AFP misrepresented detained NGO worker as a CPP official

The New People’s Army Southern Mindanao Regional Command assails the malicious and fake charges imputed against Dominiciano Muya who was presented to the media by the 10th Infantry Division-AFP as a high ranking NPA official in the region.

Last Thursday’s orchestrated arrest in Tagum City – in an outrageous story line replete with standard planted grenade and .45 pistol in Muya’s possession-- was not only implausible, it also showed the AFP’s mercenary scheme to siphon off the P4-million reward money at the expense of an NGO worker who had a legitimate profession as an educator and agriculture expert for indigenous peoples (IP) schools. Muya’s arrest was a shameless money-making plot of a corrupt Army unit.

AFP manufactured the criminal charges based on pure imagination; it wrongly accused Muya as part of the CPP Southern Mindanao Regional Committee to portray him as its enemy in order to discredit his work in the countryside as a committed educator of sustainable agriculture among IP schools.

The 10th ID-Eastern Mindanao Command arrest and detention of Muya is part of its crackdown against advocates, educators and nongovernment workers who are serving poor and neglected Lumads and peasants in Talaingod and Kapalong towns and other parts of Davao del Norte, Compostela Valley and other provinces in Mindanao.

Muya’s capture is the handiwork of a desperate Army that is fast running out of dirty tricks to harass NGOs who are closely working with the masses for basic education and other social services. The 10th ID-Eastern Mindanao Command is hell-bent in closing down IP schools which it wantonly labels as NPA structures in order to stop genuine development in these areas.

The military is allergic to far-flung private schools and any mass undertaking, seeing these endeavors as impediments to foreign large-scale mining and capitalist incursions in the resource-rich forests and ancestral lands of IPs. By arresting, detaining, or harassing teachers in the countryside, they are scheming to instill fear among NGOs, activists, advocates and civil libertarians.

The masses should see to these antipeople machinations and struggle against these gross human rights abuses.

The 10th ID-Eastern Mindanao Command should release Muya now!