NPA Justifies Raid on Sola Farm as Punitive Operation

From the Negros Daily Bulletin (Feb 5): NPA Justifies Raid on Sola Farm as Punitive Operation

The Armando Sumayang Jr. Southwest Negros Island Command, through its spokesperson, Andrea Guerrero, owned up to the recent raid on the Sola Family’s Sta. Isabel hacienda in Kamansi Village, saying it was punishment due to a series of atrocities committed against farmfolks who are merely trying to earn a decent livelihood.

In enumerating what it considered atrocities against the farmers, Guerrero bared that they were also responsible for the Sparrow operation against paramilitaryman Ricky Camacho in Canlamay Village which resulted in his death. The NPAs also cited reasons why he was gunned down.

The guerilla spokesperson further condemned in strong terms two military commanders for tolerating, instead of ordering their men to commit abuses, even declaring their goodness and absolving them of wrongdoings.

Earlier, the Sola family doubted the role of the NPA in their raid on their hacienda saying other parties may have done it.

Seized during the raid, the NPA-Southwest Command spokesperson said, on January 22 this year were five high-powered shotguns, a .38 caliber revolver, one grenade, one monocular vision devise for night purposes and a telescope. A tractor was set on fire, two security guardhouses were torched and several sheeps were slaughtered and fed to the workers and farmers in the hacienda.

The NPA explained that the depredations against workers and farmers may be linked to their efforts to call for the placement of part of the hacienda under the government’s agrarian reform program. Targeted primarily was the patriarch of the Sola family Pablito "Gene" Sola and John Paul Sola, a son.

About 98 hectares of the Sola property is to be placed under the CARP program.

The depredations committed against farmers and which took place starting in 2009 yet, included destruction of farmers’ dwellings, shootings in the air, barring through threats local DAR-Municipal Agrarian Reform Officers (MARO) from conducting surveys which happened October 23, 2013 and next day, cutting off immature corn plants and December 4 allowing by force of arms, sheeps to graze on young corn plants.

The following day, the same armed group led by John Paul Sola fired in the air for about 30 minutes, uprooted peanut plants, cassava rootcrops, banana plants and allowing sheeps to feed on plants planted by the farmers’ cooperative recognized by the Kabankalan City government.

Workers in the hacienda are paid only P100 a day, instead of the minimum wage aside from being harmed physically for imagined transgressions.

With the relationships between the farmers and workers and the Sola family exacerbating, with the former deeply oppressed, bullied and deprived of wherewithals for living, the NPAs in Southwest Negros intervened and when it did the military has, as always again, intervened.

Military commanders to include Col. Jon Aying CO of the 303rd Brigade and Lt. Col. Ariel Reyes of the 47th IB are even justifying these interventions including the Sparrow operations against a Citizens’ Armed Forces Geographical Unit (CAFGU) member operating in Canlamay, Pinggot and Magballo Village who is a known holdupper backed by another army officer.

The NPAs, Guerrero said, will not hesitate to eliminate bad elements in defense of the people’s interests, she said.

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