Rebels Bring War To Duterte's Turf

Members of the New People's Army during a guerilla training in the Philippines.

DAVAO CITY – Communist insurgents vowed to launch more attacks against government and military targets and said they would bring the war right in the doorstep of President Rodrigo Duterte’s hometown – Davao City.

The New People’s Army said it will not be cowed by Duterte’s all- out war against the communist group, say- ing, to strike rebel forces at any are opportune ready time anywhere in the country. Just last week, the rebel group claimed responsibility on a daring attack in Davao City’s Calinan district where insurgents destroyed several trucks owned by fruit companies operating there.

Rubi del Mundo, a spokesman for the rebel group, said the recent assault was a punitive action against the Japanese firm Sumitomo Fruits Corporation and Ayala-owned Highland Banana Corporation. Rebel forces torched three trucks owned and pushed them off a cliff in Calinan district, he said. “Workers and peasants in corporate plantations around Southern Mindanao are rejoicing Saturday’s punitive action,” he said in a statement sent over to the regional newspaper Mindanao Examiner. He said the attack is part of their revolutionary movement’s policy to penalize big bourgeois comprador companies which continue to exist with impunity by inflicting unimpeded environmental destruction and exploitation of peasants and workers. Del Mundo branded the two companies as notorious and accused the Sumitomo Fruits Corporation and Highland Banana Corporation of exploiting workers’ welfare by dishing out barely liveable wages, subjecting them to inhuman working conditions, union busting and other repressive labor practices, particularly in their farms in Davao City where Duterte’s daughter, Sara, is also the mayor.

“Both companies push plantation workers to work almost 12 hours, sometimes 16 hours daily under different schemes meant to extract superprofit. Packing plant workers are also made to work the same length of hours without sufficient safety implements. SUMIFRU and Highland, likewise, continue to utilize toxic chemical fertilizers and pesticides in their boom truck sprayers. Workers report that they are routinely exposed to the harmful chemicals being sprayed by boom trucks,” he said.

Del Mundo said peasant families who initially expected to be alleviated from poverty by entering into agribusiness venture agreements with SUMIFRU and Highland are faring no better under highly-exploitative arrangements that eventually cost them their lands. “With no control over production, they fall prey to the companies’ exclusive and manipulative management schemes that have buried them deep into indebtedness and have resulted in the seizure of their lands,” he said.

There was no immediate statement or reaction from neither the mayor nor the two companies on the accusations against them by the rebel group which has been fighting for many decades now for a separate state in the country.

Last month. Rebels also seized a police officer, Inspector Menardo Cui, Sr., who was inside a KTV bar in North Cotabato’s President Roxas town in southern Philippines. NPA fighters stormed the HMB KTV Bar and Lodging House in the village of Tuael where Cui - the town’s deputy police chief - was having a good time with friends.

Cui was taken out of the bar by rebels while other customers looked horrified on the sight of heavily-armed insurgents who threatened to kill anybody who would dare to stop them. The NPA declared Cui as a prisoner of war and said the officer would be tried by its so-called people’s court for crimes against innocent civilians.

President Rodrigo Duterte, who had supported the NPA when he was mayor of Davao City, branded the rebels as terrorists.

(Philippines Revolution Web Central)