Archive for March 16th, 2007
Over 50,000 firearms from NPA to be destroyed–military
MANILA, Philippines — The military will destroy 53,805 firearms recovered from the communist New People’s Army, officials said.
Armed Forces Deputy Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Antonio Romero tore apart an AK47 assault rifle with a metal cutter in Camp Aguinaldo on Friday, to start off the dismantling operations.
The dismantled firearms, mostly AK47 and M16 rifles and grenade launchers, will be burned. Metals left behind will be sold as scrap metal, Romero said.
The scrap metal will be sold for an estimated two million pesos, which will be added to funds for the military’s modernization program, he told reporters.
“We are dismantling these firearms so they will not fall into the wrong hands,” Lieutenant Colonel Bartolome Bacarro, military spokesman, said in a statement.
Bacarro could not ascertain over what period the firearms were confiscated, surrendered or recovered after encounters with New People’s Army (NPA) rebels.
Bacarro said recovered firearms that would be proven to have been seized from security forces based on its serial numbers would be returned to the military and police inventories.
Bacarro could not say how many of the recovered firearms were returned to government troops.
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Esperon admits troops in Metro part of anti-insurgency plan
MANILA, Philippines — Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) Chief of Staff General Hermogenes Esperon Jr. has admitted that the deployment of soldiers to poor communities in Metro Manila was part of Oplan Bantay Laya (Oplan Freedom Watch) 2, the military’s counter-insurgency master plan.
In an interview with reporters in Makati City late Thursday, Esperon said the communist New People’s Army (NPA) has infiltrated the capital to recruit university students.
“You can say that. It’s training but its all part of our preparations and if during those trainings we are able to solve problems in those areas then we are hitting at the causes of insurgency, poverty for one,” Esperon said when asked if the deployment was a component of Oplan Bantay Laya.
“We said the urban area and the rural area could not be separated from each other. The New People’s Army works on both the urban area and the rural area. Logistics, for one, cadres from the urban centers, by
cadre, I mean the political cadres,” he said.
It was the first direct admission from the military that the presence of armed soldiers in the capital was meant to curb the nearly four-decade-old communist insurgency. Officials have said that metro troops were training for peacekeeping missions abroad.
“We have to prepare for Bantay Laya 2. In that sense, it [deployment] can be considered a part [of it],” the military chief said.
Oplan Bantay Laya 2, which started last January 1, aims to “strategically defeat” the NPA by 2010, when President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo steps down from office.
Left-wing party-list groups have accused soldiers of campaigning against them but an internal investigation in the military and the Metro Manila office of the Commission on Human Rights had cleared soldiers of the electioneering allegations.
Esperon said the humanitarian or civil military operations (CMO) component of the metro deployment would be “very strong.”
“By the way we are not driven away from these barangay [villages],” he said.
Since November 2006, 26 teams each composed of 10 soldiers under the National Capital Region Command (NCRCom), have been deployed to depressed areas in Quezon City, Caloocan City, and Manila.
Earlier this week, soldiers began work on the repair of a day care center in Manila’s Tondo district and the construction of public toilets. Last week, soldiers gave free haircuts and circumcision to children in Pandacan, also in Manila.
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Military chief wants communism outlawed
‘I want all suspected communists arrested’
MANILA, Philippines – Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) Chief of Staff General Hermogenes Esperon Jr. has said that he wanted communism to be outlawed again, as he accused leftists of taking advantage of the repeal of the Anti-Subversion Law in 1986 to topple government.
“If I had my way I would really go for the declaration of outlawing the CPP [Communist Party of the Philippines],” Esperon told a forum of the Manila Overseas Press Club late Thursday evening.
“When we threw out, kicked out the dictator [president Ferdinand Marcos] we started to release our political prisoners, one of whom is [CPP founder] Joma Sison. We wanted them to enjoy the democratic space, but do they want that democratic space? No,” Esperon said.
In a later interview, Esperon said that if had his way, “I want all suspected [communists] arrested.”
But with no law against communism, Esperon said security forces needed to build up criminal cases against left-wing personalities, like Bayan Muna party-list Representative Satur Ocampo, before they could run after them.
Ocampo has gone into hiding after a local court issued an arrest warrant for the murder of suspected communist rebels who have turned into military informants. The remains of at least 67 of the victims were dug up in a mass grave in Inopacan town, Leyte province in 2006.
“Congressman Satur Ocampo for example, has been charged with murder. We are not charging him because he is a member of the Communist Party of the Philippines. For us to be able to do that we had to file charges, gather evidence, gather witnesses,” Esperon said.
Following the overthrow of the Marcos dictatorship in 1986, then president Corazon Aquino repealed Republic Act 1700 or the Anti-Subversion Law to encourage the CPP to enter into peace talks with the government.
Formal negotiations however have been stalled since August 2004 after the rebels accused the government of not doing enough to remove Sison and the CPP’s armed wing, the New People’s Army (NPA) from the terrorism blacklists of the United States and the European Union.
“The repeal of 1700 told us to be more efficient in going after them. We can’t just make arrests here and there. You have to file the appropriate charges,” the military chief said.
During the forum, Esperon also said that the leftists’ legal and underground fronts “work hand in hand in seizing political power.”
“These legal organizations, they say they are legal but these are supported by organizations that are largely underground and these are of course in tandem with the armed group of the CPP-NPA-NDF,” he said.
“What I’m saying is that they have a common aim. They are moving towards only one objective, which is the overthrow of this government and impose a communist government,” he added.
Esperon also renewed his criticism of left-wing party-list groups for not condemning the “violent acts” of the NPA.
“If they are responsible citizens, for that matter, high officials of the land, and they cannot denounce then what does that tell you?” he said.
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