GMA orders heightened operations vs Reds in 500 remote villages

President Arroyo said yesterday the government will try to eradicate communist rebels’ influence on about 500 poor villages nationwide and cut foreign and domestic funding to guerrilla-linked groups.

But Mrs. Arroyo said her government would remain open to resuming long-stalled talks with the rebels to peacefully settle one of Southeast Asia’s longest-running Marxist rebellions.

"We will mount a ‘full-court press’ on the security and developmental components of this threat," she said, using a basketball term for putting constant pressure on an opponent.

Both government forces and communist New People’s Army (NPA) guerrillas have recently stepped up attacks in a bloody, 34-year-old conflict that has been partly blamed for the Philippines’ economic ills and deep political divisions.

In the northern province of Tarlac, army officials yesterday showed 11 high-powered rifles and grenade launchers they said were seized from the rebels in recent clashes that killed at least 15 guerrillas in the region. However, rebel spokesman Gregorio Rosal said no guerrillas had died.

Mrs. Arroyo said the government would study a growing number of rebel-influenced villages identified by intelligence officials, then draw up military and economic solutions to "extricate these poverty-stricken barangays from the grip of the dissidents."

At a meeting of the Cabinet oversight committee on internal security presided by Mrs. Arroyo last Monday, it was decided that these 500 NPA-influenced barangays would be the beneficiaries of the "distance learning" program of the government, Presidential Spokesman Ignacio Bunye said.

"Teacher-soldiers" would be deployed to these barangays under the program, he added.

Bunye said this program seeks to provide residents in these barangays with informal education since there are no public schools in the area nor are there teachers willing to be assigned to these risky, far-flung areas.

Guerrilla-linked groups would be identified and exposed, and the sources of their funding would be cut, the President said. She didn’t name the groups, but the police and military suspect many political, labor and human rights organizations of acting as fronts for the rebels.

Teodoro Casiño, a leader of one such left-wing umbrella group, Bayan, said such a government action would violate the rights of free speech and expression, as well as due process.

"As long as we do not bear arms and we do not engage in armed overthrow of Arroyo’s government, Bayan and other legal organizations have the right to exist and do whatever it takes to exist, including raising funds for its campaign," Casiño said.

Mrs. Arroyo’s statement was dangerous because it could encourage illegal ways of suppressing dissent, Casiño said, citing the recent killing of human rights activists in Mindoro, an island-province south of Manila where an anti-rebel military offensive is underway.

The President also accused the guerrillas of using drug money to fund their rebellion amid difficulties in raising money abroad, after the United States and the European Union labeled them last year as terrorists.

She said certain members of the communist movement’s political wing, the National Democratic Front (NDF), are "ostensibly engaged in a democratic struggle but clandestinely leading and abetting the overthrow of government by force and violence."

Mrs. Arroyo has yet to reveal who these NDF members are.

Meanwhile, the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) denied yesterday that they have links with drug lords since they are considered as "enemies of the people."

Rosal said that contrary to claims made by President Arroyo, NPA guerrillas have been "actively and persistently hunting down" suspected drug dealers in areas where the movement operates.