CPDF slams ‘fake surrender’ of NPAs

SOMEWHERE IN THE CORDILLERA – The Cordillera People’s Democratic Front claimed army and police officials have been “hoodwinking the public by coercing and presenting folks in the Cordillera and Ilocos regions as New People’s Army surrenderees when they were just ordinary, innocent civilians.”    

“For pure psywar, corrupt military and civilian officials continue to make money from trickery feigning success of their counterrevolutionary war against the national democratic revolution,” said Simon “Ka Filiw” Naogsan Sr., spokesman of the Cordillera People’s Democratic Front in a press statement.

He said this was the case of clumsily photo-shopped presentation of more than “300 surrenderees” in Masbate.

A certain Maj. Aguilar who was reportedly behind the scheme apologized publicly but said it was an honest mistake, purportedly to protect the identity of the surrenderees.

“Up here in the Northern Luzon, similar gimmickry cum milking cow ventures are glaring proof that the Masbate hullabaloo was not at all an isolated case,” Naogsan said.

“In the Ilocos-Cordillera region, as with other regions of the country, people are being subjected to different forms of coercion to force them to submit to this dubious program. In order to meet their quota and project a prettified scenario that they are winning the war and in the process, get a share of the reward money, officers and personnel of the AFP concoct numerous schemes in order to present “surrenderees” and gloatingly project them to the media.”

Naogsan said cases of fake surrender of peasants were staged by the military and officials in Ifugao, Kalinga, Mountain Province, Abra and Isabela.

“Under pain of being falsely accused as NPA supporters, they were transported aboard military trucks to the headquarters of the 5^th Infantry Division in Gamu, Isabela,” he said. 

“They were ushered in a huge hall set like a dining room.  But no food was served in the finely arranged dining table.  Instead, various types of guns were laid in each table ranging from the rusty homemade short arms, hunting guns, to the high caliber sort of rifles.   All 72 of them were presented as surrenderees before President Duterte during his visit in September 2018. 

“After the well documented fake surrender, the peasants were served little food packed in small cellophane bags. A few of them received P15,000 each and were transported back to their respective communities.  They were told that another surrender batch of their barriomates will follow soon.

“In this case, the corrupt officials of 5^th ID were not only fooling the public, they were even fooling their own commander-in-chief.” 

In Abra police officials reportedly staged fake mass surrender.   Ten civilians from Sallapadan town were reportedly summoned by PNP provincial director Col. Alfredo A. Dangani in the provincial police headquarters in Bangued where they were allegedly forced to take oath as surrenderees and had their group picture taken despite the barrio folks’ protestation.

“Obviously, no one would ever believe that a 74 year-old man and women elderlies would ably qualify as militia members,” the CPDF press statement said.

“Joining the fray rather brazenly was Col. Job Russel Balaquit, the PNP provincial director of Kalinga.”  For allegedly “failing to get civilians to sing his tune, he arrested four women elderlies from Barangay Buaya in Balbalan, Kalinga in the evening of October 24, 2019, brought them to Camp Juan Duyan, Tabuk City and presto, he had four surrenderees up his sleeve the following morning. 

The dossiers of the four were projected as far back during Marcos period.

Naogsan said “most of these supposed surrenderees were recycled as they were presented as such in previous periods.  Clearly, this scheme was to pad the lists of supposed surrenderees to gain larger amounts to fatten their pockets leaving the surrenderees to a next possible round of surrender summon.

“Clearly, corrupt psywar operatives in the AFP and PNP are more interested with stealing people’s money allotted for E-CLIP.  The crooks are not concerned if their commander in chief appears even more silly before the entire Filipino people.”