The New People's Army has become more aggressive in collecting "protection money" from farming enclaves in the province and has resorted to violence to do so, officials said.
NPA members belonging to the Guerilla Fronts 72 and 73 burned some P40- million worth of trucks, road-building equipment and a rubber processing plant in separate attacks in three towns in the province in a span of 34 days since August.
The atrocities caused panic among villagers in areas vulnerable to rebel attacks.
NPA rebels also set off more than a dozen powerful roadside bombs along stretches of a highway and farm-to-market roads in North Cotabato’s Magpet, Arakan and Tulunan towns in recent months, violating the ban on the use of such explosives that can recklessly kill or maim non-combatants.
Combat casualties
Officials of the Army’s 57th Infantry Battalion and the Philippine National Police cautioned the local communities in hinterland towns in the province against possible escalation of attacks by the NPAs, as villagers continue to refuse to give in to demands of rebel forces frequenting villages to collect food and money from farmers at gunpoint.
Highly-placed sources from the Army’s 10th Infantry Division, whose commander, Major Gen. Ariel Bernardo, was former assistant division commander of the 6th Infantry Division in nearby Maguindanao province, said there were reports about heavy NPA losses in recent encounters with government forces in the province, feared to trigger retaliations that can affect villagers.
1Lt. Nash Sema, 57th IB’s chief civil-military relations officer, said the 700 farm workers displaced by the NPA’s attack and burning more than a week ago of the multi-million processing plant of the Standard Rubber Development Corp. in Barangay Talun-Talunan in Makilala made the public more wary of the rebel group.
Police and Army Intelligence operatives and local community sources confirmed having received reports that six of the more than 30 NPAs that carried out the arson attack, apparently meant to intimidate owners of big rubber plantations in the municipality into paying “protection money,” were wounded in an encounter with pursuing soldiers two days later.
Sema said the information that six rebels were slightly wounded in the encounter when shoulder-fire 40 MM grenades landed near them. The information remains unconfirmed.
“We have been getting persistent feedback about that. The problem is these NPAs are known for their very strong tradition of hiding their losses. They bring with them their wounded and dead companions when they retreat after every encounter with the military,” Sema said.
Difficult, trying times
Local officials said the NPA attacks could have been the result of last year’s military campaign that drove the rebels from some of their enclaves.
Local folks had considerd the NPAs in decades past as “protector” and source of “swift justice” via its ruthless Kangaroo courts, which managed community peace and security concerns in far-flung impoverished areas where government was unable to administer.
“But that was long time ago. That was before, not anymore,” a town official said.
With a strained relationship with the people that provided sanctuary and supplied food in the past, living conditions in the hinterlands have become harsher for the rebels, according to former guerrillas that have availed themselves of the government’s reconciliation program.
One of these guerrillas is an ethnic Bilaan guerilla, who was seriously wounded in an encounter with combatants of the 57th IB early this year and was treated for free at the Camp Siongco Hospital of the 6th ID in Maguindanao, leading to his return to the fold of law.
Government socio-economic projects implemented in far-flung areas also helped improve the lives of villagers that now oppose the presence of NPAs in their enclaves, according to local officials.
“That could be the reason why the NPAs burned the heavy equipment of a private firm constructing an inland water impounding project for irrigation purposes in the municipality of Arakan last month. They don’t want any socio-economic empowerment of the local sectors,” said a local executive, who asked not to be identified for security reasons.
Local executives had branded as “crime against humanity” the burning of the rubber processing plant in Makilala, which left hundreds of farm workers jobless.
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