Correspondence Reports
The AFP and PNP are the country�s biggest drug syndicates

Basahin ang artikulong ito sa Pilipino

In a statement issued July 9, the New People�s Army Chadli Molintas Command in Ilocos-Cordillera strongly denounced the orchestrated smear campaign of Arroyo and the AFP and PNP depicting the NPA as marijuana cultivators. It is merely an attempt by Arroyo and the AFP-PNP to cover up the latter�s own involvement in drug syndicates.

The CMC said that in the countryside, the marijuana plantations in Benguet were initiated by Brig. Gen. Reynaldo Acop, former chief of the PNP Cordillera Regional Command, and carried on by his successors. In Kalinga, it is the Cordillera People�s Liberation Army, the paramilitary force that has formally merged with the AFP, which maintains the plantations. This is an open secret and can be verified by the masses in these areas, said the CMC.

At the national level, no less than the Presidential Task Force on Intelligence and Counter-Intelligence has reported that thousands of AFP and PNP forces are members of 507 drug syndicates and that their military officials earn P50 billion annually from the sale of confiscated drugs and from protection money collected from these drug syndicates. Aside from jueteng, the illegal drug trade is the leading source of AFP and PNP generals� unexplained wealth.

The CMC said that the NPA does not cultivate marijuana. It cultivates revolutionary consciousness and the militant assertion of democratic rights among the people. �The NPA is a disciplined army. It deplores and denounces bourgeois decadence, including drug abuse, gambling, prostitution, and other anti-social activities which are endemic to corrupt social systems such as capitalism and semifeudal societies like the Philippines.�

The CMC also said that in areas where the NPA encounters peasants who cultivate marijuana, a vigorous campaign is waged to discourage the practice. The peasants are taught that revolution, not marijuana planting, is the solution to poverty and oppression. The revolutionary movement also launches revolutionary land reform and various socio-economic programs so that the peasants are provided with alternative sources of livelihood.

21 July 2003
English Edition

	Editorial: Oppose and thwart the repression of the legal democratic movement
	Violence and fraud in the Isabela elections
	41st IB attempts murder of peasant leaders in Cagayan
	Arroyo-Cojuangco conflict intensifies
	Victorious NPA offensives
	Correspondence Reports Establishing a MAKIBAKA chapter in a barrio in Bicol
	Correspondence Reports The fight against illegal drugs in Eastern Visayas
	Correspondence Reports The AFP and PNP are the country�s biggest drug syndicates
	Correspondence Reports 3 RHB elements tried by people�s court
	Bishop of the poor
	AFP junior officers and rank-and-file restive
	Developments overseas The worsening US economy
	News