NPA Refutes AFP claim: 5 Soldiers killed in NPA ambush

Rigoberto F. Sanchez
Spokesperson
Merardo Arce Command
Southern Mindanao Regional Operational Command
New People's Army
February 07, 2005

There is no truth to the wild claim by Maj. Gen. Samuel Bagasin of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP)'s 4th Infantry Division that the New People's Army suffered 14 casualties in last Saturday's incident in Sitio Pulang Lupa, Brgy. Ngan, Compostela, Compostela Valley province. Again, the enemy officialdom is using propaganda in its futile attempt to reverse the real score in the battlefield.

No one from the NPA was wounded, much less killed. On the contrary, five soldiers (based on body count) were killed on the spot while scores were wounded when NPA guerrillas of the Ruperto Tuyac Command (RTC)-Sub-Regional Operations Command of the Merardo Arce Command ambushed a 48-man oversized-platoon of the 36th IB at about 9:00 AM on February 5. The overwhelming success of this tactical offensive by the NPA is such that the NPA seized an M60 machine gun with 2,500 rounds of ammunition, one Armalite rifle, several military backpacks and a map showing the military operation conducted by the 36th IB. A day before this ambush, a team of the same NPA unit conducted a military action that resulted in the killing of one 36th IB trooper.

These tactical offensives are punitive actions by the NPA on the 36th IB which was deployed in Diwalwal as part of the regime's grand program to hand over the gold-rich area to foreign monopoly capitalists. Clearly, the 36th IB and all AFP battalions previously and prospectively deployed in the area serve as protectors of foreign mining interests in Diwalwal.

Despite the unfounded claims by some quarters, the 36th IB is no different from other AFP battalions in its record of violations of human rights. Its anti-people and fascist character is manifested in the following cases, among others:

1. February 17, 2004, HAMLETTING of 28 farmers in Brgy Lebanon, Montevista while the 36th IB was conducting a military operation;
2. January 9, 2004, STRAFING of five (5) Ata-Manobo in Sitio Kalabirahan, Brgy. Naboc, Monkayo, Compostela Valley; a 17-year-old victim was finished off at close range;
3. November 27, 2004, FORCED SURRENDER of five banana plantation workers in Brgy. Osmena, Compostela and 1 Barangay Health Worker who were falsely accused of being NPA members
4. November 18, 2003, RAPE and GRAVE THREATS against one Marissa Libot, a mother of two and falsely accused of being an NPA member, inside a 36th IB detachment in Brgy. Upper Ulip, Monkayo, Compostela Valley

The US-Arroyo regime is pursuing intense militarization in the countryside for no other reason than to protect the interests of its imperialist masters and the local big bourgeois-comprador and big landlord classes.

The Arroyo regime has made a treacherous sell-out of the national patrimony through the Mining Act of 1995 and signalled the renewed pillage of the country's natural resources principally by foreign monopoly capitalists engaged in environmentally-destructive large-scale mining and agribusiness.

It is in this context that the revolutionary forces strongly reject the deceptive truce offer recently made by GRP President Macapagal-Arroyo. The puppet US-Arroyo regime is hallucinating if it expects that the NPA can be hoodwinked into this scheme. The peace offering is patently designed to conjure a climate of false peace in the countryside in order to facilitate the voracious plunder of the nation's natural wealth. This is the message that was sent in clear terms in this latest tactical offensive by the NPA. #

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