Reds kidnap deputy police chief in Cotabato
Inspector Menardo Cui was off-duty and drinking with friends at the HMB Videoke Bar in the town proper when the rebels arrived, herded him at gunpoint to their vehicle and left. File
KIDAPAWAN CITY, Philippines — Communist rebels snatched late Thursday the deputy police chief of President Roxas town in North Cotabato.
Inspector Menardo Cui was off-duty and drinking with friends at the HMB Videoke Bar in the town proper when the rebels arrived, herded him at gunpoint to their vehicle and left.
Local officials said Cui is a resident of Magpet town in the same province.
The military and the provincial police have launched a search for the group that snatched Cui.
There is strong presence of the New People’s Army in North Cotabato’s neighboring Magpet, President Roxas and Arakan towns.
Supt. Bernard Tayong, spokesman for the North Cotabato provincial police, on Friday said intelligence agents are now trying to identify the rebels that snatched Cui.
Officials of the Army’s 39th Infantry Brigade are certain Cui’s abductors are NPA guerrillas.
Regional military spokesman Capt. Silver Belvis said they have enlisted the help of traditional community elders in Magpet, President Roxas and Arakan in their search for Cui and his captors.
The NPA reportedly has a list of personalities targeted for assassination.
The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), during its 49th anniversary last Tuesday, provided the NPA with the targets, including human rights violators, corrupt officials, drug lords and heads of criminal syndicates.
The CPP said the NPA should concentrate its attacks in eastern Mindanao and then in Luzon and the Visayas regions.
On the other hand, the National Democratic Front (NDF) said it is willing resume peace talks with the government but not on capitulation.
NDF spokesman Joaquin Jacinto said the peace negotiations that ran for several months were handled adeptly, which made it possible to finish the fourth round of talks.
However, when the peace talks were about to begin the fifth round, it was unilaterally stopped by President Duterte and his proclamation declaring the CPP-NPA as a terror organization.
Jacinto blamed the Duterte administration for scuttling the peace talks.
Duterte ordered cancelled all future peace talks with the communist rebels, blaming the NPA over deadly attacks against soldiers and policemen during the negotiations. – Artemio Dumlao, Jose Rodel Clapano, Jaime Laude
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