COMPOSTELA VALLEY, Philippines (Mindanao Examiner / 19 Sept) – Communist rebels have killed a militia and disarmed several others working for a veneer factory in Compostela Valley province in southern Philippines, a spokesman for the New People’s Army said on Wednesday.
The rebels, from the NPA's Armando Dumandan Command, carted four automatic rifles and a handgun during the weekend raid. The militias are working for the Li Chiang Veneer Plant in Montevista town.
The NPA branded the firm as “despotic” and accused it of actively supporting the military operations against innocent farmers in the town.
“The NPA disarming operation was a punitive action against the company which uses its goons to harass and intimidate residents. One paramilitary element who attempted to open fire was neutralized during the operation,” Marcella Valiente, of the Armando Dumandan Command, said in a statement sent to the Mindanao Examiner on Wednesday.
Rubi del Mundo, NPA spokesman for southern Mindanao, also accused the Philippine military of arresting innocent civilians in North Cotabato’s Pigcawayan town on mere suspicion they were sympathizers of the rebel group.
“In its desperate move to crush the revolutionary forces within the regime's three-year delusion, the fascists Armed Forces of the Philippines has only accumulated more crimes against the people, isolating them further from the masses and causing more disgruntlement from their own ranks,” he said.
The NPA is the armed wing of the outlawed Communist Party of the Philippines, which has been fighting for decades to establish a Maoist state in the country.
The Philippine government opened peace talks with the rebels, but the negotiations collapsed in 2004 after the United States listed the CPP and the NPA and its political arm, the National Democratic Front, as foreign terrorist organization on Manila’s prodding. (Mindanao Examiner)
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