NPA owns raid on jathropa firm in Negros Oriental

MANILA, Philippines - The New People's Army (NPA) on Monday night claimed responsibility for a raid on a jathropa firm in Negros Oriental last week, saying it was a "punitive action." A statement from the NPA Mt. Talinis Front Command said it punished the Tamlang Valley Agricultural Development Corporation (TVADC) for promoting and planting jathropa and cassava. Ka Dom Pantaleon, spokesman of the command, said in a statement on the Communist Party of the Philippines website that Red fighters seized and immediately burned three tractors owned by the TVADC last September 9 in Sitio Cuadra, Mantikil village, Siaton town in Oriental Negros. He said the punitive action was implemented after it was proven that the year-old TVADC project "gravely dislocated" the planting of the traditional corn, rice and other food crops in Tamlang Valley. Lands previously used by farmers for own-consumption food production were now forcibly used for bio-fuel purposes, and a succession of Army battalions were employed to allegedly harass and dupe farmers to plant jathropa and cassava, he added. Early this year, the 79th Infantry Battalion was deployed to southeast Negros at about the same time the 302nd Brigade previously based in Bohol transferred headquarters to Tanjay City, Oriental Negros. Before this, it was the 61st IB that took care of the AFP's counter-revolutionary campaign in the said area. During President Arroyo's last State-of-the-Nation Address (SONA), she boasted that "jatropha estates are starting in 900 hectares in and around Tamlang Valley in Negros Oriental." Tamlang Valley covers several villages that border the towns of Sta. Catalina, Siaton and Valencia in upland Oriental Negros. Pantaleon said the NPA in southeast Negros will continue to block efforts of the reactionary Manila-centered government to impose the planting of jathropa and other plants for bio-fuel purposes. Aside from worsening the poverty and hunger already experienced by peasants in upland barangays of the province, this also serves to railroad further the Filipino people's struggle for food security through genuine agrarian reform, he emphasized. It is utterly wrong to prioritize the planting of agricultural crops that benefit only foreign corporations and local politicians, he added. He said hundreds of farmers belonging to the provincial farmers group Kaugmaon [Kahugpongan Alang sa Ugma sa mga Gagmay'ng Mag-uuma sa Oriental Negros (Association for the Future of Small Farmers of Oriental Negros)] have already demanded that local government units provide them with food assistance as temporary remedy to the hunger that pervades many hinterland barangays in Oriental Negros. TVADC is co-owned by the family of former Congressman Herminio Teves. It is no wonder that Oriental Negros is considered even by the reactionary government as one of the 20 poorest provinces in the country today, he said. - GMANews.TV