|
Friday, January 10, 2003
Cops claim NPA not sparing Aetas from 'tax'
By Ria Isidro-de Fiesta
SAN FERNANDO -- Communist guerillas are reportedly objecting to "corrupt" activities of their unit commanders, documents recovered by the Pampanga police and the 69th Infantry Battalion in a joint counter-terror operation in Porac town allegedly showed.
The activities, the provincial police learned, include extortion acts by unit commanders of the New People's Army on the Aeta minority groups and the poor.
An official of a Porac barangay said the NPA, the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), has been demanding P20 weekly from each Aeta family.
The local official, who requested anonymity, said the Aetas object to the collection and will sometimes tear up the money intended for the rebels.
Police reports showed the manner of extortion of communist commanders in some areas was no longer centralized. Some are not anymore remitting their collection of the so-called revolutionary tax to the provincial fund and are instead utilizing the money for their own personal use.
A rebel who has since returned to the fold of the law also said there is no sufficient audit system used on the money collected by the NPA's tax implementation unit. The group remits the money to the unit commanders who, in turn, should have turned this over to the next organizational level.
Sr. Supt. Rodolfo Mendoza, provincial police director, said his men have lined up, in view of the recent developments concerning the extortion activities of the CPP-NPA, a forum with barangay officials whose areas are considered threatened or infiltrated by the group.
The forum, according to Mendoza, will be a follow up to a similar activity conducted last September, which had the same agenda.
Mendoza said that the main objective of the forum is to conduct an assessment on the scope and extent of the extortion activities of the NPA and the Rebolusyonaryong Hukbo ng Bayan (RHB).
He added the police will be re-activating the barangay peace and order Committees and creating a barangay sub-committee on anti-terrorism, which shall be responsible for the implementation of peace and order programs particularly those related to the anti-terrorism campaign at the barangay level.
Mendoza also said their recent operations in Porac town revealed the systematic and massive launching of the group's extortion activities.
According to Mendoza, the NPA organized the tax implementation groups, which are attached to and closely associated with an NPA unit, to impose and collect money from helpless individuals and legitimate businesses.
But he said they recently observed a "policy shift" in the group's method of collecting extortion money.
"Before, they would collect P3,500 per hectare from fishpond and fishpen operators annually, but at present the grou has been demanding a 10 percent share from the gross income of every harvest of fishpond and fishpen operators," Mendoza said.
Mendoza said the policy shift reveals the CPP-NPA wants to be the "dominant force" in the collection of extortion money since they are "threatened" by the presence of the RHB, which has also launched extortion activities of its own.
"They are likewise threatened by the recent initiatives of the international community to isolate the CPP-NPA by freezing their bank accounts and assets in Europe and the United States of America," Mendoza said. Sun.Star Pampanga |
|
|
|
 |
| click
to comment on this article or discuss it with other readers |
[return to top]
[home]
|
|
Aznar scion killed with own .9mm gun