The Rachelle Mae Palang Command (RMPC) of the New People’s Army (NPA) in Southeast Negros dismissed as a big hoax 11th Infantry Battalion’s pronouncement that at least 15 members of people’s militia surrendered recently.

According to RMPC spokesperson Ka Estrella Banagbanag, the supposed surrenderees are actually farmers hoodwinked into attending a one day “livelihood training” organized by the Alpha Company of 11th IB under 1Lt. Marc Garrick Pulutan and Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) under Provincial Director Nimfa Virtucio.

The farmers were promised one cow each and a cash incentive to allure them into participation.

The real purpose of the event, Banagbanag explained is to “round-up farmers they suspected having NPA ties or sympathy and recruit them into military intelligence assets, as well as, to use them as proganda tools considering their failure to wrest significant victories in the field lately.”

“It’s deplorable for the 11th IB to resort to such appalling and low-down trickery. It only showed how isolated Philippine Army particularly 11th IB from the peasant masses. On the hand, it unravel their reactionary and fascist character as the soldiers of the ruling class,” Banagbanag added.

Many of the farmers who attended the event and subsequently publicly declared as NPA militias were officers and members of legitimate and legal farmers’ association.

“The event is part and parcel of the Community Support Program of the AFP design to deodorize the brutal and savage war of suppression of the teroristic US-Duterte regime against the people launched through the NTF-ELCAC”, Banagbanag ended. ###