|
Monday, July 07, 2003
Cops confirm NPAs' link to marijuana trade
CAMP DANGWA -- A ranking official of the Police Regional Office in the Cordilleras confirmed Sunday the involvement of New People's Army rebels in the marijuana trade in the region.
Supt. Rimas Calixto, chief of the PRO-CAR intelligence and investigation division, said communist guerillas make huge profits in the cultivation of the prohibited plant and that the rebels have intensified their involvement in the trade after they were included in the US list of "international terror groups."
Calixto said that operatives of the Benguet Provincial Police Office encountered last year suspected communist rebels while conducting an operation against marijuana.
The Benguet police destroyed more than P50 million worth of marijuana plants and seeds during that operation, he added.
But Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) spokesperson Gregorio Rosal denied the allegations and even accused the military and the police of coddling more than 200 big-time drug syndicates, which are allegedly operating in conspiracy and with protection from the government, in the country.
Rosal, in a statement, rejected President Arroyo's pronouncement that the NPA is engaged in illegal drug operations and maintains marijuana plantations in its guerilla zones.
In a statement released last year, the Chadli Molintas Command of the CPP-NPA Ilocos-Cordillera regional committee described the allegations linking the rebels to marijuana cultivation as "black propaganda."
Crime syndicates
Over the weekend, the Cordillera police released a drug situation report saying the bulk of marijuana supply in the region came from the hinterlands of Ifugao, Mt. Province, Benguet and Kalinga.
The same report disclosed that at least 61 barangays in the region have been classified as "drug-affected" and 41 barangays as shabu (methamphetamine hydrochloride)-affected.
The report went on to say that around 148 drug personalities are now operating in the region and are believed to have direct links to crime syndicates involved in illegal drug shipments.
Police have tagged the region as the number one source of marijuana, supplying almost 70 percent of the total produce in the country.
In 1997, a team from the US drug enforcement agency joined in the marijuana eradications in the Cordilleras following intelligence reports that the prohibited plant was being clandestinely shipped to the US.
Rosal claimed the "military, police and some government officials" know about the plantations and are even protecting them.
On government's contrary claim, Cesar Montana, spokesman of the Chadli Molintas Command, pointed out that both the military and the police are raising the issue again to justify the possible involvement of the US drug agency in anti-marijuana operations in the hinterlands of the Cordilleras and Ilocos.
Rosal said of government's accusation: "She (Arroyo) is totally dishonest in hurling such false accusations at the NPA. She hides the fact it is her own military, police and civilian bureaucracy from top to bottom that are steeply engaged in and behind the illegal drug business."
Drug problem
The CPP spokesman also belittled President Arroyo's "recent hype" that her government is seriously solving the drug problem.
"The drug problem in the country will not be solved with the arrests of hundreds of small-time pushers and users," Rosal stressed.
"They can arrest all of the tens of thousands of pushers they want, yet the drug problem will not be solved because the ones making the arrests are the ones behind the illegal drug business in the country. (Worse), not one of the big syndicates and their high military-police-bureaucratic connections are touched at all."
On the other hand, Rosal claimed, the drug problem is decisively minimized in areas where communist guerillas have influence.
"The young people in the guerrilla zones are inspired to undertake worthy endeavors in the interest of the masses, effectively leading them away from drugs and other influences of the prevailing decadent culture nurtured by the military and politicians," he stressed.
He also cited the constant work of the NPA "to raise the people's consciousness and replace the decadent culture with a scientific, progressive and patriotic" one. Sun.Star Baguio
(July 7, 2003 issue)
Want Sun.Star news on your mobile phone? Click here.
Write letter to the editor. Click here.
Join the Sun.Star message board. Click here. |
|
|
|
 |
| click
to comment on this article or discuss it with other readers |
[return to top]
[home]
|
|
Mayor denies giving orders to 'death squad'