BAGUIO City Mayor Benjamin Magalong is bent on getting rid of rebel groups following the parade led by the Cordillera People’s Liberation Army (CPLA) during the Cordillera Day celebration.
Magalong said as far as he is concerned, CPLA has ceased to exist when they surrendered to the government.
“I did not allow them to conduct the parade,” Magalong said.
CPLA members paraded along Session Road on September 13 to commemorate the “Sipat” agreement.
The mayor also said he will have reports to a camp used by the group investigated.
“They are not recognized and they are not approved to operate here,” Magalong added.
Cordillera Peoples Alliance (CPA) and the “Tongtongan ti Umili” earlier denounced the activities of the CPLA.
“Such activities should never have been allowed, as CPLA has been declared persona non grata by the Baguio City Council in 1999. The CPA reiterates anew its position against the commemoration of the Mt. Data Sipat, which is an insult to the Cordillera peoples’ struggle for regionalization, genuine self-determination and the Cordillera indigenous socio-political practice of Bodong (peace pact). Commemorating the 1986 Mt. Data Sipat is a deplorable historical misinformation and revisionism committed by the Duterte regime in complicity with the Cordillera Peoples Liberation Army,” the CPA statement said.
The groups said CPLA’s terrorism victimized progressive Cordillera leaders and activists as well as organizations that criticized the narrow indigenist CPLA politics (formation of a “Cordillera nation” with the bodong system as its form of government) and the opportunism of its leaders.
“But amid the terrorism unleashed by the CPLA, the former government of Cory Aquino gave its all-out support. Clearly, the deafening silence of the Cory Aquino regime and the succeeding regimes on CPLA atrocities manifest government complicity in such terrorism,” the group added.