NPA rebels burn Japanese firm’s equipment in Compostela Valley

TAGUM City, Philippines—In an attack reminiscent of the October 3 raid on three mining companies in Surigao del Norte, New People’s Army rebels struck again, this time in a compound of a banana-growing firm in Compostela Valley.

Around 4:20 a.m. on Thursday, some 25 rebels swooped on the compound of Japanese banana grower Sumitomo Fruits Corp. (Sumifru) in Barangay (village) Kapatagan in Laak town and burned some P5 million worth of heavy equipment and other vehicles, Major Jacob Obligado, commander of the 10th Infantry Battalion’s civil-military operations, said.

The damage that Thursday’s attack wrought on Sumifru might not be at the level of the damage suffered by the three mining companies in Claver, Surigao del Norte, but it showed that the NPA was standing by its warning against foreign-owned companies.

Before and after the raid in Claver, Jorge Madlos, National Democratic Front (NDF) spokesman for Mindanao, said foreign companies operating in Mindanao should be aware that they would be punished for their “abuses to the environment and the communities.”

Obligado said after disarming the company’s guards of three shotguns and four pistols, the rebels burned the equipment and some company vehicles in the Sumifru compound in Kapatagan.

He said the rebels later went to the Sumifru packing plant in nearby Barangay Ceboleda and burned a generator set.

“The suspects then commandeered an Elf cargo truck and used this as getaway vehicle when they fled,” he said.

Lieutenant Colonel Lyndon Paniza, 10th Infantry Division spokesman, said economic sabotage was the sole intent of the attack as the company reportedly refused to pay the so-called revolutionary tax to the rebels.

A similar statement was also issued by the military in the aftermath of the Claver raid.

But Madlos denied that money was the reason for NPA attacks on companies.

“The revolutionary movement shall continue to uphold and to carry our national policy of banning and dismantling large-scale mining, logging and agri-business companies with a track record of violating revolutionary policies,” Madlos said in a statement issued after the Claver raid.

“We will not take this incident sitting down,” Paniza said of Thursday’s attack in Compostela Valley.