PRESS STATEMENT
13 May 2011
Guerillas belonging to the 3rd Pulang Bagani Company of the Merardo Arce Command-Southern Mindanao Regional Operations Command of the New People’s Army (3rd PBC-MAC-SMROC-NPA) disarmed a security unit of the RACEL Mines and Minerals — an American mining company — in Sitio Lawaan, Barangay Kingking Pantukan, Compostela Valley province yesterday afternoon. Four M4 high-powered rifles were confiscated. One of the mining firm’s armed personnel who tried to give battle to the NPA unit was killed while the others who did not were left unhurt.
This NPA tactical offensive is an enforcement of the People’s Policy of defending the national patrimony against the onslaught of the US-driven imperialist globalization that has gone even faster in the country under the current US-Aquino regime. This pro-Filipino and pro-environment policy requires the people and their People’s Army to oppose every reactionary regime’s drive of allowing foreign monopolies to take over the country’s natural resources, especially its rich mineral resources.
The Aquino regime has accelerated the sellout of the national patrimony, especially in the mining, agriculture and energy sectors. In the provinces of Compostela Valley, Davao Oriental, South Cotabato, Surigao and in the district of Paquibato in Davao City, foreign large-scale mining companies and their big bourgeois comprador partners have been permitted to explore, extract and export as raw materials the area’s ore deposits. Small-scale miners, peasants and whole indigenous peoples communities are nowhere in the agenda of the US-Aquino government.
RACEL Mines and Minerals — an affiliate of the US global mining company St. Augustine — and other large-scale mining corporations target the gold ore deposits in the mountains of Pantukan town. It maintains a sizable group of armed personnel who secure their exploration area and the Americans who run the 4,000-hectare operations. And to protect the interests of big foreign and local big businesses, the 10th Infantry Division-Philippine Army-Armed Forces of the Philippines stationed its 71st Infantry Battalion in Pantukan. Combat and civilian-military operations, disguised as “peace and development operations”, are conducted in conjunction with the program of imperialist plunder.
It is therefore in the genuine interests of the poor people that the AFP violators of human rights and protectors of the rich classes and their armed security adjuncts are hit by NPA tactical offensives.
(Sgd) Rigoberto F. Sanchez
Spokesperson
Merardo Arce Command
Southern Mindanao Regional Operations Command
New People’s Army
The purpose of disarming is to show defiance against the US-driven imperialist globalization. I disagree. By the way, before I forgot, I would like to inform Mr. Sanchez that it is not RACEL; it is RUSSEL Mines and Minerals, precisely, that’s the real name of the company.
Disarming civilians who were supposed to go to work on that day is a clear manifestation of their being inconsiderate to the small time working class. It is the exact opposite of their claims as heroes of the poor. They are just frustrated hero-wannabees who brought not order but turmoil; not peace but chaos; not development but downfall; not liberty but bondage from deceit and terror.
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