By CPP Information Bureau
The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) today noted the existence of a concerted effort by the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and Philippine National Police (PNP) in cahoots with criminal syndicates to engage in nationwide extortion activities and use the name of the New People's Army (NPA) in their nefarious activities.
The CPP called upon legitimate businesses and the people not to fall for this campaign of extortion by fake NPA and urged them to report such activities to the proper revolutionary authorities for prompt and decisive action.
"These military, police and criminal extortionists pose as members of the NPA and send out crudely worded threat letters demanding money from small- and medium-sized businesses, entrepreneurs and even rank-and-file employees and ordinary people without distinction," said the CPP.
"To render such extortion threats more believable to their targets, Philippine Army spokesman, Col. Daniel Lucero recently distributed to media a press release claiming that the NPA is extorting millions of pesos from business establishments," the CPP said further.
"The perpetrators' objective in this psywar-cum-extortion campaign is to tarnish the NPA's reputation and isolate it, and at the same time pocket the monies themselves," the CPP added.
The CPP clarified that "The revolutionary movement encourages and welcomes economic activities and voluntary contributions of legitimate businesses and entrepreneurs in cooperation with local revolutionary mass organizations and organs of political power for the benefit of the socio-economic and overall interests of the people especially in the revolutionary mass base areas."
"The revolutionary movement has nothing to do with the extortion of honest-to-goodness businesses and ordinary earners and will act decively to end such lecherous activities that only serve to besmirch the good name of the revolutionary movement and enrich the heads of the military and police establishments and criminal syndicates."
"The Arroyo regime and its fascist military and police officials have become so desperate in the face of their impending failure to meet their deadline of defeating the armed revolution by 2010. Thus, they are desperately resorting to such vile psywar and self-enrichment campaigns," said the CPP.
"We anticipate the Arroyo regime's military and police officials to hurry up with even more similar psywar and self-enrichment gimmicks as their frustration mounts with the failure of Oplan Bantay Laya 2 which is scheduled to expire next year."
