NPA rebels to continue anti-biofuels campaign

The com­mu­nist New Peo­ple’s Army (NPA) in Negros vowed Sat­ur­day to sus­tain its cam­paign against bio­fu­els and to raid plan­ta­tions ded­i­cat­ed to jathropa, a source of bio­fu­el.

NPA South­east­ern Negros spokesman Dom Pan­ta­le­on said the NPA will imple­ment more “pre­ven­tive mea­sures” against pri­vate agri-busi­ness cor­po­ra­tions for aggra­vat­ing food sup­ply prob­lem by plant­i­ng non-food crops.

The com­mu­nist New Peo­ple’s Army (NPA) in Negros vowed Sat­ur­day to sus­tain its cam­paign against bio­fu­els and to raid plan­ta­tions ded­i­cat­ed to jathropa, a source of bio­fu­el.

NPA South­east­ern Negros spokesman Dom Pan­ta­le­on said the NPA will imple­ment more “pre­ven­tive mea­sures” against pri­vate agri-busi­ness cor­po­ra­tions for aggra­vat­ing food sup­ply prob­lem by plant­i­ng non-food crops.

In an arti­cle on the Com­mu­nist Par­ty of the Philip­pines web­site, he cit­ed the Tam­lang Val­ley Agri­cul­tur­al Devel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (TVADC) as caus­ing wors­en­ing food sup­ply prob­lem and height­en­ing mil­i­tary abus­es in south­east Negros.

He said the NPA recent­ly con­duct­ed anoth­er “puni­tive action” against the TVADC bio­fu­els com­pa­ny main­ly based in the vil­lage of Casalaan, Sia­ton, Ori­en­tal Negros.

Pan­ta­le­on said an NPA team last Oct. 3 was ordered to con­fis­cate and burn two TVADC-owned trac­tors in Sitio Tam­lang, Talalak vil­lage in Sta. Catali­na town.

No one was harmed in the inci­dent, he added.

“It was the sec­ond such oper­a­tion in as many months by the Red army to pro­tect upland peas­ants from the intru­sive and harm­ful bio­fu­els com­pa­ny co-owned by the fam­i­ly of ex-Con­gress­man Her­minio Teves and their Kore­an busi­ness part­ners. Last Sep­tem­ber 9, a sep­a­rate NPA team seized and burned three trac­tors owned by the same com­pa­ny in sityo Cuadra, barangay Man­tik­il, in Sta. Catali­na town,” the NPA said.

Pan­ta­le­on added the NPA will con­tin­ue imple­ment­ing sim­i­lar orders for puni­tive actions to block the wide­spread grow­ing of jathropa and cas­sa­va in and around the vast Sta. Catali­na-Sia­ton-Valen­cia-Pam­plona bor­der vil­lages of Ori­en­tal Negros.

He said the NPA will also impose armed puni­tive actions against the Army’s 302nd Brigade for “pro­vid­ing pro­tec­tion and even col­lud­ing with TVADC in forc­ing ordi­nary farm­ers to plant jatrhopa and cas­sa­va, instead of their tra­di­tion­al food crops like upland rice and corn.”

Pan­ta­le­on said the mer­ce­nary AFP has become the bio­fu­els cam­paign’s most vis­i­ble “errand boys” for the agri-busi­ness com­pa­ny and the Teves fam­i­ly in south­east Negros.

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For pre­vi­ous NPA protest against bio­fu­els in the Philip­pines, see http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/21752