Oplan Bayanihan’s PsyWar Cannot Fool the People All the Time!

From the CPP Website (Feb 12): Oplan Bayanihan’s PsyWar Cannot Fool the People All the Time!

Spinmasters of the AFP’s Oplan Bayanihan have a penchant for inventing positions and promotions of NPA alleged surrenderees in order to fleece millions from the reactionary government coffers. In the case of the reported alleged surrenderee Connie Santiago Valera aka Yasser from Lacub, Abra, only the fertile but ridiculous imagination of the AFP and PNP can place the 29-year old Valera as occupying the supposed number five position in the Ilocos-Cordillera Region’s CPP heirarchy after only a few years’ stint in the revolutionary movement. If that is their best system of promotion in the AFP/PNP, definitely the revolutionary movement has its sound and contrary system.

The AFP’s psy-war attempt to make mountains out of molehills fails to fool the people even while the AFP/PNP generals line their pockets of “reward money” for bounty-hunting. Last November 13, 2012, the Department of National Defense (DND) and the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) came out with Joint Order No. 14-2012, raising the bounty for some 235 revolutionary leaders to P466.88 million. From then on, bounty hunting became the preoccupation of generals who inflicted human right violations against the oppressed masses. Every alleged revolutionary captive or surrenderee is tagged a high ranking official of the armed revolutionary movement ostensibly to qualify for the reward money.

The AFP psy-war experts are quick to put words in the alleged rebel returnee’s mouth. They would impute to Yasser concocted tales of supposed criminal activities of the CPP-NPA as reason for his surrender. In truth, the AFP fear most is the revolutionary movement’s “crime” of halting the historical perpetuation of national oppression against the indigenous people that has reached ethnocidal levels. Among the nefarious atrocities against the national minorities that the NPA combats is the non-respect for the integrity of ancestral lands, and the widespread plunder through destructive large scale corporate mining, hydropower power dams and geothermal plants. The military, on the other hand, exacerbates the social discrimination of the minorities by garrisoning and occupying schools, health centers and barangay facilities, thereby depriving the indigenous people’s rights to basic services. The pressure of national oppression with its multifaceted manifestations at present against the indigenous continues unabated.

It is right and legitimate for the indigenous people to form revolutionary mass organizations to resist development aggression, or blocks the drilling activities of the large scale corporate mines, but the military is quick to denounce these as “criminal activities”. These are not “crimes” to the indigenous people, but heroic acts to stop the eradication of national minorities in genocidal proportions. What the AFP spins fail to obscure is the military’s crime of protecting and securing the economic aggression of multinational firms acting as “investment defense forces”.

The military’s latest atrocity is the illegal arrest, torture and arbitrary detention of several civilians, including a 14-year old minor, in Lagangilang, Abra, after an encounter with the NPA last January 30 which resulted in the wounding of two soldiers. Four farmers from Kayapa, Lagangilang, accosted near the encounter site were held for three days, then freed after being cowed into silence for fear of retribution. Another civilian working in a small-scale mine nearby was manhandled with no apparent reason by an intelligence asset wearing a bonnet who was accompanying the soldiers. Two other youngsters who were tending their carabao in nearby Palpalitpit, Lagangilang were also accosted by the operating troops. Sensing danger, one scampered for safety but his other companion, Jeboy Lunes, a 14-year old. was illegally detained, harassed and accused as an NPA. He was dragged to the municipal hall the next day to be presented as a captured NPA. Only after it was found out that the kid was not an NPA but a relative of the Mayor did the soldiers of the 503rd Bde from nearby Barbarit, Lagangilang, admit their mistake and released the minor.

These are real crimes of the AFP against the people, one which the NPA will surely bring to justice alongside the advancing people’s war.

Rebolusyon kayet! #

http://www.philippinerevolution.net/statements/oplan-bayanihan-s-psywar-cannot-fool-the-people-all-the-time