Duterte: I want NPA destroyed

From Malaya Business Insight (Jan 23): Duterte: I want NPA destroyed

PRESIDENT Duterte yesterday said he wants the New People’s Army “destroyed,” similar to ongoing efforts to eradicate illegal drugs in the country.

He said the public should not mind what human rights groups would again say because the communist insurgency situation only adds to the suffering of the Filipinos.

“Just like drugs… destroy the NPA. Destroy the organization,” he said in Compostela Valley during the launch of the “Tienda para sa mga Bayani” outlet in partnership with Armed Forces of the Philippines.

Duterte also chided businessmen and groups that tolerate the communist rebels by paying the NPA “revolutionary tax” or extortion money.

Duterte said that long ago, the idea of communist-socialism was popular that some groups had even funded the communist movement.

In some instances, he said, the funds went to the pockets of some of the current communist leaders, some of whom are abroad and have enjoyed stays in hotels and good food, while the local armed groups are poor and continuing to fight.

Jose Maria Sison, founding chair of the Communist Party of the Philippines, has been on self-exile in the Netherlands since the late 1980s.

Duterte reopened peace talks with the CPP-NPA-National Democratic Front of the Philippines shortly after he became President in 2016. Last November, he cancelled the talks because of continued attacks by the NPA on government forces, even while the talks were ongoing. Last month, he declared the CPP and its armed wing, the NPA, as terrorist groups.

Presidential spokesman Harry Roque dismissed Sison’s call for the youth to organize a mass protest against the President and even emulate the riots of the “First Quarter Storm” (FQS) of 1970.

“We don’t attach too much importance on Joma Sison. I hope he has enough grandchildren to heed his call,” Roque said adding that the problem with Sison is that he is stuck in history and had “failed to move beyond the First Quarter Storm.”

http://www.malaya.com.ph/business-news/news/duterte-i-want-npa-destroyed