EDITORIAL – Extortionists

Environmentalists will probably rejoice in secret, but the raid by communist rebels on a logging concession in Isabela is bad news. Forest conservation was the last thing on the mind of the raiders. For months the logging concessionaire, the Philippine Aggregates Timber Export Co., had been receiving extortion letters from the New People’s Army, which was demanding P6 million in annual "revolutionary taxes" from the firm.

Last Nov. 15 NPA rebels burned down power facilities and a cargo vessel owned by a Pateco subsidiary in Aurora province. When Pateco still refused to give in to the extortion, about 60 NPA rebels waylaid Pateco trucks on their way to the company’s logging concession area in Isabela last Saturday afternoon. The rebels set fire to 20 trucks, a bulldozer, a forklift and a pick-up truck before fleeing. Pateco placed the damage at around P60 million.

The raid was not surprising; the New People’s Army was reduced to banditry and extortion many years ago. The NPA’s extortion activities and harassment of legitimate businessmen have forced many companies to shut down and dampened investments. Communist agitation has swelled the ranks of the unemployed and abetted poverty especially in the countryside. And yet the rebels continue to claim that they have the masses’ interests at heart, while their exiled leaders are protesting their new terrorist tag.

Likening the destruction of P60 million worth of private property to Islamist terrorism may in fact be too flattering for the communists. The raid in Isabela, like similar attacks on the offices of companies that refuse to give in to communist extortion, is not motivated by any ideology but by simple desire for easy money. Even the ideology that the rebels claim to be fighting for has been widely discredited. The NPA has become one of the biggest cri-minal organizations in this country, which is why there is no great public outcry over the possibility that for the first time in many years, there will be no truce this Christmas between communist guerrillas and government troops.