Caraga traders helpless on rebel taxation, gov admits

BUTUAN CITY — Local traders are helpless on the "revolutionary taxation" and other extortion activities of the New People’s Army (NPA), Surigao del Sur Gov. Vicentel Pimentel Jr., chairman of the Caraga regional peace and order council, admitted in a press conference here the other day.

Pimentel also said the two-year deadline given by President Arroyo to crush the decades-long communist insurgency is "unachievable" without the help of the people.

The governor officiated the simple signing ceremonies between the Armed Forces and the Philippine National Police to formalize their coordinated efforts in the war against insurgency and criminality in a convention center here Thursday night.

"It’s unachievable if the people will not help in crushing this social menace that has caused too much poverty in the countryside and pestered lives of many Filipinos," Pimentel said.

Pimentel said local entrepreneurs, particularly rice and wood traders, are helpless whenever communist rebels demand "revolutionary taxes."

"This, even as the military and the police are being tasked by President Arroyo and top military officials to secure traders from NPA extortion because our PNP and military lack manpower to guard (them) on a 24-hour basis," he said.

Pimentel bewailed that there is just one policeman for every 9,800 people in the Caraga region, instead of the ideal 1:1,000 ratio.

He, however, said this should not be an excuse, adding that the lack of manpower should be addressed by better quality policemen with more training, the right values and adequate equipment and facilities.

Meanwhile, military and police officials said the male skeletal remains exhumed in a remote barangay here the other day do not belong to a missing priest.

According to intelligence agents, a group of nuns had frequented the area supposedly in search of the remains of a missing priest.

Brig. Gen. Ricardo David Jr., commanding officer of the Army’s 402nd Infantry Brigade, told The STAR that the skeletal remains unearthed in remote Purok 6 in Barangay Taligaman apparently do not belong to a priest because of the clothing.

Chief Superintendent Geary Lingan Barias, Caraga police director, ordered more diggings in the site following tips from concerned citizens that the former NPA camp there in the 1980s had been turned into a mass grave of people killed by the NPA under its "Operation Ajos."

Barias said the NPA killings from 1986 to 1990 were part of an internal purge of disloyal comrades, former rebels-turned-military spies, and uncooperative civilians or "counter-revolutionaries."

Last June 15, the skeletal remains of one Sonny Boy Plaza, 15, and Olong Mantilogco, 38, were unearthed by the Caraga police and the Army’s 402nd Infantry Brigade in a former NPA-infested area in Nasipit, Agusan del Norte.

Barias said the NPA "kangaroo court" ordered the execution of the two after finding them guilty of theft and murder.