Troops Hunt Raiders In South RP

BUKIDNON (Mindanao Examiner / 21 Mar) – Security forces on Wednesday mounted a fresh operation to track down dozens of communist insurgents who raided a private coal mining firm in the southern Philippines, police and military said.

Military reports said the New People's Army (NPA) gunmen attacked the MG Mining Company in Raja Cabunsuan village in Surigao del Sur’s Lingig town on Tuesday afternoon.

Troops were dispatched to hunt down the insurgents in the hinterlands. The NPA band, the military said, carted weapons taken from security guards at the mining headquarters.

The military did not say how many guards had been disarmed, but other reports claimed as many as seven people had been briefly taken captive by the raiders during the attack.

It was unknown what triggered the raid, but a military report leaked to the Mindanao Examiner suggested that the attack had something to do with forced taxation imposed by the NPA on mining firms in the province.

The gunmen had been collecting so-called "revolutionary taxes" to support its armed struggle to overthrow the democratic government for a separate Maoist homeland in the Philippines.

The weapons maintained by the firm’s security guards may have also attracted the insurgents, the reports said. (Mindanao Examiner)

Church Leaders, Militant Groups Condemn Police Raid On Convent

BUTUAN CITY (Mindanao Examiner / 04 Nov) — Church leaders on Saturday condemned the police for raiding a convent in the southern Philippine city of Butuan.

Heavily-armed policemen, tracking down a senior New People’s Army (NPA) rebel leader, stormed the Contemplatives of the Good Shepherd (CGS) run by Catholic nuns in the village of Tiniwisan late Wednesday, but failed to find Jorge Madlos.

Madlos is also the spokesman of the National Democratic Front in Mindanao.

Militant groups and human rights advocates denounced the raid and accused the police of desecrating the convent. It said policemen barged into rooms and searched for Madlos even though the nuns denied links with the rebel leader.

The Sisters of the Good Shepherd, founded over two hundred years ago in Angers, France, by St. Mary Euphrasia Pelletier, form one international congregation ministering in 71 countries on five continents. The nuns and volunteers helping the congregation are mostly involved in community works in poor areas. (Mindanao Examiner)