Mindoro Church radio station razed

Unidentified men destroyed the facilities of a radio station run by the Catholic Church in Occidental Mindoro in an attack that no group yet has claimed responsibility for.

A top Church official in the province said while he received reports linking communist rebels to the attack, he didn’t believe them.

Police also said there was no evidence that the rebels were behind the attack.

“No one saw the suspects and reports linking armed communist rebel groups were negative,” Chief Supt. Gregorio Olaguer, regional police head, was quoted as saying.

The suspects doused the radio station’s offices and compound with gasoline and set it on fire before dawn on Wednesday, according to Olaguer.

Authorities are investigating if there were links between Wednesday’s attack and a previous attempt to set fire to the building that housed the radio station.

The fire lasted for three hours, according to Bishop Antonio Palang, the top Church official in the Apostolic Vicariate of San Jose.

The burned building housed AM and FM stations. Offices near the radio station’s transmitter in Barangay Labangan Poblacion, about 2 kilometers from the main radio station building, were also set on fire.

While the main building burned, the suspects were setting on fire the radio station’s offices in Barangay Labang, said Bishop Palang.

Palang said this was not the first time the radio station was attacked.

He said on Friday last week, a fire believed to be intentional damaged the radio station’s generator set and portions of its offices in Barangay Labangan, where the transmitter was located.

Wednesday’s attack was the most devastating, said the bishop. “This time, the whole building and its transmitter were burned down,” Palang said.

The bishop said that as a result of Wednesday’s attack, the radio station’s operations had to cease, including its live online streaming.

Radio station dzVT has about a million listeners, including those from nearby provinces like Palawan, Antique, Oriental Mindoro, Aklan, Capiz, Marinduque, Romblon, Batangas and Quezon.

It is a member of the Catholic Media Network which has 52 radio station members nationwide.

Palang said he does not believe the attackers are members of the New People’s Army.

Sources said the radio station was known to air reports and commentaries critical of a prominent politician in the province.

Palang refused to discuss further who he believed was behind the attack. He said members of the police’s Scene of the Crime Operatives have started investigating.

The bishop, however, said he was convinced that the attack on Wednesday was planned to coincide with the absence of clergy men who were in Lucena City for an event.

The radio station was also known to be critical of an electric cooperative in the province. With a report from AFP