CPP/IB: Mindoro ambush part of vigorous defense of people and their land—CPP

Propaganda statement posted to the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) Website (May 30, 2021): Mindoro ambush part of vigorous defense of people and their land—CPP

INFORMATION BUREAU

COMMUNIST PARTY OF THE PHILIPPINES

MAY 30, 2021

The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) today said it anticipates more tactical offensives to be mounted by the New People’s Army (NPA) after its Red fighters in Mindoro island successfully ambushed military and police troops last Friday.

According to initial reports, a unit of the NPA-Mindoro (Lucio de Guzman Command) ambushed combined forces of the PNP-MIMAROPA’s 1st Occidental Mindoro Provincial Mobile Force Company and the 203rd Infantry Brigade on May 28 in Sitio Banban, Barangay Nicolas, Magsaysay, Occidental Mindoro. Three elements were confirmed killed while 6 of the 10 wounded are in critical condition.

The military and police troops were headed to a program by the Mindoro Occidental Provincial Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict when they were ambushed by the NPA. “The ambush could not have been successfully mounted without the invaluable support of the masses,” said CPP Chief Information Officer Marco Valbuena.

Valbuena described the NPA ambush in Mindoro as “a necessary and just act” in the face of rampant military and police abuses perpetrated in the course of the reactionary state’s counterinsurgency war.

Valbuena also pointed out that in the face of Duterte’s Executive Order 135 lifting the ban on new mining operations, there will be “more aggressive incursions into the ancestral lands of the Mangyan people to push mining interests in the island.”

“Waging revolutionary armed struggle is intrinsically part of the defense of the environment and the Mangyan peopls’s ancestral lands in Mindoro,” added Valbuena. He pointed out that intense aerial bombardment being carried out by the AFP in the mountainous areas of Mindoro are driving away the Mangyan people from the lands.

In the last week of March, the 203rd Brigade dropped bombs in adjacent villages of Mansalay and Roxas towns of Oriental Mindoro. It also shelled the villages with 11 howitzer artillery bombs, prompting thousands of residents of about 15 villages to evacuate. The relentless bombing and shelling were part of the AFP’s focused military operations in the island.

Valbuena also pointed out that soldiers from the 203rd Brigade are behind the kidnapping last May 12 of political prisoner Emilia Marquez’s child MJ.

“These crimes of the AFP/PNP will not go unpunished,” said Valbuena. “The NPA is determined to mete justice and punish the most notorious units of the enemy,” he added.

The CPP, furthermore, called on all NPA units across the country to mount more blows against the fascist criminals of the Duterte regime.

https://cpp.ph/statements/mindoro-ambush-part-of-vigorous-defense-of-people-and-their-land-cpp/