NPAs in barong kill cop chief

They arrived clad in barong Tagalog and Army uniforms. Some of them displayed ID cards of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI). But a possé of about 50 heavily armed men turned out to be communist rebels who raided a police station in Quezon province yesterday.

Reports said police emptied their guns on the raiders in a firefight that lasted about 30 minutes before they were overwhelmed.

The daring raid left police chief Superintendent Cesar Santander dead with a bullet to the head and two police officers and a civilian wounded.

Before fleeing, the gunmen seized weapons of the police station in remote Lopez town in Quezon, about 170 kilometers southeast of Manila.It was the second NPA attack on a police station in less than a week.

Troops backed by helicopter gunships were dispatched to hunt down the raiders, said Maj. Gen. Roy Kyamko, Armed Forces Southern Command chief. "The rebels may be up for a bigger target and using deceptive methods," he said.

Chief Superintendent Enrique Galang, head of the regional police force covering the area, said one of the gunmen, clad in barong Tagalog, arrived at the police station at around 4 p.m., saying he wanted to file a complaint.

"The suspect said he had some companions with him outside the station," Galang told reporters.

Police officers drew out their guns when they noticed that the man’s companions were edgy. A firefight ensued. Galang said "several" rebels were wounded.

On Tuesday, a band of 30 NPA rebels using the same modus operandi entered the town of Maco in Compostela Valley unmolested and emptied the town police station’s armory.

Led by one "Ka Lando," the rebels – masquerading as Army soldiers in complete military uniforms – first visited Mayor Miller Alaba, who then accompanied them to the station.

There, the rebels announced the raid to the surprise of police officers, who decided it was useless to put up a fight. Twenty-four automatic rifles, one machinegun and eight handguns were carted away by the rebels.

Communist rebels have stepped up attacks in recent days following President Arroyo’s recent order for an intensified military campaign against the NPA.

Director General Hermogenes Ebdane, chief of the Philippine National Police, said he is now reviewing the deployment of police forces in rebel-threatened areas.

"We have to do this in tandem with the armed forces," he said, adding that the rebels have intensified efforts to recruit members.

The Lopez attack came only hours after National Security Adviser Roilo Golez told reporters yesterday at Camp Crame that security forces are prepared to deal with the rebels.

"This proves that these rebels are really terrorists," Golez said.

Rebel leaders denied the charge. CPP spokesman Gregorio "Ka Roger" Rosal said in a statement yesterday that the NPA "launches tactical offensives against definite and legitimate military targets and always with consideration for the welfare of the masses."

In the raid on the Maco police station, Rosal pointed out, the policemen who immediately surrendered "were left unharmed because the NPA respects their rights as stipulated in the international guidelines governing armed conflict."

In contrast, civilians have been harmed in the past by "forced evacuations, indiscriminate firing and torching of the houses of civilians, arbitrary killings and torture, destruction of crops and the masses’ sources of livelihood" by the military, Rosal claimed.

In August, Washington included the Communist Party of the Philippines and the NPA, the CPP’s armed wing, in its list of "terrorist" organizations.

The US government asked other countries to stop funds flowing to the rebels. The Philippines and the rest of Southeast Asia are seen as the United States’ second front in its global war against terrorism.

CPP founder Jose Maria Sison, who lives in self-exile in the Netherlands, protested the US action, saying his group is a legitimate political party, decriminalized after the 1986 ouster of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos and the subsequent repeal of a law that effectively legitimized parties of the Left.

The anti-subversion law was repealed during the administration of Fidel Ramos in the 1990s in an attempt to encourage the rebels to negotiate peace with the government.

The CPP is not legally registered in the Philippines and leads one of the world’s longest-running communist insurgencies through the NPA since 1969.

Sison said the US action threatened to derail peace talks between the rebels and the Philippine government.

The government suspended formal peace talks in June last year held in Oslo, Norway, after the rebels assassinated two congressmen. Officials hoped to reopen talks soon.

Last August, Mrs. Arroyo ordered troops fighting the Abu Sayyaf – labeled a terrorist group by the United States – redeployed against the NPA.

Mrs. Arroyo said the communist rebels took advantage of the military’s preoccupation with the Abu Sayyaf in recent months to step up attacks and infiltration of villages.

The NPA replied it would retaliate by attacking power lines.

Government officials rate the NPA as an even more serious threat to national security than the Abu Sayyaf, which for the past two years had kidnapped foreign tourists and Christian missionaries for ransom.

A military estimate pegged the NPA’s current strength at 12,000, which reached 30,000 at its peak in the 1980s.

Mrs. Arroyo, a staunch supporter of the US-led global war against terrorism launched after the Sept. 11 attacks, urged Congress to pass an anti-terrorism bill.

In her State of the Nation Address in July, Mrs. Arroyo urged Congress to pass an anti-terrorism bill as part of her administration’s campaign against terrorism, and efforts to build to a "strong Republic."

In the absence of an anti-terrorism law, Malacañang issued a guideline defining "terrorism" as the "premeditated use or threatened use or actual use of violence or means of destruction perpetrated against innocent civilians or non-combatants or against civilian or government properties, usually intended to influence an audience." — With reports from Paolo Romero, Benjie Villa, Artemio Dumlao