Death of Mt. Province cop linked to PNP’s forced closure of pocket mines

June 10, 2018 Provincial

BONTOC, MT. PROVINCE – Communist guerillas have linked the attack against patrolling policemen in barangay Aguid, Sagada on June 5 to the forcible closure of small-scale mining operations in several mountain villages in Mt. Province by the police.
Earlier, Mt. Province police director Sr. Supt. Allen Ocden threatened to bomb the portals of small scale miners in Pidlisan, Sagada and in Alab and Mainit, both in Bontoc, if small scale miners refuse to shut down.
The rebel attack killed Police Officer 2 Henry Dion of Bauko, Mt. Province, and wounded Supt. Joseph Bangcawayan and eight other policemen.
The Mt. Province-based Leonardo Pacsi Command of the CPP-NPA which claimed no casualties on the rebel side also said that aside from the anti-small scale mining campaign (of the police) “is the overzealous enforcement of the total log ban within government declared public land on the basis of PD 705, the Revised Forestry Code.”
Magno Udiaw, spokesman of the NPA-Mt. Province, said that such a campaign jointly implemented with the DENR “has resulted in numerous human rights violations, extortion and corruption by police officers and DENR officials and affected the livelihood of the woodcutters for added income and curtailed the people’s right to their local wood resources for their housing needs”.
Late February, the DENR and its Mines and Geosciences Bureau aided by the police shut down small-scale mines in Kias, Baguio City.
Last week of April, Udiao claimed that a similar scenario “was to be recreated by Sr. Supt. Ocden threatening to bomb mining portals in Sagada and Bontoc if they are not voluntarily shut down”.
The NPA-Mt. Province claimed that “the people of Mountain Province are very much aware of how dirty and biased these so called environmental campaigns are. First and foremost, the DENR in cahoots with the PNP is biased against these small-scale miners and loggers while turning a deaf ear on the people’s demand for the closure of big foreign companies who are plundering our resources and rapidly destroying the environment. They can catch the small fishes but never the big ones,” Udiao said.
The rebel spokesman added that the closures of small scale mines and total logging ban “are clearly violating the inherent right of the Igorot national minorities to their ancestral land,” explaining that, “it is the right of the people of Mountain Province to use, develop and protect the land and resources inherited to them by their forefathers.”
Udiao insisted that “if any concern of misuse or abuse is done, the umili (villagers) or the ili (community) have their own self-regulating measures to reprimand and apprehend their kailians (villagemates). If there are violators among communities, it is also because they have connections within the DENR and the PNP.”
He further argued that the Igorots “have protected and nourished their ancestral land, and they must be left freely to do so.” Before the enactment of PD 705 in 1975 during the darkest years of Martial Law, Igorot communities have already developed a viable self-regulation compatible with their right to ancestral lands and resources, he also claimed.
Udiao claimed that “instead of fostering unity in the communities, the PNP resorts to brute force and militarization, and divide and rule tactics to implement repressive and anti-people laws. It recruits from the locale to join the ranks of PNP and their intelligence network to spy, intimidate and violate the rights and interest of their own people.”
The rebel spokesman warned, “the June 5 ambush of the LPC is a message to all police personnel in combat and intelligence units and operations.” He also warned “all AFP combat units entering our areas. It is also a warning to civilian intelligence assets to stop spying on the movements of the revolutionary forces and their neighbors they arbitrarily tagged as sympathizers.”
While the National Democratic Front ally Cordillera People’s Democratic Front (CPDF) hailed the successful attack against the policemen, it appealed “to the rank and file of the PNP and AFP not to be carried out and be used as pawns by selfish interests of their ranking officialdom for promotions, bounty hunting and twisted hawkish mindset.”
Simon Naogsan, spokesperson of the CPDF also denounced “the expedient cover up of the PNP and AFP officials that every time they lose a battle within Sagada, they drum up the excuse that Sagada is a ‘peace zone.’” In the first place, they are the ones violating this one-sided declaration, he said. “The people of this place know fully well that there was never a time that the area had been spared from combat operations even during the unilateral declarations of ceasefire while the peace talk between the GRP and NDFP was ongoing.” ACE ALEGRE / ABN