Reds own 'punitive' attacks on Ilocos, Compostela Valley mining firms

From InterAksyon (Apr 13): Reds own 'punitive' attacks on Ilocos, Compostela Valley mining firms

Communist rebels claimed responsibility for recent attacks on mining firms in Ilocos Sur and Compostela Valley, calling these punitive actions for the companies’ alleged environmental destruction and abuses against workers of indigenous people.

In Ilocos Sur, the New People’s Army’s provincial unit, the Alfredo Cesar Command, said it burned a diamond-drilling machine of Freeport McMoran-Phelps Dodge in Barangay Patiacan, Quirino town Friday, April 11, “to punish the said company for four years of destructive exploration and to support the community’s overwhelming rejection of the extension of the company’s exploration project in a referendum last April 2, 2014.”

The NPA’s ComVal-Davao Gulf Sub-region Sub-regional Command, on the other hand, said it had “detonated explosives” against troops of the Army’s 9th Infantry Battalion at the Masara Apex Tenement Complex in Compostela Valley on Saturday in what it called a “follow-up to an earlier successful tactical offensive when Red fighters under the 6th Pulang Bagani Company and the Guerrilla Front 27 Operations Command, and Guerrilla Front 2 Operations Command-NPA imposed punitive sanction against the US-owned St. Augustine Gold and Copper Ltd., and Malaysia-owned Apex mining, two biggest foreign mining firms in Southern Mindanao on April 7 and 10, respectively.”

“The companies grossly and repeatedly violated regulations of the People's Democratic Government with regards to environmental protection, workers' welfare and people's livelihood,” Daniel Ibarra, spokesman of the Mindanao rebel command, said.

Armando Silva, spokesman of the Ilocos Sur rebels, called the attack on Freeport McMoran-Phelps Dodge “the NPA’s act of uniting with the widespread opposition of the people of Patiacan and the entire municipality of Quirino against the ongoing exploration project in Patiacan and sitio Maliten of Barangay Laylaya.”

“The revolutionary movement remains firm in its opposition to large-scale mining of foreign and local mining companies like Freeport McMoran-Phelps Dodge which will only plunder the ancestral lands and natural resources of the people and wreak havoc on their environment, livelihood and communities,” he added.

Silva said Phelps-Dodge, one of the world’s largest copper producers, “owns the companies Makilala which has an exploration project covering 2,719 hectares in Pasil, Kalinga and another large area in the Bicol region; and Malibato which has an exploration application covering more than 11,158 hectares of Mountain Province, Abra and Ilocos Sur.”

He acknowledged that after the firm’s bid for an exploration project in Patiacan met strong opposition in 2006 and was again rejected in a 2009 referendum, Phelps Dodge secured a two-year agreement from the community in May 2010 on three conditions: concreting of the road to the barangay, scholarships for the children of Patiacan and employment for the people of Patiacan.

However, because of the firm’s alleged failure to comply with these conditions, its bid to extend its exploration was rejected in an April 2012 referendum and again in the one held early this month.

Meanwhile, Ibarra said the NPA raid on the five mining tunnels of Apex in Masara, Maco town destroyed heavy equipment and several vehicles while several portable drills were destroyed at the St. Augustine mine in Pantukan town.

The rebel spokesman said the Apex was attacked for the following reasons:

1. “Failure to stop expansion of underground and open-pit mining operations despite warnings issued in April and October 2013
2. Expansion of mining operations in reserved forest areas in Maco that were defined by the organs of political power in the area's guerrilla base
3. Failure to address and indemnify casualties after two landslides that also wiped out Barangay Mainit, Maco. The Apex Mining Corporation has caused widespread ecological destruction and the massive displacement of peasant and Lumad families since the 1970s. The already damaged soil has caused landslides and flash floods even with minimal monsoon rains and storms.
4. Low wages at P301 daily, retrenchment and threat of retrenchment of its mining workers by June this year
5. Failure to comply with its responsibility to rehabilitate streams and bridges in Maco as part of the reparation deal it signed with 91 families in Barangay Tagbarus, Elizalde, Panibasan, Panangan and Malamudao, who were affected by Supertyphoon Pablo in December 4, 2012.
6. Company's active role in funding and backing the 9th Infantry Battalion's counter-revolutionary operations against the NPA that has led to the death of civilian, Wilmar Bargas and arbitrary violation of human rights of residents and small-scale miners.”

On the other hand, he claimed St. Augustine “wantonly violated revolutionary policies when they operated outside of their tenements, and due to setting up of military outposts, conducting regular seizure and check-up of things brought in and out by small-scale miners, controlling of movement of civilians, and aggressive psychological warfare against tribal leaders through dole-out projects.”

http://www.interaksyon.com/article/84704/reds-own-punitive-attacks-on-ilocos-compostela-valley-mining-firms