NPA attempts to torch cellular site in Cagayan

BAGUIO CITY — Communist guerrillas attempted to torch a cellular transmitter site of Globe Telecom in a mountainous barangay in Cagayan early yesterday morning but were unsuccessful in paralyzing the facility, the military said.

Brig. Gen. Rodolfo Alvarado, commanding general of the Army’s 5th Infantry Division based in Gamu, Isabela, said fully armed New People’s Army (NPA) rebels poured diesel fuel inside the transmitter room in Globe Telecom’s poorly secured cellsite compound in Barangay Narsiting in Gattaran, Cagayan.

He said the room had minimal damage. The transmitter tower was spared, thus the rebels failed to totally paralyze the cellsite’s operations.

"There was small damage because the attackers were ill-prepared and fled immediately without fulfilling their dangerous plan," he said.

The cellular transmission facility, situated in a thickly forested and mountainous area, services Globe Telecom’s mobile phone subscribers in eastern Cagayan.

Smart Telecommunications also has a transmission tower in the area but the rebels’ target, Alvarado said, was apparently only Globe Telecom’s.

"Clearly, it is related to ‘revolutionary taxation,’" Alvarado said.

He said the cellsite’s lone security guard, who was held for a few minutes, quoted the rebels’ leader as saying that the attack was related to "unpaid dues" to the communist movement in Cagayan.

Alvarado said a certain Ka Bobby Javier of the Henry Abraham Revolutionary Front Committee of the Communist Party of the Philippines-NPA based in eastern Cagayan was behind the attack.

Elements of the Army’s 41st Infantry Batallion under Col. Gin Verchez are now pursuing the rebel attackers, Alvarado said.

Earlier, Maj. Gen. Rodolfo Garcia, Northern Luzon Command (Nolcom) chief, said the communist rebels’ "taxation" on businessmen, politicians and even lowly farmers continues to be a concern among military commanders in Northern and Central Luzon.

Nolcom has two infantry divisions (composed of six brigades) or some 10,000 troopers spread all over the Ilocos, Cagayan Valley, Cordillera and Central Luzon regions.

Garcia revealed that the rebels have begun extorting from families of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) especially in remote communities.

"Families of OFWs are very prone to such (extortion) because (they) fear reprisals from the rebels," he said.

He said families of OFWs have ready cash unlike farmers who can only give goods like rice.

Garcia, however, could not say how much communist guerrillas are getting from their "revolutionary taxation" in a month, except saying that it could be in the hundreds of millions of pesos.

He said the rebels’ extortion may also be going on elsewhere in the country.