Duterte orders action against NPA after cops’ killings

MANILA: President Rodrigo “Rody” Duterte confirmed that he ordered especially the military to render a “tit for tat” treatment against members of the communist New People’s Army (NPA) blamed for the summary execution of four policemen in Negros Oriental province in the Visayas in Central Philippines.

“I will give you tit for tat. That’s my order to the military, give them what they deserve,” Duterte said, referring to the killing of the four police intelligence agents who were reportedly tortured and killed by NPA insurgents in Negros Oriental.

The killing of the policemen in the town of Ayungon, Negros Oriental resulted in the subsequent slaying of a total of 21 people, including a lawyer as well as a former mayor and a “barangay” (village) chief in the last two weeks of July.

Duterte disclosed he issued the order when he spoke late on Friday night before farmer beneficiaries of the government’s land reform programme in Davao City, his hometown in Mindanao.

He warned the NPA: “You have gone too far... you cannot do it unrestrained, unbridled, uncontrolled. I will not allow it.”

But the president also emphasised that he and the military did not allow NPA members who either surrendered or were captured to be tortured or harmed “because we are different from the barbarians like them.”

The NPA is the armed component of the Communist Party of the Philippines that has been waging a Maoist-style insurgency against the government for more than 50 years, considered the longest in Asia and the Pacific.

Earlier, Salvador Panelo, the presidential spokesman, warned Duterte was seriously considering the use of his emergency powers granted him by the Constitution to impose martial law over Negros Island, composed of the provinces of Negros Occidental and Negros Oriental.

In addition, more than 300 members of an elite police unit called the Special Action Force have been deployed on the island, especially in Netro Oriental to stop the seemingly unabated killings.