HACIENDA LUISITA — Protesting laborers and farm workers here, joined by their respective families and reinforced by militant activists, have practically taken control over nearly all movements in this sprawling sugar estate owned by the family of former President Corazon Aquino.
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Luisita resumes milling operations as tension eases
HACIENDA LUISITA — Tension has somewhat eased in this 6,000-hectare sugar plantation, as the ranks of the protesters who locked up the refinery during the weekend have thinned out, allowing the Central Azucarera de Tarlac (CAT) to resume its milling operations noontime Monday.
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Truck attacks force Luisita mill closure anew
HACIENDA LUISITA — The “violent and destructive” actions being carried out by alleged “troublemakers” among the ranks of protesters here has forced Luzon’s biggest sugar mill to shutdown anew its operations Tuesday morning, after these were briefly resumed around noontime last Monday.
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7-month long Rabbit strike ends
TARLAC CITY — The almost seven-month long strike in one of the country’s oldest transport company finally came to an end, as the Philippine Rabbit Bus Lines (PRBL) commenced plying major routes from Metro Manila to Central and Northern Luzon again.
Subic allows FedEx to operate ecozone hub until 2013
TARLAC CITY — The Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority (SBMA) has recently decided to extend the lease contract of air courier giant, the Federal Express (FedEx), up to August 2010.
Int’l media watchdog: RP hostile for journalists
TARLAC CITY — Although the country has a “free and lively press,” the Philippines has been counted by the Paris-based international media watchdog as one of the places most hostile to journalists.
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The Tarlac Headlines News Central displays all the news of our latest issues.
October 1 - 31, 2004
NDF raps troops in battle of Pura
TARLAC CITY — Troops deployed north of Metro Manila were put on “heightened alert” as the Armed Forces here announced that it expects communist guerillas to carry out more armed attacks on government positions, as well as public service facilities, following this week’s fierce battles with a large group of New People’s Army (NPA) rebels who gathered in Tarlac’s eastern outskirts.
This, even as the regional leadership in Central Luzon of the National Democratic Front (NDF) has filed a number of complaints against the AFP Northern Luzon Command (Nolcom) and the Tarlac police provincial office before the government-NDF Joint Monitoring Committee (JMC) for alleged violation of some provisions of the Comprehensive Agreement on Respect for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law (CARHRIHL) in pursuing about 50 NPA rebels from Oct. 11 to 13 in Sitio Umangan, Barangay Balite in Pura, this province.
The NDF is the underground political umbrella of the Communist Party of the Philippnes (CPP) that has been representing the entire rebel movement in formal peace talks with the government, while the JMC was formed early last June to monitor the CARHRIHL’s implementation, as well as to receive and address complaints of abuses against either state or guerilla forces.
According to Nolcom commanding officer, Lt. Gen. Romeo Dominguez, the military expects NPA units operating in Central and Northern Luzon provinces to soon launch “tactical offensives” on isolated government positions in compliance with an Oct. 4 directive by the CPP Central Committee.
The CPP then ordered its 128 NPA guerilla fronts across the country to “launch bigger, more numerous and more frequent tactical offensives on isolated elements of the (AFP) and the (police) every time the opportunity presents itself.”
Suspecting that the gathering in Pura by a large number of guerillas was supposed to be an “opening salvo” for the planned rebel attacks in the region, Dominguez said that the military “should not allow any room for the NPA to avenge their debacle.”
Pura happens to be the hometown of Rafael Baylosis, a former student radical who was one of the CPP-NPA-NDF’s senior founding leaders.
As the military has claimed that villagers in Pura have tipped off authorities about the rebels’ presence in their village, Nolcom has declared that the prolonged engagements averted what could have had been a damaging attack by the NPA in the province.
For aside from recovering from the rebel side a carbine rifle, hand grenades, a mobile phone, a two-way radio, medical paraphernalia, a laptop computer with printer, assorted ammunition for high-powered firearms, and several personal belongings, combined police and soldiers also found in Sitio Umangan a truck that was repainted by the guerillas in military camouflage.
Dominguez said it was likely that the NPA was then planning to use the stolen truck to raid the Pura police station, or those in the neighboring towns of Gerona, Ramos and Victoria, as well as in the nearby municipality of Guimba in Nueva Ecija, by way of the rebels passing themselves off as soldiers.
The Nolcom commander said that the government assault on the rebels was a “direct slap on the enemy’s face,” but Serafin Magdiwang, spokesman for the NPA’s Nelson Mesina Command operating in the province, taunted the AFP as he pointed out that the rebels, although then cornered, were able to outmaneuver the more than 250 soldiers and policemen deployed in Sitio Umangan.
Both the Nolcom and the Nelson Mesina Command denied having sustained casualties on both sides, even as they traded suspicions that either of them suffered some losses in the ferocious battle of Pura.
Meanwhile, the NDF in Central Luzon has cited the Nolcom and the Tarlac police, particularly the Army’s 69th Infantry Battalion and 703rd Infantry Brigade, and the 312nd and 313rd police mobile groups (PMGs), of violating provisions of the CARHRIHL for supposedly endangering civilians during the encounter.
Among the alleged violations committed by government forces were putting in danger civilian lives and properties, subjecting villagers to “forced evacuation,” and that soldiers on board the UH-IH Huey helicopter dispatched by the Air Force then purportedly resorted to “indiscriminate bombings, shellings, strafing and gunfire.”
A fact-finding mission in the village commissioned by the human rights group Karapatan and the religious group Promotion of Church People’s Response (PCPR) also noted that troopers “occupied” some civilian houses, and that Sitio Umangan’s Dona Felisa Elementary School was used by soldiers and policemen as their “war room.”
But Dominguez said the evacuation then of exactly 573 villagers was carried out “with the cooperation of (Pura’s) municipal officials to prevent them from being used as human shields by the withdrawing rebels.”
He added that the use of air support to ground troops was “authorized in the conduct of internal security operations against enemies of the state.”
The Air Force helicopter, which was dispatched on Oct. 12, then fired at least four rockets into what was believed to be the rebels’ position in the village, even as Dominguez said that the use of the school by the military and police was similarly authorized.
The chopper however took an emergency landing after supposedly sustaining damages due to rebel firing, but Magdiwang said that it was apparent that the Huey conked out in mid-air.
Besides, the rebel spokesman added that even reports by the Nolcom and the Tarlac police showed that the guerillas involved in the skirmishes withdrew to the sugarcane fields “to avoid bringing harm to the unarmed civilian masses.”
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