NPA to step up attacks vs RP-US exercises in Panay

MANILA, Philippines - As joint RP-US military exercises in Panay started Monday, the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) ordered the New People's Army (NPA) to heighten offensives there, as well as in Bicol. In a statement on its website, the CPP called on residents to "expose and oppose" the Balance Piston 09-1 in Panay and the Balikatan exercises in Bicol. "The CPP directs NPA units, particularly those in Bicol and Panay, to intensify tactical offensives in their respective areas of operation in mockery of the US-RP joint military exercises and to prevent US troops from strengthening their foothold in these areas," it said. CPP scored the scheduled 25-day US-Philippine joint military exercises starting Monday at Camp Peralta in Jamindan, Capiz in Panay island. It said the military exercise is an instrument of the US in violating Philippine sovereignty and keeping a tight leash on the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP). The CPP said the US training of "puppet troops" for inter-operability and providing war materiél to it paves the way for increased intervention in the local armed conflict. "Through its military doctrines, advisers, trainers, intelligence and arms support, the US has been directing and buttressing the local counterrevolutionary war and campaigns, hand-in-hand with its policy to dissuade and put an end to formal peace negotiations between its puppet regime and the local armed revolutionary forces," it said. Also, it said the US-designed "counter-insurgency" Oplan Bantay Laya has become the principal tool of the Arroyo regime in waging a "brutal, antipeople campaign of suppression and repression not only in areas of the armed revolutionary movement in the countryside but also in the open, legal and parliamentary arena of the patriotic and democratic mass struggles." The CPP also said the exercises are being carried out in outright contempt of the Tumanduk people, saying the exercises will take place in their ancestral land. "Since the time of Gloria Arroyo's father, the puppet government and its armed forces have been violating the Tumanduks' ancestral rights over more than 33,000 hectares grabbed from them by the AFP to put up the second largest military camp in the country, and the largest on indigenous land. Diosdado Macapagal's Presidential Decree No. 67 in 1962 declared the area as a military reservation," it said. "By holding the joint military exercises in Camp Peralta, the US military is rubbing salt on the collective wounds of the Tumanduk people who have been continually subjected to fascist terror and abuses by the puppet army," it added. It also said the upcoming war exercises in Capiz as well as the planned Balikatan exercises in Bicol this April signal stepped-up US military intervention and direct involvement of US troops in the AFP's counterrevolutionary war against the NPA. Current joint military exercises are being conducted in these areas to pave the way for the US to gain more access to the NPA's areas of operation, it added. - GMANews.TV