Sunday, July 24, 2022

WESTMINCOM: Kasangga Battalion Intensifies its Campaign on IED Awareness in Koronadal City

Posted to the Western Mindanao Command (WESTMINCOM) Facebook Page (Jul 24, 2022): Kasangga Battalion Intensifies its Campaign on IED Awareness in Koronadal City



4th Civil Relations Group

Kasangga Battalion Intensifies its Campaign on IED Awareness in Koronadal City

The Personnel of 64th CMO (Kabalikat) Company, 6CMOBn, 6ID, PA conducted Leaflets Distribution and Loudspeaker Operations regarding IED Awareness in Koronadal City on 21 July 2022. | @Six CMO Kasangga Battalion Updates

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2 NPAs nabbed for extorting goods from businesswoman in Cagayan

 From the Manila Bulletin (Jul 24, 2022): 2 NPAs nabbed for extorting goods from businesswoman in Cagayan (By Liezle Basa IƱigo)

PIAT, Cagayan – Police arrested two suspected members of the New People’s Army (NPA) for extorting goods and cash from a businesswoman here Saturday, July 23.

The suspects were identified as “Benigno,” 18, and “Mario,” 21, residents of Barangay Minanga, this town.

Investigation showed that the suspects approached the victim “Beth,” of Poblacion 2 here, and introduced themselves as communist guerrillas.

They demanded P20,000 cash, assorted groceries, and one sack of rice. The suspects warned the victim that they will burn her poultry farm in Tuao, this province, if she does not grant their demands.


Beth reported the extortion attempt to the local police. Lawmen led by Police Chief Master Sgt. Rodolfo Anguluan planned an entrapment operation then proceeded to Barangay Santo Domingo here where the handover would take place.

The suspects were arrested and recovered from them were the boodle money and a motorcycle without a license plate.

https://mb.com.ph/2022/07/24/2-npas-nabbed-for-extorting-goods-from-businesswoman-in-cagayan/

In UN meeting, Philippines hits NPA’s use of landmines

From Rappler (Jul 24, 2022):  In UN meeting, Philippines hits NPA’s use of landmines (By SOFIA TOMACRUZ)



'These weapons are abhorrent because they cause unnecessary suffering, endanger civilians, and disrupt communities,' says Ambassador Evan Garcia, Philippine permanent representative to the United Nations in Geneva

The Philippines renewed its concern over communist rebels’ continued use of landmines, citing a recent incident in Northern Samar that left one soldier dead and five others injured.

At a United Nations experts’ meeting held in Geneva, Switzerland, on Thursday, July 21 (Manila time), the Philippine Permanent Mission to the United Nations hit the New People’s Army (NPA) for its use of explosives “that destroy lives and properties and cause undue suffering in violation of international humanitarian law.”

This came after the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) reported on Wednesday, July 20, that landmines were set off in Northern Samar, where the army was conducting community programs in Barangay Osang and five other villages.


The use of landmines is banned by the 1997 Ottawa Treaty (Mine Ban Convention), of which the Philippines is a signatory. The Philippines, a party to the UN Anti-Personnel Land Mine Convention, also earlier committed to the implementation of the Oslo Action Plan that seeks a mine-free world by 2025.

“They (NPA) seek to escape accountability for their crimes through creative semantics. They often claim that their explosives have technical specifications that render them outside the scope of relevant treaties,” said Philippine delegate JJ Domingo.

“Yet no amount of obfuscation will hide the fact that what they deploy are improvised explosive devices functioning as landmines. They are prohibited by international law and have been condemned by global public conscience.”

Responding to this, the Philippines pointed to local measures in place that aim to curb the use of and access to weapons such as landmines, including the Firearms, Ammunitions, and Explosives Act, the International Humanitarian Law Act, and the Comprehensive Firearms and Ammunitions Act.

The AFP has also submitted a “comprehensive report” that detailed instances of the NPA’s use of improvised explosive devices to the Commission on Human Rights, which is investigating incidents with an independent verification body.

The Philippine mission to the UN in Geneva also underscored that the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and the National Democratic Front earlier agreed to uphold respect for human rights and comply with international humanitarian law.

“Arguing about technicalities betrays lack of good faith. Regardless of technical definitions, these weapons are abhorrent because they cause unnecessary suffering, endanger civilians, and disrupt communities,” said Ambassador Evan Garcia, the country’s permanent representative to the UN in Geneva, in a statement.

Under the administration of former president Rodrigo Duterte, the Philippine government had intensified its anti-insurgency campaign in the aftermath of failed peace talks with the CPP. Human rights groups and lawyers, however, called for restraint as the government’s campaign also led to the red-tagging of groups and individuals.

https://www.rappler.com/nation/philippines-hits-communist-rebels-use-landmines/

CPP/NDF-Southern Mindanao: #NeverForget our legacy of struggle and wield historic resistance to confront Marcos 2.0

Propaganda statement posted to the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) Website (Jul 24, 2022): #NeverForget our legacy of struggle and wield historic resistance to confront Marcos 2.0

Rubi del Mundo
Spokesperson
NDF-Southern Mindanao
National Democratic Front of the Philippines

July 24, 2022



The National Democratic Front in Southern Mindanao calls on all democratic and revolutionary forces in the region to militantly protest and proclaim the real state of the country during tomorrow’s expected spectacle of the nation address of the illegitimate Ferdinand Marcos Jr. regime.

The Marcos II regime—whose veneer of authority is tenuously built upon his family’s legacy of bloodshed, corruption, and deception—will undoubtedly weave a denialist and historically-distorted version of the state of the nation. In response, the Filipino people must wield all forms of historic resistance that toppled the first Marcos dictatorship, especially the growth of the revolutionary armed struggle and national democratic movement that tyrants in the intervening years evidently have come to fear up to this day.

At an unprecedented time of widespread food crisis, worsening unemployment, and all-time high inflation rate beleaguering the economy still reeling from the Covid-19 pandemic, Marcos Jr.’s denialist attitude toward the country’s pressing issues clearly indicates a mere continuity of the previous Duterte regime’s miserable failures. By all indications, the Marcos II regime is on track to reinforce imperialist-dictated policies, the rotten political dynasties and crony system, and the counter-insurgency rampage of the semi-colonial and semi-feudal state.

From Duterte to Marcos Jr., the same neoliberal policies that have caused widespread displacement of peasants and Lumad, depressed wages and unemployment of workers and other such miseries will further condemn our productive forces to destitution. Just recently, Davao City is salivating over a total of 105 hectares of land, some of which have been tilled by farmers and Lumad for decades, to convert into agro-industrial economic zones and usher in more foreign-owned large-scale agri-plantations, semi-processing and manufacturing plants.

From Duterte to Marcos Jr., the destructive practices of foreign-owned open-pit and large-scale mining in the region continues to wreak havoc to host communities and the environment. Davao Oriental, for instance, is blind and deaf to widespread demands to stop the mining activities in Mati City and Banaybanay town, following months of heavy floods and river pollution. Instead, Arc Nickle Resources, the mining company responsible for the discoloration and heavy siltation of Mapagba River, has been allowed to continue its operations. To counter popular resistance, the provincial government decided to delegate an ex-general to take over the “regulation” of the pro-capital and ecologically-destructive practice.

From Duterte to Marcos Jr., the fascist AFP and PNP and their armed paramilitaries will further sow terror in the lives of the masses, especially in the countryside, with the avowed continuation of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict. Davao City’s Peace 911 and other so-called provincial task forces will continue to target civilians for fake or recycled surrender ceremonies to bolster the regime’s counter-insurgency portfolio. While the revolutionary forces continue to express their openess to the formal GRP-NDFP peace talks, the Marcos II regime’s warmongering security department has firmly shut the door to the negotiations. Instead, the AFP in the Southern Mindanao is ironically peddling “localized peace talks,” despite having declared all but one province in the region to be “insurgency-free.”

In the run-up to his first SONA, Marcos Jr. is inadvertently exposing the illegitimacy of his regime. For someone who claims to have garnered the biggest reactionary electoral mandate in history, his paranoia is otherwise reeking in his clamping down on peaceful protests, banning even of political shirts and wardrobe, and the superfluous deployment of more than 20,000 police as security detail for the SONA. The masses are therefore certain that the objective abject conditions or legitimate demands of the toiling masses will not be represented in tomorrow’s SONA, in the same way that Marcos Jr. will never acknowledge, much less apologize, for his family’s innumerable crimes.

Being grounded on truth, the demands of the people for genuine land reform, national industrialization, living wages, and other democratic interests will serve as a formidable counter-narrative to Marcos’ glossed over version of the state of the nation and systemic revision of history. The masses will continue to fight along the national democratic line because they know that it is only through such course will they be able to effect genuine change, and never from an illegitimate regime installed through a stolen reactionary “electoral victory.”

https://cpp.ph/statements/neverforget-our-legacy-of-struggle-and-wield-historic-resistance-to-confront-marcos-2-0/

CPP: Reject Marcos’ false promises of prosperity and peace

Propaganda statement posted to the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) Website (Jul 24, 2022): Reject Marcos’ false promises of prosperity and peace

Communist Party of the Philippines
July 24, 2022

This article is available in Bisaya

Ferdinand Marcos Jr is the chief executive of the neocolonial state. He comes from the Marcos dynasty of bureaucrat capitalists who accumulated monstrous amounts of wealth during their close to two decades of dictatorial rule throughout the 1970s up to the mid 1980s.

Marcos represents the interests of oppressive imperialist banks and foreign multinational corporations in the Philippines, and those of the ruling exploiting classes of big bourgeois compradors and big landlords.

But tomorrow—as he delivers his first state of the nation address before the joint session of the Philippine reactionary congress—Marcos will style himself as representative of “the ordinary Filipino”, or as one who understands or sympathizes with their daily suffering in the face of spiralling prices of fuel and food, low wages and lack of income, onerous taxes, landlessness, homelessness, hunger and poverty.

Marcos knows fully well the widespread discontent being generated by the gross socioeconomic conditions besetting the people in the face of the domestic and international economic crisis. He is determined to pull all the stops to deceive and mesmerize the people with high-sounding promises of progress and conjure illusions of prosperity in order to raise false hopes, and bring the people to a stupor and social paralysis.

Like his predecessors, Marcos will promote the same slew of neoliberal economic policies which, over the past four decades, have ravaged the country’s productive forces, and reduced the Philippines to a beggar of loans and a prostitute catering to foreign capitalists. With his so-called economic managers, all trained by the IMF-World Bank and champions of neoliberalism, it is certain that Marcos will carry out anti-people policies and measures that promote economic underdevelopment to the benefit of foreign creditors and capitalist investors. Marcos will:

(1) prevent wage increases and continue the policy of flexible labor (contractualization); (2) perpetuate land monopolies and feudal exactions on millions of peasants (land rent, unpayable debt, low farm-gate prices); (3) open more land for mining and plantations owned by big foreign capitalists; (4) continue labor-export policy as solution to widespread problem of unemployment and to generate foreign currency; (5) impose more taxes on people’s consumption and small businesses, while granting tax incentives to foreign big capitalist investors; (6) pursue foreign investment liberalization in remaining areas of the economy; (7) continue policy of agricultural production for export; (8) carry out social austerity measures to reduce spending on education, public health, social welfare, and public service; (9) open more foreign-funded infrastructure projects including dams and large-scale reclamation projects that damage the environment; (10) allow public utility operators (water, electricity, internet) to continue raising service costs despite poor service; and others.

These Marcos policies are anti-people and anti-national and are in line with the impositions of imperialist banks and multinational corporations. These will aggravate the conditions of the oppressed and exploited classes of workers, peasants and petty-bourgeoisie. These will worsen the backward, agrarian and non-industrial state of the Philippine economy.

Marcos will try to obscure or draw attention away from these policies by promoting showcase programs accompanied with grandiose but empty promises. For instance, he has declared plans of promoting “food security and sovereignty” but has declared no plans to address the basic problems of feudal exploitation of millions of tenant farmers in rice, corn and sugarcane lands, or stop the expansion of plantations for export crops, or end the policy of import liberalization of agricultural products. He talks of raising agricultural productivity through Masagana 99-like loan programs which buried millions of farmers in mountains of debt. Like his father, Marcos Jr will likely devise his own Nutribun campaign to come up with the appearance of addressing the people’s welfare while actually exacerbating the roots of their poverty and hunger.

Under the signboard of “unity,” Marcos is steadily building his authoritarian regime using the overwhelming power of state security forces. The short period since Marcos assumed power has already been marked by incidents of unlawful arrests and incidents of political repression. Leaders of people’s organizations are being targeted for suppression in order to impose a climate of fear. Military and police officers have raised the level of fascist rhetoric, openly contemptuous of the people’s right to assemble and free expression, and raising the intensity of red-baiting and terrorist-labelling.

In the countryside, martial law measures continue to be openly carried out in villages and communities hamleted, blockaded and occupied by the military and police. The peasant masses and minority people are assaulted and subjected to interrogation in their homes, subjected to ceaseless harassment and forced to cooperate with the military under pain of being arrested, tortured or killed. False flag operations of the AFP are on the rise where attacks against civilians are being blamed on the NPA.

Under the advise of his national security officers, Marcos chooses to ignore the socioeconomic roots of the armed conflict and will instead pursue “localized peace talks,” a smokescreen for intensified psychological warfare and intelligence operations against the peasant masses to force them to surrender the defense of their land. The ultimate aim of Marcos’ “peace” is to pave the way for the entry of plunderous multinational corporations in mining and plantations, as well as infrastructure, ecotourism and energy projects. American multinational corporations are coveting at least 300,000 hectares of agricultural and ancestral lands in Mindanao.

Having assumed power, the Marcoses are set to reconsolidate and expand their ill-gotten wealth estimated at more than $10 billion which they accumulated through plunder and corruption under martial law. The gargantuan wealth of the Marcoses fund not only their ostentatious lifestyle, but more importantly, their ever expanding political dynasty.

Confronted by the anti-people, puppet and fascist US-Marcos regime, the Filipino people have no other course of action but to advance their national and democratic interests through militant struggle. By expanding and strengthening their organized ranks, the people will not allow themselves to be cowed by fascist intimidation and will take every opportunity to resolutely assert their demands and aspirations. The level of the people’s unity must be raised. The highest priority must be placed on building, expanding and strengthening workers’ unions, mass organizations and different types of associations in factories, communities, school campuses, offices, markets, churches and other places of work and congregation. Tactics and methods must be enhanced and adopted for mobilizing and consolidating the politically advanced section of the masses in order to galvanize the middle section into social and political action.

The people’s consciousness and militant determination to defend their political, socioeconomic and cultural rights must be raised through untiring political education and organizing. Burning issues of the day, from fuel and food price increases, to the US proxy war in Ukraine, must be discussed by the broad masses of the people from their democratic and patriotic perspective. The people must press their urgent demands for wage increases, lower prices of oil and other commodities, lower land rent and elimination of usury, higher farmgate prices, fishing rights, free public education and public health, production subsidies, and other urgent demands amid the worsening economic crisis. They must vigorously oppose the imposition of new consumer taxes, automatic debt allocations, wasteful military and police spending, extravagant and destructive infrastructure projects, expansion of mining companies and plantations, and other anti-people policies and programs. These issues must be linked and raised to the basic national democratic demands for free land distribution and national industrialization.

The people must resist distortions of history being promoted by Marcos to cover up widespread rights abuses, corruption and national treachery under the US-Marcos I dictatorship. They must recall and draw inspiration from their epic resistance to the dictatorship, especially in line with the upcoming 50th year of martial law declaration.

At the same time, the Filipino people must push strongly to defend the country’s sovereignty against imperialist intervention and violations of its territory. They must denounce Chinese incursions in the West Philippine Sea and demand the dismantling of Chinese military facilities, destructive land reclamations and industrial fishing in and around Philippine waters. At the same time, the Filipino people must demand the dismantling of US military facilities inside the camps of the AFP, the withdrawal of American troops in Philippine soil under the Operation Pacific Eagle-Philippines, an end to US intervention in counterinsurgency and support for AFP aerial bombing and the abrogation of the Military Defense Treaty, the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA), the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) and other lopsided military agreements.

The broad masses must conduct large numbers of group meetings and assemblies in factories, communities and campuses. There must be a proliferation of educational materials, especially printed matter such as leaflets, pamphlets, primers and newspapers, that must be brought from house to house in one community after another, to reach and organize the people in their millions. At the same time, more video documentaries and films, progressive newscasts and other online materials must be produced to counter the Marcos campaign of disinformation being conducted in social media and the mass media.

Underground mass organizations allied with the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) must be strengthened and new chapters built. They must conscientiously conduct revolutionary propaganda among the masses and carry out tasks to support the New People’s Army in all ways possible, including gathering financial and material support for the people’s army, and recruiting new Red fighters.

The broad antifascist united front must be further expanded and harnessed in order to fight and isolate the Marcos regime in all fields of struggle. Aside from the basic sectors of workers and peasants, this broad united front must bring together, individuals and organizations from the academe, to the church, the cultural community, teachers, as well as from business, and the disgruntled sections of the ruling classes and within the military and police.

The New People’s Army (NPA) must persevere in carrying forward the people’s war through extensive and intensive guerrilla warfare on an ever widening and deepening mass base. The NPA has largely preserved its forces and surmounted the large-scale offensives and aerial bombardment drive of the AFP during the past 3–4 years through guerrilla tactics of dispersal, shifting, and concentration and by deepening and widening its mass base. The NPA is in a position to further expand and grow. It must aim to recruit large numbers of new Red fighters from among the peasant masses, as well as from workers and pettybourgeois intellectuals in the cities. In the face of heightening repression under Marcos, the NPA must be ready to recruit as Red fighters the mass activists and leaders who are targets of extrajudicial killings or arrests, or to provide them sanctuary in the guerrilla zone and base areas.

The Party must continue to strengthen itself comprehensively in order to lead the people in all fields of resistance against the US-Marcos regime. Party units must carry out a vigorous ideological campaign to study Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and its application in the Philippine revolution through the Party’s three-level study course. At all levels, Party units and cadres must conduct assessments, and criticism and self-criticism in order to overcome weaknesses and shortcomings and pull out their root causes. Party branches must be strengthened, and new ones built. The Party must promptly recruit the advanced activists from the underground mass organizations.

Through its thousands of branches, the Party ensures that it is deeply rooted among the people and capable of leading the mass struggles in factories, workers communities, peasant and fisherfolk villages, universities and offices. The Party must strengthen its branches and groups at all levels of the NPA in order to firmly lead the revolutionary armed struggle.

The chronic crisis of the semicolonial and semifeudal system in the Philippines is bound to get worse under the anti-people, puppet and fascist Marcos regime. Conditions are bound to worsen amid the prolonged international capitalist crisis and rising inter-imperialist armed conflicts that have resulted in disruptions in production and supplies. The backward, agrarian and non-industrial Philippine economy is ever more vulnerable to social and economic convulsions.

The US-Marcos regime’s push for more neoliberal policies, its fascism and subservience to the imperialists are generating conditions favorable for waging revolutionary armed struggle and all forms of resistance. The Filipino people are ever determined to fight for their national and democratic aspirations. The Party must firmly position itself, and lead the oppressed and exploited Filipino in carrying forward the people’s democratic revolution.

https://cpp.ph/statements/reject-marcos-false-promises-of-prosperity-and-peace/

Skirmish leaves 1 NPA rebel dead in Agusan Sur

From the Philippine News Agency (Jul 24, 2022): Skirmish leaves 1 NPA rebel dead in Agusan Sur (By Alexander Lopez)



SLAIN REBEL. A combatant of the New People's Army is killed during a 15-minute encounter with the troops of the 65th Infantry Battalion in Barangay Sta. Cruz, Sibagat, Agusan del Sur on Friday (July 22, 2022). The authorities were still determining the identity of the slain rebel. (Photo courtesy of 65IB)

A New People’s Army (NPA) rebel was killed in a 15-minute clash with troops of the 65th Infantry Battalion (65IB) in Barangay Sta. Cruz, Sibagat, Agusan del Sur on Friday.

In a statement released on Saturday, the 65IB reported that their troops were conducting a security patrol in the area when they encountered at least 10 NPA fighters.

It said the rebels were disturbing the residents by asking for food supplies.


“The security operation was launched in response to the complaints of the civilians and to ensure their security and protection,” the 65IB said.

A high-powered firearm, an anti-personnel mine, some ammunition, two backpacks, and personal belongings were recovered from the encounter site.

The Army, with the help of local officials and the police in the area, was still determining the identity of the slain NPA fighter.

In the same statement, 65IB commander Lt. Col. Emerson de Vera lauded the courage of the civilians who reported the presence of the NPA combatants.

"This is another meaningless death of an NPA terrorist,” de Vera said, as he called on the remaining rebels in the area to surrender.

“It is not too late for you to surrender, return to your family, and avail of the benefits of the Enhanced Comprehensive Local Integration Program of the government.”

He added that the 65IB troopers would continue their mission to protect the communities from the harassment and other terroristic activities of the NPA.

The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP)-NPA is listed as a terrorist organization by the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the Philippines.

The National Democratic Front was formally designated as a terrorist organization by the Anti-Terrorism Council on June 23, 2021, citing it as “an integral and inseparable part” of the CPP-NPA created in April 1973. (

https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1179624

NPA fighter slain in Bulacan clash

From the Philippine News Agency (Jul 24, 2022): NPA fighter slain in Bulacan clash (By Manny Balbin)



KILLED IN ENCOUNTER. A member of the New People's Army was killed in an encounter with government troops in the City of San Jose Del Monte, Bulacan on Saturday (July 23, 2022). Colonel Charlie Cabradilla, acting provincial director of the Bulacan Police Provincial Office, identified the slain rebel as certain Jovel Agudez, a member of the Komiteng Larangan Guerilla-Narciso. (Photo courtesy of the Bulacan Police Provincial Office)

CAMP ALEJO SANTOS, Bulacan – A New People's Army (NPA) rebel was killed in an encounter with government troops in the City of San Jose Del Monte, this province on Saturday.

In his report, Col. Charlie Cabradilla, acting director of the Bulacan Police Provincial Office, identified the slain rebel as Jovel Agudez of the Komiteng Larangan Guerilla (KLG) - Narciso.


Cabradilla said that based on the information given by the Philippine Army’s 70th Infantry Battalion (70IB), a gunfight ensued between the KLG-Narciso combatants and joint elements of Intel Platoon 70IB, Alpha Company 70IB, together with the 1st and 2nd Bulacan Provincial Mobile Force companies, City of San Jose Del Monte (CSJDM) Police Station, and 33rd Company of the Regional Mobile Force Battalion 3 (Central Luzon) in Sitio Katorse, Barangay Kaybanban, City of San Jose Del Monte.

The report did not indicate the number of fighters encountered by the joint military and police team.

Recovered by the government troops from the clash site were a cal. 5.56 gun loaded with ammunition, subversive documents, and personal belongings.

Cabradilla added that the CSJDM Police Station, together with the Bulacan Provincial Forensic Unit, secured and processed the encounter site.

He said the provincial police and the 70IB will continuously and relentlessly intensify their internal security operations against the communist group “to ensure that they cannot launch atrocities in the community."

The Communist Party of the Philippines - NPA is listed as a terrorist organization by the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the Philippines.

The National Democratic Front was formally designated as a terrorist organization by the Anti-Terrorism Council on June 23, 2021, citing it as “an integral and inseparable part” of the CPP-NPA created in April 1973.

https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1179623