Thursday, August 22, 2013

Philippines: NPA holds 1001st Brigade HQ personnel as POW, exacts 11 casualties in enemy camp blast

 
 
 
The NPA detonated a bomb inside the headquarters of the 71st Infantry Battalion of the Philippine Army in Barangay (village) Pangibiran, Mabini town in the evening of 5 August, killing six enemy troops and wounding five others.
 
 
PRESS STATEMENT
By DANIEL IBARRA, Spokesperson
NPA Sub-regional Command
Compostela Valley - Davao Gulf Sub-region
21 August 2013

NPA holds 1001st Brigade HQ personnel as POW, exacts 11 casualties in enemy camp blast


Giving justice to two victims of extra-judicial killings and to peasant victims of Armed Forces of the Philippines atrocities, operatives under the Compostela Valley-Davao Gulf Subregional Command of the New People’s Army exploded its command detonated bomb inside the headquarters of the 71st Infantry Battalion in Barangay (village) Pangibiran, Mabini town, killing six AFP troops and wounding five others.

The bomb explosion last 5 August at 8:00pm was preceded by the arrest of Private First Class Rodello Canada Arigonan (serial number 776045), a 1001st Brigade Headquarters utility personnel. Arigonan was caught by the NPA operatives on 3 August, at 11:00pm in the vicinity of the military headquarters at Barangay Mapaang, Maco town.

Members of the Military Intelligence Battalion under the 101st Brigade - 10th Infantry Division of the AFP were responsible for the killing of Eddie Canon, a civilian and municipal coordinator of a progressive partylist group in Barangay San Isidro, Mawab town last 25 May; and of Ramil Lintas, a motorcycle driver of Barangay Calabcab, Maco town last 25 July.

Indeed, it is ridiculous how Maj. Jake Obligado, Civil-Military Operations Battalion chief, would repeat the lie that the NPA blast violates the international humanitarian law. When, truth to tell, the AFP perpetrates the worst forms of violence in the countryside with its US-designed (counter-insurgency program) Oplan Bayanihan. The military’s counter-revolutionary campaign forces the evacuation and dislocation of peasants to kowtow to the interest of landgrabbers and big miners in Compostela Valley. Military units, like the children-killer 71st Infantry Battalion, are responsible for the most despicable crimes against the people.

As the NPA keeps custody of Arigonan as its Prisoner of War, it will hold accountable elements of the reactionary armed forces who continue to abuse poor peasants and indigenous peoples in the countryside. The NPA actively seeks and pursues revolutionary justice in the face of the US-Aquino regime’s continuing apathy.

The hated regime condones human rights abuses that has only emboldened the AFP, Philippine National Police, and paramilitary forces under the prevailing culture of impunity.

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