instigation of a pangayaw as proxy war between lumad and non-lumad settlers, and drinking sessions by soldiers that led to various forms of harassment of local residents, to name a few.

Not content with this gross injustice, Sara Duterte has taken the stance of the fascist AFP, hook, line and sinker in demonizing the NPA and the revolutionary movement, ignorant as she is in the realities of the ongoing civil war in the country.  Sara Duterte has revealed her gross poor knowledge of the fact that the CPP-NPA-NDFP leads a political movement engaged and co-belligerent in armed conflict with the GPH.

By arrogantly challenging the surrender of NPA leaders like Ka Parago and Ka Oda, Sara Duterte has shown that she is utterly unacquainted with the fact that the NPA is a revolutionary army engaged in defending the masses from the fascist and atrocious AFP.  In offering surrender talks, would her infantile mind concoct a solution to the centuries-old problem of landlessness and exploitation, problems that have bred the armed struggle in the country?

By acting as a conscious spokesperson and defender of the fascist AFP, Sara Duterte has de facto condoned the culture of impunity in the AFP, PNP and their paramilitary groups (Cafgus and CVOs) and intelligence units.  These troops which Sara Duterte so wants to protect and prop up as harbingers of peace and order and progress, are implementing the Oplan Bayanihan, which rehashed the previous regime’s Oplan Bantay Laya in attacking communities and deploying thousands of troops deemed to be under the sway or supportive of the revolutionary movement.

Before shooting her mouth, Sara Duterte should listen to the people, investigate the onslaught of abuses by the AFP in Davao City and study even the basic rudiments of our country’s history and the civil war.  As things point to right now, she has already rendered herself as a noisy but shallow reactionary, a friend to the people’s enemy, and, who knows, an enemy in the making.

Rigoberto F. Sanchez
Spokesperson
Merardo Arce Command
Southern Mindanao Regional Operations Command
New People’s Army

ALSO READ:

Davao City urges New People’s Army rebels to surrender | Sun.Star

Mayor Sara Duterte: New People’s Army rebels‘ reaction rabid, vile …

Truce call conciliatory, not reactionary: mayor | Mindanao Times

Zamboanga mining firm joins battle vs. environment code

BY ROGER M. BALANZA

A mining company in Zamboanga has found itself in the same footing as South Cotabato’s Sagittarius Mining Inc. (SMI) whose operation has been threatened by an ordinance banning open-pit mining.
TVI Resource Development (Phils.) Inc. (TVIRD), the Philippine affiliate of TVI Pacific Inc. of Canada, stands to lose $448 million in revenue if the Canatuan copper-gold mine closes prematurely due to an open pit mining ban in Zamboanga del Norte.
TVIRD has filed a case in court challenging the constitutionality of the ordinance, which took effect on November 6 after its publication in local papers. It gave TVIRD one year to wrap up the Canatuan project.
The US$5.9 billion SMI copper-gold project in Tampakan, backed by giant copper mining Xstrata, is also having trouble with the South Cotabato government which has passed the Environmental Code banning open-pit mining in the province.
SMI is wooing the Provincial Board to amend the code.
Earlier, a mining group said local legislation against open-pit mining could kill the Philippine mining industry.
Like a wildfire burning everything in its path, the South Cotabato Environmental Code is developing into a conflagration spreading to as far as the Zamboanga Peninsula and Palawan to push down to its knees the mining industry in Mindanao, a report in the Durian Post said earlier, citing sentiments of the Coalition for Responsible Mining (Coremin).
Local anti-mining legislation, the armed New Peoples Army (NPA) insurgents, and multiple taxation are the biggest threats to mining in Mindanao, said the Coremin.
Coremin raised its concern about threats to the mining industry during the 20th Mindanao Business Conference (MinBizCon) held in Pagadian City in early September.
MinBizCon is the annual conference organized by the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry showcasing Mindanao’s investment opportunities.
Minbizcon 2011 focused on public-private partnerships in mining, tourism and agri-business in Mindanao.

KA ROGER IS DEAD!

Comrade GREGORIO “Ka Roger” ROSAL, 64, spokesman, New People”s Army (NPA)

Army spokesman tags NPA rebels as peace saboteurs and ‘political terrorists’

MANILA, Oct. 8 (PNA) -– The spokesman of the Philippine Army Saturday branded the New People’s Army (NPA) rebels as peace saboteurs and political terrorists following last Monday’s attacks by about 300 insurgents on three mining firms in Surigao del Norte.

Col. Tony Parlade, Army spokesman, said the coordinated attacks have “confirmed our earlier statements that their leadership (Communist Party of the Philippines/National Democratic Front (CPP/NDF) does not have control over their local terrorist leaders.”

Parlade said that the raids have shown that CPP/NPA/NDF leadership has no control over Jorge Madlos, a ranking rebel leader operating in north eastern Mindanao, or his son who have defied orders by carrying out attacks despite an ongoing peace talks.

“This is another cheap political stunt of the CPP that proves too costly to our economy,” Parlade said, adding that “your Army (Philippine Army) can only do so much.”

“Eventually, the people and other stakeholders should decide whether to support these bandits or their government to stop these saboteurs of peace and progress,” he said.

“We don’t want anymore of these ‘political terrorists’”, Parlade said.

Last Monday, some 300 heavily armed NPA rebels simultaneously attacked the Taganito Mining Company, Nickel Asia Corp., and the Platinum Metal Corp. all in Claver, Surigao del Norte and burned heavy equipment worth P3 billion.

NPA RAID. Burned equipment of Nickel Asia

Destroyed by the rebels were 132 dump trucks, nine barges, 22 backhoes, two cranes, two bulldozers, two compactors, one grader, several buildings and office equipment.

The rebels were infuriated when the three companies refused to pay revolution tax demanded by the NPA.

The coordinated attacks came at a time when the government and the NDF peace panels were scheduled to resume their peace negotiations in Oslo, Norway later this month.

Supt. Martin Gamba, spokesman of Police Regional Office 13, has confirmed the nefarious activities of the NPA in Surigao del Norte.

The Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) has launched a counter offensive against the NPA rebels who attacked the three mining companies.

Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process Teresita Quintos-Deles said that these atrocities by the communist have made the peace process difficult.

“Peace talks are more difficult when there is no accompanying ceasefire on the ground,” Deles.

“Hostile attacks such as the one conducted by the NPA in three mining areas in Surigao del Norte undermine people’s confidence in the peace process, creating a ‘disconnect’ between agreements made on the peace table and what is happening on the ground.”

But in spite of the attacks, Deles said the “government is still committed to push through with the peace negotiations. We continue to look for peaceful resolution to all armed conflict — and hope the other party will listen more to our people’s aspirations for peace and devote more energies on making the peace table work.” (PNA)

DURIANBURGDAVAO News Forum For Peace In Mindanao

Philippine rebels warn ‘abusive’ foreign mining firms

BY ROGER M. BALANZA

“We are serious and determined to protect our patrimony, sovereignty, and the general welfare and interests of the people and the environment. We will use the full potential of the revolutionary movement to carry out these just policies,” said Jorge “Ka Oris” Madlos, spokesman for the National Democratic Front (NDF)-Mindanao.
The NDF, which has an ongoing peace negotiation with the government to end a 40-year old communist insurgency, is the political arm of the communist movement in the Philippines.
Communist rebels recently attacked a foreign mining company in Surigao del Norte and burned down its heavy equipment worth P500 million.

The rebels would carry out punitive actions against those that “destroy the environment, exploit the workers and drive away indigenous people from their ancestral lands,” sa Ka Oris in a statement sent out to Mindanao-based media.

READ MORE: National Democratic Front warns of more attacks against ‘abusive …

NDF releases video clips, photos of four PNP/BJMP captives

PRESS STATEMENT

More than a month after they were taken under custody, the four PNP/BJMP prisoners of war of the New People’s Army, Jail Inspector Murphy Bomoway Todyog (Badge No. 0-08021), Jail Warden Erico Dacillo Llamasares (Badge No. 0-07022), Special Jail Officer 2 (SJ02) Rogelio Begontes (Badge No. 960187), and Jail Officer 1 (JOI) Rolando Delta Bajoyo, Jr., are well , as shown in the video clips and photos taken on August 23 and released by the National Democratic Front Southern Mindanao.  Pointedly criticizing the ongoing military offensives of the Philippine Army as thwarting their freedom, the four also urged the GPH to expedite more effort in the negotiations.

The GPH is not interested in the speedy resolution of the cases of the NPA captives.  Despite the groundswell of calls for negotiations, the GPH spokesperson is actually the fascist Eastern Mindanao Command AFP which insists on declaring unrestrained military offensives camouflaged as peace and development outreach program in the region.  It is illusory to equate the POWs’ calls for a suspension of military operation as a script with military spokesperson Leopoldo Galon, Jr. saying that the NPA purportedly wants to stop the operations out of fear of an “organizational collapse.”  Surely, a people’s army that has more than four decades of experience and accomplishments in the revolutionary war cannot be dismembered with fascist dogs wearing innocuous collars.

The NPA’s humane and lenient treatment of the four POWs in compliance with Protocol 1 of the Geneva Conventions indicates the high level of understanding by the people’s army as regards to the application of international humanitarian law in the ongoing civil war.  In contrast, the AFP distorts facts to suit its counter-revolutionary thrust, justifies the Oplan Bayanihan military operations as rescue missions and makes it an occasion to control peasant villages and preclude people’s resistance.  Even as the NDF is open and ready to tackle the case of the NPA POWs within the framework of the peace talks, the GPH prolongs the incarceration of political detainees and apprehended JASIG-protected NDF consultants, maliciously demonizing them as criminals and mercilessly protracting the agony of their families and loved ones who are suffering from an unjust reactionary GPH judicial system.

 

(Sgd) Rubi del Mundo
Spokesperson
National Democratic Front of the Philippines
Southern Mindanao

DURIANBURGDAVAO News Forum For Peace In Mindanao News Update from