By SIMON SANTIAGO
Political Director, NPA Southern Mindanao Regional Command
The 2nd Pulang Bagani Company-New People’s Army ambushed a joint operation of the 84th Infantry Batallion of the Philippine Army, Special Action Force of the Philippine National Police, paramilitary Citizens Armed Forces Geographical Unit (CAFGU) and Lumad vigilante group ‘Black Fighters’ on 08 March at 4:20 pm in Barangay (village) Carmen, Baguio district, in Davao City. Red fighters punished three soldiers, wounded eight others, and confiscated an M-16 armalite rifle, an M-14 assault rifle, a packbag and ammunitions.
In fleeing from the ambush site, other members of the joint AFP-PNP-CAFGU platoon held for several hours the employees of the nearby Puentespina flower garden.
The NPA ambush was to give justice to the victims of the 84th Infantry Battalion and its use of Lumad vigilantes in its current intensive military operations. The military offensives started last 27 February, covering the barangays of Cadalian, Tambobong, Tawan-atwan, Carmen and Tamayong, hampering preparations of the civilians for the forthcoming Araw ng Dabaw celebration.
Desperate but miserably failing to frustrate the advance of the people’s Red army in the Davao City hinterland, the Army has backed and armed one Ceasar Malinaw, a pastor, to lead the indigenous peoples for counter-revolutionary operations. The 10th Infantry Division’s combat and Special Operations Team of the Philippine Army has blatantly used local Lumad opportunist leaders to resurrect the notorious Black Fighter vigilantes. It has also shamelessly used the Philippine Eagle Foundation as front for its reconnaissance activities.
It is futile and illusory for the 10th Infantry Division to conjure an image of Davao City peasant villages bereft of the NPA and revolutionary forces. The recent NPA ambush and the punishment of a military spy in Baguio district demonstrate the pursuit of revolutionary justice consistently upheld by the people’s army.