Communist rebels scoffed at military claims of killing a guerrilla in a clash in Camarines Norte this week, accusing the soldiers of executing a farmer instead.
Carlito Cada, spokesman of the New People’s Army’s Armando Catapia Command in the province, denied a statement by the Army’s 9th Infantry Division that troops had killed a guerrilla and seized weapons and ammunition during a clash in Sitio Public, Barangay Itok in Capalonga town on Wednesday.
“There was no encounter between the Philippine Army and any unit of the Armando Catapia Command of the New People’s Army in Camarines Norte,” Cada said.
Residents of Itok also “refuted” the Army statement, he said.
Cada added that their initial investigation indicated that “a civilian farmer by the name of Obina … was accused as being a member of the NPA and was executed by elements of the 9th ID, under a certain Sergeant Hernandez, in Barangay Mactang, a nearby barrio.”
He blamed the alleged murder of the farmer on the Duterte government’s counterinsurgency template, Oplan Kapayapaan, under which he claimed “three farmers per week have been slain by the state’s armed forces.”
He accused the government of “complete disregard for the lives of innocent civilians,” echoing earlier warnings by human rights groups here and abroad, following President Rodrigo Duterte’s order to state forces to carry out air strikes against the rebels and disregard “collateral damage,” that he could be opening himself up to prosecution for crimes against humanity.
This is aside from the thousands of lives lost in Duterte’s war on drugs since July last year.
Even as fighting has resumed and intensified since the rebels and the government lifted their respective unilateral ceasefires early last month, both sides have recently agreed to resume formal peace negotiations in the first week of April.
They are also expected to restore their unilateral ceasefires before talks resume and to negotiate a bilateral ceasefire agreement.
http://interaksyon.com/article/137794/what-encounter-soldiers-executed-farmer-npa-in-camarines-norte-claim
Typical commie anti-military propaganda. Commies generally assert that rebels killed during encounters with the AFP are not members of NPA but rather are just peasants/farmers/innocent civilians. Now CPP propaganda will seek to discredit OPLAN Kapayapaan just it has done all the previous military counterinsurgency operational plans.
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