NPA scores AFP Lumad conscription

It is highly despicable for the Armed Forces of the Philippines - 10th Infantry Division to conscript young Lumad people to join its brutal counter-revolutionary war in the countryside. Not content with wantonly killing Lumad civilians, attacking Lumad schools and their personnel, students and parents, and Lumad communities in Mindanao, the AFP now has the gall to garb the indigenous youth as uniformed fascist troops, become killing machines that sow terror and mayhem against their own tribe and kin.

Last week, the 10th ID announced it would recruit and train 300 Lumad from different tribes in Davao, Cotabato and Socskargen regions alongside its plan to add several more Army battalions. The move is a desperate attempt of the AFP to score military points in the battlefield where its troops are required to have mastery of terrain, high tolerance for sacrifice and to exhibit innate courage—attributes that they sorely lack and want to exploit from the Lumad youth.

The AFP is inherently fascist—an armed force that elicits blind obedience from its ranks through abuse, manipulation and intimidation. Worse, as a mercenary armed force of the reactionary ruling class, it is downright subservient to the interests of big landlords and bourgeois compradors at the expense of the exploited masses. Indoctrinated in the xenophobic tradition of the US military, it is violently prejudiced against and has no respect for minorities such as the Lumad and Moro people.

The recent brutal murder of 22-year old Remart Dumayongan, a 10thID recruit, shows only too grisly the extent of systematic abuse and prejudice against the Lumad in the AFP. Dumayongan, a Dibabawon, was mercilessly battered to death while undergoing recruitment training at a 10thID camp in Mawab, Compostela Valley last September.

Under Oplan Kapayapaan, this latest recruitment of “Lumad warriors” to augment AFP troops rehashes the IP-centric efforts of Task Force Gantangan and the Investment Defense Force that ventured but failed to mobilize the Lumad as protectors of large mining and logging companies in Mindanao. This time around, the AFP cajoles the Lumad with promises of “status and benefits” as other regular soldiers, highlighting all the more the AFP’s deeply ingrained culture of looking down on indigenous people.

In the way that they repudiate paramilitary groups such as the Bagani and Alamara, the Lumad in Mindanao will never embrace or call as their own a fascist machinery trained by the AFP to fight for the USDuterte regime’s counter-revolutionary war against the people. They know that the AFP has always employed divide-and-rule tactics in the vain attempt to pit them against one another and weaken their armed resistance.

More importantly, the Lumad stand by the national democratic revolution as the only means of advancing their right to selfdetermination. The Lumad of Mindanao will continue to wage just people’s war in the ranks of the NPA for and alongside all oppressed Filipino masses. (Sgd.) RIGOBERTO F. SANCHEZ Spokesperson Merardo Arce Command Southern Mindanao Regional Operations Command New People’s Army