The end of Duterte's term as President is imminent. That means the troops need to speed up their operations to meet the June 2022 deadline to defeat the insurgency.
Troops under the Philippine Army’s 3rd Infantry (Spearhead) Division (3ID) on Tuesday were told to serve the people using the development programs of the national government but to also be aggressive in the battlefront to be able to put an end to the insurgency.
“Go where the enemies are by establishing forward operating bases, increase intelligence efforts to improve operational efficiency and instill the culture of discipline among yourselves. Take all these into account in serving the people of Central and Western Visayas because these will give us the edge to win,” he said. "Focus on (the) main task, be mindful of (the) deadline set by the President, which is to defeat insurgency by June 2022."
During the change of command ceremony, Maj. Gen. Benedict Arevalo assumed as acting commander of the 3ID, replacing Brig. Gen. Noel Baluyan.
In his message, Arevalo said while they would continue to win the hearts and minds of people through their civil-military activities, they would be feared by their enemies through relentless, aggressive, and offensive operations.
“We should not be coward or down-hearted because of the comments of our enemy and the friends and supporters of our enemy. We will continue to negate the lies and deception that our enemy is trying to propagate in our provinces, especially in the far-flung barangays,” he said.
Arevalo also raised the importance of their commanders to continue engaging stakeholders, local government units, national government agencies, civil society organizations, academe, and different sectors to sustain their operational momentum and accomplishments.
He also urged the people of Western and Central Visayas to support the armed forces.
“It might be difficult but with the trend nationwide, the CPP-NPA actually is collapsing but has not yet collapsed. Hopefully, if we can sustain it, we can really see the time that they are not capable of engaging us in frontal combat operations. With our relentless operations, I’m sure that we will be able to neutralize the threat they are posing not only to us but also to our countrymen,” he said.
So, the plan is to win the hearts and mind of the people through development programs and to instill fear in the CPP-NPA "through relentless, aggressive, and offensive operations." Operations this week resulted in the death of several NPA fighters.
Army soldiers on Wednesday found five bodies of suspected New People’s Army (NPA) rebels, who were believed killed in a gunfight on Tuesday, during the clearing operations in Barangay Dungeg, Sta. Teresita, Cagayan.
Army Maj. Jekyll Dulawan, 5th Infantry Division (5ID) spokesperson, said aside from the bodies, the soldiers also found and recovered three high-powered firearms, three anti-personnel mines, five handheld radios, four mobile phones, assorted medical supplies and equipment, anti-government documents and personal belongings.
He recalled that soldiers uncovered a rebel hideout where anti-personnel mines were manufactured by the NPA-Komiteng Rehiyon-Cagayan Valley after Tuesday's firefight.
The Army did not suffer any casualties in the firefight against some 40 communist rebels.
“The accurate information provided by the locals and the timely, precise and well-coordinated actions of the ground troops and the Philippine Air Force led to this decisive engagement against the NPAs without any casualties on the government forces and the civilians,” Dulawan told the Philippine News Agency in a phone interview.
The Army engaged 40 NPA fighters and only 5 died. That is 12.5% dead. Is that an acceptable kill rate? Six more NPA fighters died in two other clashes with government troops.
Six suspected communist rebels were killed in separate clashes with the military in Bukidnon and Agusan del Norte provinces, the military said.
In the first clash, five suspected members of New People’s Army were killed in Malaybalay City, Bukidnon around 6:46 a.m. on Monday (Sept. 20), the Army’s 4th Infantry Division said.
Eleven high-powered firearms were found at the clash site. No casualties were recorded on the government side.
Another communist rebel was killed in a clash with policemen and soldiers in Butuan City, Agusan del Norte on the same day.
No word on how many total NPA fighters were engaged in each encounter.
The AFP has their way of dealing with the NPA and so does the Manobo tribe.
Leaders of indigenous peoples (IP) communities in Surigao del Sur gathered Sunday afternoon for a ritual called “boney”, a ceremony intended to impose penalties on fellow tribe members who committed offenses.
Different IP Mandatory Representatives (IPMRs) in the province want Bayan Muna party-list Representative Eufemia Cullamat punished for the insults and transgressions she committed against the Manobo tribe where she belongs.
Datu Rico Maca, the IPMR of San Miguel town, said 50 tribal leaders from different towns expressed their outrage against Cullamat and wanted to make her accountable for her wrongdoings against the tribe.
“A number of tribal leaders wanted to show up and join the boney but we limited the attendance due to the strict health protocols in the province,” Maca told the Philippine News Agency (PNA) on Sunday night.
He emphasized that Cullamat committed three major offenses against the tribe -- misrepresentation, lack of concern for the IP youth and children, and dishonor against the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP).
Cullamat is no longer allowed to enter and step into the ancestral domains of the Manobo tribe in Surigao del Sur, Maca said.
“She is not a recognized leader of the Manobo tribe in Surigao del Sur. She does not represent us. For years, Cullamat has been advocating the doctrines and advancing the cause of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), the National Democratic Front (NDF), and the New People’s Army (NPA),” Maca said.
No word on what the "boney" ritual entails but from the picture it looks like they might have sacrificed a pig.
Another way the insurgency is being fought is through good old fashioned censorship. Last week the AFP and PNP showed up at Kalinga State University and confiscate materials related to the insurgency. The librarian got so sacred that she gave up the material and then got rid of some of what they left behind. She said she reservations about it but did it anyway to protect the students. This censorship of university libraries is now spreading. First in Isabela.
After the Kalinga State University (KSU), the Isabela State University (ISU) has become the second public school in the Philippines to purge books authored by or related to the communist movement in the country supposedly to “protect” the youth and students from insurgent ideology.
ISU president Ricmar Aquino said he had directed the ISU’s main campus in Echague town and 10 other campuses in the province to pull out of their libraries handbooks from the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) and books by Jose Maria Sison, the self-exiled founding chair of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP).
“ISU supports the government’s ‘whole-of-nation’ approach to [communist insurgency]. As an academic institution, ISU has its mandate to protect the Filipino youth and ensure their future by providing them quality and relevant education,” Aquino told the Inquirer by phone on Tuesday.
The ISU library pulled out 23 NDFP handbooks and works by Sison, including “Building People’s Power,” “Defeating Revisionism & Opportunism,” “Crisis Generates Resistance,” “Building Strength through Struggle” and “Continuing the Struggle for Liberation.”
The move came three weeks after KSU in nearby Tabuk City removed several reference materials on the aborted peace negotiations between the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP) and the NDFP.
Aquino said the books were turned over on Monday to Dennis Godfrey Gammad, regional director of the National Intelligence Coordinating Agency (Nica). The agency directs, coordinates and integrates all national intelligence activities.
He said the books would be brought to the Nica office for safekeeping.
Col. Leandro Abeleda, deputy commander of the Army’s 501st Infantry Brigade (IB), witnessed the turnover at the ISU library.
According to Aquino, the decision to ban these books from the ISU libraries is part of its commitment to “protect the university and its students from the harm that the communists might inflict.”
“Our students should not be exposed to anything that will destroy their future,” Aquino added.
In a statement, Brig. Gen. Danilo Benavides, commander of the 501st IB, said withdrawing the NDFP books from the ISU “will save our youth” from being recruited by the CPP, its armed wing, the New People’s Army (NPA), and the NDFP.
“The action of the officials and leadership of the ISU indicates that they are against the CPP-NPA-NDF ideologies and want to safeguard the institution from communist infiltration,” Benavides said.
He said the move would help put an end to the communist insurgency in the region, one of the goals of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict.
Gammad praised the university’s move, saying that “libraries play a fundamental role in society.”
“The books you read become part of you. Therefore, commitment and accountabilities lie in every page you read,” Gammad said during the turnover.
The second university to pull out "subversive materials" is Aklan State University.
The Aklan State University (ASU) in the municipality of Banga made history as the first higher education institution in the Visayas to turn over subversive documents and textbooks to the government.
The reading materials were mostly donated to the ASU and have been in its library since 2012, before the term of current president, Dr. Emily Arangote, who was appointed last year.
“The APPO (Aklan Police Provincial Office), with the full support of RTF-ELCAC 6 (Regional Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict 6 [Western Visayas]) reached out to ASU for them to turn over also books that are not mentally healthy for students,” task force spokesperson, Prosecutor Flosemer Chris Gonzales, said during the dialogue and turnover ceremony held at the university cafeteria on Friday.
The books and documents, which are now under the custody of the APPO - Provincial Investigation and Detection Management Unit, include one authored by Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) founder Jose Ma. Sison titled Foundation for Resuming the Philippine Revolution.
In exchange, Gonzales donated a book from the RTF-ELCAC-6, The War Within.
He noted that turning over the books to the government is not a restriction of academic freedom.
“Academic freedom is always subject to control and supervision by the state when the welfare of the people or overriding public welfare calls for it. We are at war with terrorism and of course, our university officials exercising sound discretion and good judgment can always decide for the welfare of their students,” Gonzales said in his message.
In an interview on Saturday, APPO spokesperson, Staff Sgt. Ma. Jane Vega, said even if Aklan has been declared insurgency-free in December 2011, there are still sightings of insurgents as neighboring Antique and Capiz provinces are still infiltrated.
Vega said APPO Director, Col. Ramir Perlito Perlas, pursued the turnover so students would not be influenced by the communist ideologies.
“We are very active in our campaign. Col. Perlas pursued this initiative because he does not want to see atrocities that are happening in other provinces to happen here,” she said.
Vega also encouraged other schools in the province to “not hesitate to surrender” similar materials to the police.
This is just stupid. Everything about it is stupid. The authorities are justifying this 1984 tactic by saying they are protecting students. "The books you read become a part of you," says one moron Ricmar Aquino who is actually president of Isabela State University. Now that is true and not true. While certain books have stuck with me for years I have also read a lot of books that have not become a part of me So, what other books are they going to pull to protect students? How about the Koran? They do know that the Philippines is at war with Islamic militants right?
The situation with Akaln State University is even worse. They say they are turning "over also books that are not mentally healthy for students." What does that even mean and who can define such a thing in the first place. Again, what about the Koran? What about any Islamic material on the shelves of the library? Waht makes pulling books from Aklan State University is that it has been declared insurgency free for a decade!
To top it all off in exchange for getting rid of NDFP propaganda the state donated their own propaganda, The War Within. I have no idea what this book is. A Google search brings up too many hits to be able to narrow it down.
This is not the last we will see of Filipino universities banning books. Not with the police telling schools they should "not hesitate to surrender" so-called subversive reading material. It appears books have become the newest enemy in the insurgency. But will they receive any benefits upon being surrendered to the military or police?
