Military in NCotabato: NPAs are human rights violators

NORTH COTABATO, Philippines - The military on Thursday lambasted the New People’s Army (NPA) for “concocting” stories portraying soldiers in the province as human rights violators.

Lt. Col. Nilo Vinluan, commanding officer of the Army’s 57th Infantry Battalion, said it is in fact, the communist forces in the province that have wantonly been violating human rights by using landmines, attacking unarmed peasant communities, and mulcting “protection money” at gunpoint from farmers on a regular basis.

The 57th IB, a unit of the 10th Infantry Division, has jurisdiction over four adjoining North Cotabato towns, and Kidapawan City, where NPAs have been operating with impunity, targeting both government forces, and villagers who refuse to shell out money and provide food to rebels.

Vinluan was apparently reacting to circulating text messages and statements of NPA leaders, sent to local media outfits via emails, accusing soldiers in the province of disregarding International Humanitarian Laws, while forging ahead with their pacification campaign against rebels.

“It is the NPAs that have been recklessly violating human rights, not the military,” Vinluan said.

Vinluan said the NPAs in North Cotabato have continuously been using powerful roadside bombs, and booby traps fashioned from fragmentation grenades, which are banned by all international warfare regulations and laws set by the United Nations.

“These explosives are not `command-detonated,’ or those that can be exploded to hit selected targets. These can be accidentally set off through trip wires, and improvised triggering contraptions that can activate at the slightest touch, or pressure, making them so dangerous to innocent people and even farm animals,” Vinluan said.

He also cited as an example the NPA’s act of banditry when rebels ambushed  about two months ago a team of soldiers and militiamen in Tulunan town in North Cotabato, while on their way to deliver monetary allowances of local members of the Citizens Armed Forces Geographical Unit.

Nine government combatants were killed in the attack, where the NPAs also carted away the P2 million worth payroll money the victims were to distribute to CAFGU members in Tulunan and surrounding towns in the province.