NPA rebels capture cop; attack troops in Mindanao

From the Mindanao Examiner (Mar 18): NPA rebels capture cop; attack troops in Mindanao

Communist rebels on Monday arrested a policeman at a checkpoint and attacked patrolling troops in separate operations in the southern Philippines, a spokesman for New People’s Army said.

Rigoberto Sanchez, of the NPA Regional Operations Command, said a second policeman SPO2 Randy Masambo managed to escape, but rebel forces held on to his companion PO3 Ruben Nojapa, Jr. who is assigned with the Nabunturan municipal police force in Davao del Norte province.

“The NPA checkpoint was part of its regular operations against undesirable elements in the area and the abusive Special Operations Teams under (the military’s) Oplan Bayanihan,” he said in a statement sent to the regional newspaper Mindanao Examiner.

Sanchez said the policeman is now their prisoner-of-war and would be interrogated to determine whether he was involved in anti-insurgency operations and human rights abuses in the town.

He said rebels also attacked soldiers belonging to the 66th Infantry Battalion in the village of Cabidianan also in Nabunturan town. An earlier roadside attack killed four government soldiers from the 71st Infantry Battalion, and wounded several more, in the town of Maco in Compostela Valley province.

“The morale of AFP (Armed Forces of the Philippines) troops is sinking, so much so that it has turned its fangs against the civilians. The AFP's desperate measures are pathetic, cowardly and duplicitous. Blind and oblivious to the blows of the people's army who are ready anywhere, anytime in the revolutionary territories of the People's Democratic Government; the 10th ID has resorted to unleashing its wrath towards the peasant masses,” he said.

Sanchez accused the soldiers of human rights abuses and protector of abusive logging and mining companies in Mindanao.

There was no immediate statement from the 10th Infantry Division or the military’s Eastern Mindanao Command about the allegations, but the NPA has been fighting for decades now for the establishment of a Maoist state in the country.

http://www.mindanaoexaminer.com/news.php?news_id=20130318123341