Duterte sets up special team to go after Reds

From the Gulf News (Mar 23): Duterte sets up special team to go after Reds

President Rodrigo “Rody” Duterte set up a special team to train policemen assigned to stop increasing attacks by a communist “hit squad” known as the “Sparrows” following his decision to formally end peace talks with the rebels in 2017.

Director General Ronald dela Rosa, the chief of the Philippine National Police (PNP), on Thursday disclosed the team is composed of retired and seasoned police officers who battled the Sparrows during their heydays in the 1980s.

Dela Rosa described the Sparrows as the hit squad of the New People’s Army (NPA) that has been revived to assassinate “adversaries of the revolutionary movement.”

“We have seasoned and retired police officers commissioned by no less than President Duterte to train and orient younger officers who lack exposure in counter-insurgency,” Dela Rosa explained.

The NPA is the armed component of the Communist Party of the Philippines that has been waging a Maoist-style insurgency against the government for close to 50 years, considered the longest in Asia and the Pacific.

Dela Rosa noted an alarming increase in Sparrow attacks particularly in the Davao and Caraga Regions as well as Northern Mindanao and other areas in the country where the Maoists operate since Duterte ended peace talks with them.

Aside from ending the talks, Duterte also signed a proclamation declaring the CPP-NPA as “terrorist organisations” even as he warned that the government would file charges of “economic sabotage” especially against mining firms found to be assisting the rebels like providing them with explosives.

Duterte also accused the Maoists of “large-scale extortion activities” by demanding huge “payolas” from companies under the guise of collecting “revolutionary taxes.”

This developed as the military denounced the Maoists for using “human shields” in their encounter with government forces, the latest of which was on Monday in a “barangay” (village) in the town of Aluran, Misamis Occidental in Mindanao.

Major General Roseller Murillo, the Army’s First Tabak Division chief, said the rebels took hostage and used as human shields three farmers in their losing encounter with government forces.

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