The New People’s Army (NPA)-Cagayan Valley (Fortunato Camus Command) joined the people’s broad condemnation of the Philippine National Police (PNP) for its violent and brutal dispersal of the residents’ anti-mining barricade in Barangay Bitnong, Dupax del Norte, Nueva Vizcaya on October 17. Three individuals were arrested but were immediately released.

“The NPA-Cagayan Valley salutes the people’s steadfast resistance. The struggle against destructive foreign mining is not only the fight of the Nueva Vizcaya people but also that of the entire Cagayan Valley and the whole nation,” the people’s army regional command spokesperson Nelia Lucia Guerrero said.

A court’s Temporary Restraining Order against the protesters authorized the police to arrest anyone obstructing the mining operations of Woggle Corporation. The company is 60% owned by FCF Minerals Senior Staff Annuity Corporation and 40% owned by Metals Exploration Plc, both based in London, England.

Captured videos show shield-bearing police aggressively pushing residents while dragging and arresting some protesters. At the front resisting were mostly elderly. Foreigners with covered faces were also observed standing behind the police.

Many organizations, progressive groups, church people, and universities expressed solidarity with the residents’ struggle.

Ka Nelia said the residents’ militant defense demonstrated the land’s importance to their lives and livelihood. “They clearly understand that the chemicals used in mining pose dangers to the creeks that nourish many aquatic resources, and the massive destruction of trees,” she said.

The spokesperson emphasized that the people of Bitnong can rely on no one but their own strength and unity. “They must strengthen their organization and conduct studies to understand why farmers lose their rights even to the land they have enriched, while it is constantly offered for foreigners to plunder and destroy,” she added.

The NPA-Cagayan Valley explained that the fight against large-scale mining is part of the general struggle against bureaucrat capitalism, which is dominated by politician-businessmen and a corrupt government responsible for destroying mountains, dispossessing farmers of their land, and driving the people into poverty. “The current system anchored on the three roots of widespread poverty offers no hope for the masses,” Ka Nelia said.

The police and military serve as the reactionary state’s weapons to defend this system. Amid the violence unleashed by the police and military, Ka Nelia declared that the struggling people have no one to rely on but the revolutionary movement.

“There is no other solution to end the people’s suffering but to strengthen the New People’s Army (NPA) and wage a protracted people’s war that will overthrow the current semi-colonial and semi-feudal system,” she said. In this regard, the NPA-Cagayan Valley called on the peasant masses and the working class, especially in Nueva Ecija, to take up arms and join the people’s army to defend themselves and change the rotten system.