The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) condemns the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) for unleashing widespread terror among the people of Bukidnon, especially the Lumad people living in the mountains of Valencia, Quezon and San Fernando, with the series of bombing and shelling over the past months.

On February 21, the AFP roused the people from their sleep as they fired their howitzers at least 13 times from 2 a.m. to 7 a.m., hitting in all directions at the mountain ranges bordering the towns of San Fernando, Quezon and Valencia City. These mountain ranges are home to thousands of Lumads who farm and make a living from forest resources.

Two days later, on February 23, the AFP fired their howitzers in the same area from 2 to 5 in the afternoon releasing a total of 13 bombs. During those days, there were no armed encounters between the AFP and the NPA. People in the area observed that the shelling had no clear target.

A little more than a month prior, on January 6, the AFP dropped bombs using Super Tucano jet fighters and fired rockets using MD520 helicopters at the adjacent barangays of Minongan, Kawayan and Santa Filomena, all in Quezon town, with bombs exploding near Lumad communities in the area. An NPA unit in the area was able to safely maneuver away from the bombing.

The relentless shelling and bombing has resulted in widespread fear among the people living at or along the foot of the mountains. These are directly aimed at the proximity of peasant and Lumad communities with the clear objective of instilling fear and terror among them.

The US-Marcos fascist regime and its armed minions are intensifying their attacks against the peasant masses and Lumad people, whom they believe continue to extend support to the New People’s Army (NPA), units of which continue to carry out military and political work in and around the area, despite the all-out military offensives and operations of the AFP during the past six or seven years.

The US-Marcos regime desperately wants to end the armed resistance in order to satisfy the greed of mining companies and plantations who covet the agricultural and ancestral land of the peasants and indigenous people of Bukidnon and elsewhere.

The US-Marcos regime, however, is succeeding only in exposing its true character as a fascist tool of foreign big capitalists and their local big bourgeois comprador partners, in stoking the people’s outrage and steeling their determination to fight back and defend their rights and lives.