NDF rejects Army 'explanation' on Abra students disappearance

Despite the Army's claim that six high school students who disappeared in Abra province were just "delayed" in getting home, the National Democratic Front (NDF) demanded Sunday night the pullout of soldiers from the area. In a statement on the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) website (www.philippinerevolution.net), NDF Cordillera spokesman Simon "Ka Filiw" Naogsan said there should be "no excuses" for the disappearance. "Military troops have saturated several mountain ridges in the area, sowing fear among the peasants and their children and preventing them from their usual activities such as firewood gathering, farming and travel. It is tantamount to the denial of the rights of the tribal people to the full use, access and development of their ancestral lands and to livelihood," he said. "The Cordillera Peoples' Democratic Front (CPDF) joins the village folk of Tubo and Sagada in condemning in the strongest words possible the AFP's inhumanity, brutality and total disregard of the children's democratic rights and welfare," he added. He said no amount of explanation by the AFP can justify the cruelty soldiers are inflicting on these school children. Last Friday, the CPP accused the military of abducting the six students of the Mountain Province General Comprehensive High School (MPGCHS), and detaining and torturing them. The CPP said villagers of Kili, with help from neighboring villages in northern Sagada, organized search teams to locate the missing students, and found them detained by Army troops at a military camp in Lagangilang, Abra. He noted that one year ago, on the same mountain ridge, an 18-year-old student Michael Uyad of Gueday, Besao was murdered by operating troops of the same Army's 54th IB. On March 18 that same year, another organic unit of the 54th IB illegally arrested, detained, and tortured two men from Baclingayan, Tubo, Abra who were en route to Mainit, Bontoc to deliver carabaos as ordered by their counterpart in Mainit. "Even their carabaos were not spared by [soldiers] who butchered them," he said. He said that by intensifying militarization and state terrorism, the military is wreaking havoc and severe suffering, most particularly on the poor peasant families and national minorities. - GMANews.TV