The Rachelle Mae Palang Command (RMPC-NPA) dismissed the PNP claim of recovering firearms in Sta. Catalina last July 7 as “fake and desperate”.

According to RMPC-NPA spokesperson Estrella Banagbanag, there are no NPA members in the area. “It is highly possible that the three people they monitored are their own assets who planted the firearms, to maintain their long-disproved claim of a dismantled guerrilla front”, Banagbanag said.

She mentioned that the 11th IB and NOPPO are “desperate liars who have nothing left in their arsenal but deception due to their utter failure to defeat the New People’s Army.” She also called on civilians turned military and police intelligence assets to instead “do honest and productive work rather than being pushed to make up false reports to fulfill their quotas or otherwise be killed or imprisoned by the AFP and PNP”.

Banagbanag also exposed that “the reactionary government is hell-bent on declaring the Stable Internal Peace and Security (SIPS) status in Negros Oriental to push through imperialist and local business interests of mining and ecotourism, which includes Barangay Milagrosa and other nearby barangays in Santa Catalina”.

“The armed revolution will continue due to the continued militarization and subsequent exploitation of peasant and indigenous people communities in the area. Unwittingly, it is the actions of the AFP and PNP who recruit more people to take up arms to dismantle the rotten semicolonial and semifeudal system”, Banagbanag ended.