DAVAO CITY, Philippines (Mindanao Examiner / Nov. 16, 2008) – A commander of the Philippine Army’s elite Special Forces, who went missing last week after a fierce firefight with communist rebels, is being held captive in Mindanao, a rebel spokesman said Sunday.
Rigoberto Sanchez, an NPA spokesman, said rebel forces are holding 1Lt. Vicente P. Cammayo, commander of the 11th Special Forces Company. “He was taken as an NPA prisoner of war,” Sanchez said, adding, the Alejandro Lanaja Command is holding Camayo captive.
Cammayo’s group clashed with rebels Nov. 7 in Compostela Valley's Monkayo town that left two army soldiers and a government militia dead in the village of Casoon.
“The smashing blow the Alejandro Lanaja Command of the New People’s Army delivered on an enemy unit touted as the regime's elite combat forces is a testament to the increasing military capabilities of the NPA. It is an apt punishment to the Armed Forces of the Philippines and the fascist and corrupt Arroyo regime for the grave atrocities it has committed and continues to commit against the Filipino masses,” Sanchez said.
Army Maj. Gen. Jogy Leo Fojas, commander of the Army’s 10th Infantry Division, said the offensive against the NPA will not stop until the rebel group is neutralized.
“Our troops will not get tired of running after the NPA bandits,” he said. “We will never stop until we get hold of Camayo and return him to his loved ones.”
Sanchez warned any rescue attempt would put Cammayo’s life in peril. “The only cause of POW Cammayo's safety being imperiled emanates from the 10th Infantry Division's futile attempt to mount a rescue operation,” he said.
He said Cammayo is being interrogated for possible human rights violations and other crimes related to operations of the Special Forces in Mindanao.
Sanchez said Cammayo’s rights as prisoner of war are being respected by rebels.
“His rights as a POW are guaranteed in consonance with the NPA's Three Rules of Discipline and Eight Points of Attention and Protocol II of the Geneva Convention,” he said. “We assure his wife and family that he is well and is adapting to the guerrilla conditions of his captivity.”
The rebels also seized an M60 machine gun and two M16 and one M14 automatic rifles from Cammayo’s unit during the fighting.
Aris Francisco, spokesman of the NPA’s Alejandro Lanaja Command, accused the 3rd Special Forces Battalion to which Cammayo’s unit belongs, as responsible for the series of violations to human rights, protocols of war and international humanitarian law in Compostela Valley province.
Francisco said the Special Forces masterminded the June bombing in Nabunturan town that wounded several innocent civilians. “The bombing was a desperate and fascist attack in response to the sparrow operations of the NPA which killed two of their soldiers at that time,” he said.
The NPA also tagged Special Forces members as behind the brutal murder in June of a peasant leader Noli Llanos in Nabunturan's Mipangi village, where rebels killed three government soldiers; and also the killing of farmer Diego Encarnacion in the village of Linda in Nabunturan town in July. Both farmers were accused by the military as NPA supporters.
The NPA, armed wing of the outlawed Communist Party of the Philippines, is fighting the government the past four decades for the establishment of a Maoist state in the country. (Mindanao Examiner)
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