NPAs attack logging area, burn 20 trucks

DINAPIGUE, Isabela – About 60 New People’s Army (NPA) rebels burned an estimated P60 million worth of equipment belonging to a logging company here over the weekend for supposedly refusing to pay P6 million in "revolutionary taxes," the military announced yesterday.

Col. Juvenal Narcise, commander of the Army’s 702nd Infantry Brigade, said the rebels burned 20 trucks, a bulldozer, a forklift and a 4x4 pick-up truck belonging to the Philippine Aggregates Timber Export Co. (Pateco).

Narcise said the vehicles were on their way to the company’s logging concession on Mount Dinapigue at the boundary of Isabela, Quirino and Aurora provinces when they were accosted by the rebels at an NPA checkpoint at around 4 p.m. Saturday.

Narcise said it was the second time that the NPA had vandalized a logging firm’s property since Nov. 15 when a band of about 50 NPA rebels burned power houses, generators and a cargo vessel belonging to the Diapitan Resources Development Corp. (DRDC), a Pateco subsidiary in Dilasag, Aurora.

"We provided adequate military security at the DRDC compound as well as the Pateco offices in Isabela, but we did not anticipate the rebels would strike in the remote jungles where the Pateco logging area is located," Narcise admitted to The STAR.

He said there were two groups of raiders — one from northern Aurora and the bigger one from the Quirino-Isabela area.

"The groups merged and established a checkpoint along the steep route to the logging concession," Narcise said.

"They blocked the 20 logging trucks, one bulldozer, one log forklift and one 4x4 pick-up truck and rounded up their drivers in one area," he added.

The trucks and equipment were then brought to another area where they were torched.

The company’s employees, who were released after the burning, reported the incident to the Pateco management after a long trek down the mountain.

Narcise said the military did not learn of the incident until about midnight of Saturday.

It was only then, Narcise said, that troopers from the 701st IB and 302nd police mobile group were dispatched to pursue the rebels.

"Since early this year, the management of Pateco has been receiving demand letters from the NPA for some P6 million as annual revolutionary tax payment, but the firm has refused to comply," he said.

The incident on Saturday was an indication, Narcise said, that the financial resources of the communist movement were dwindling after European nations froze the foreign assets of the NPA and the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP).

He described the attack as a "desperate move" to raise funds to shore up the CPP-NPA’s precarious financial situation.

But Narcise lamented that the Army does not have enough troops nor logistics to take effective control the remote jungles of Mt. Dinapigue.

"Our best military vehicles here would find it difficult to negotiate the route to the logging concession of Pateco, which could be traversed only by the firm’s powerful logging trucks," he said.

The rebels launched the attack on the same day that the Palace announced that a holiday ceasefire with the rebels may not be necessary.

President Arroyo ruled out a ceasefire with the communist rebels this Christmas season as she met with her top security officials at Malacañang yesterday.

After the Palace made the announcement, top communist officials instructed the NPA to continue its offensive during the holidays.

The CPP said it is in a "state of active defense" and insisted NPA rebels will still go on the offensive to reciprocate Mrs. Arroyo’s "no ceasefire" policy.

Palace officials said the President’s decision stemmed from previous recorded incidents of armed attacks and politically motivated slayings by the NPA, in particular the assassinations of former Cagayan Rep. Rodolfo Aguinaldo, Quezon congressman Marcial Punzalan and Batangas City Mayor Cesar Platon.

Peace talks with the communist movement were suspended in March last year after the assassinations.

Last August, the United States designated the CPP-NPA as a "foreign terrorist organization."

In October, Foreign Affairs Secretary Blas Ople led a delegation that persuaded the 15-nation European Union (EU) to declare the CPP-NPA and founder Jose Ma. Sison as terrorists.