The Philippine Peasant News (PESANTE NEWS) based in the US learned that the most recent in the long-running series of splits in the Cordillera Peoples Liberation Army (CPLA) has produced a purported new and reformed group but is composed of the same old opportunist elements. This was contained in an internet message posted by the CPDF signed by its spokesperson Filiw Naogsan posted on December 15, 2009. The reported ouster of Mailed Molina and the rise of a new group led by Arsenio Humiding is nothing more than a quarrel over the division of spoils within their dwindling organization. This same thing has repeatedly happened to the CPLA in the past as various factions squabbled over the funds, weapons, and jobs in the AFP that were dangled before them by the reactionary government.
PESANTE NEWS
Decmber 20, 2009
The CPLA is in the same sinking boat as the Ampatuan private army and other armed groups coddled by the Arroyo regime
Simon "Ka Filiw" Naogsan
Spokesperson
Cordillera Peoples' Democratic Front
December 15, 2009
Los Angeles- The Philippine Peasant News (PESANTE NEWS) based in the US learned that the most recent in the long-running series of splits in the Cordillera Peoples Liberation Army (CPLA) has produced a purported new and reformed group but is composed of the same old opportunist elements.
This was contained in an internet message posted by the CPDF signed by its spokesperson Filiw Naogsan posted on December 15, 2009.
The reported ouster of Mailed Molina and the rise of a new group led by Arsenio Humiding is nothing more than a quarrel over the division of spoils within their dwindling organization. This same thing has repeatedly happened to the CPLA in the past as various factions squabbled over the funds, weapons, and jobs in the AFP that were dangled before them by the reactionary government.
As an armed group devoid of any ideological mooring, the CPLA serves as a special paramilitary force for AFP counter-insurgency operations in the region. Its members were involved in horrible human rights violations such as the abduction, torture, and murder of Cordillera Bodong Association chairman and Cordillera People's Alliance vice-chairman Ama Daniel Ngayaan and the killings of scores of Cordillera activists and civilians. Various factions of the CPLA serve in the private armies of warlord-politicians in Abra and other Cordillera provinces.
In Isabela, CPLA members serve in the private army used by the warlord Dy clan in land-grabbing activities. In recent years, even the PNP has complained about the armed robberies, extortion, land grabbing, illegal logging, drug dealing, gambling protection rackets and other crimes perpetrated by the CPLA.
The current CPLA interim leadership keeps on harping on the same tired issues of the integration of more of their members into the AFP and the continuation of their supposed peace-talks with the government. This underscores their confused and laughable position. Peacetalks are held between adversaries.
The CPLA is not an adversary of the government. In fact, the CPLA is pleading for more of their members to be integrated into the reactionary armed forces. The CPLA raises the issue of their imaginary peacetalks and their empty threats of "going back to the hills" whenever they demand more financial assistance and projects from the government.
The CPLA should be ashamed calling themselves rebels or a "liberation army." It is simply a criminal armed group used by the military in counter-insurgency operations against the NPA, the rest of the revolutionary movement, and the people.
The CPLA is in the same sinking boat as the infamous Ampatuan private army and other armed groups funded, equipped and coddled by the military and the Arroyo regime.
The Cordillera Peoples Democratic Front (CPDF) calls upon the public not to be deceived and to vigorously reject the purported new and reformed CPLA. It is nothing more than an armed gang of lapdogs begging for crumbs from an increasingly isolated regime
The CPLA must be immediately disarmed, disbanded, and punished for the various abuses and human rights violations it committed against the Cordillera people!
***************
Original: The CPLA is in the same sinking boat as the Ampatuan private army