THE DEPLOYMENT of Philippine Army soldiers as part of the Community Support Program (CSP) in Southern Iloilo towns is not a solution to the poverty and hunger that beset the people especially in hinterland barangays.
The CSP is an intrinsic component of the anti-insurgency program being implemented by the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTFELCAC) with its P19.5 billion budget.
The experience of different Tumandok indigenous communities of Calinog, Iloilo and Tapaz, Capiz showed that the CSP teams composed of Phil. Army soldiers and Philippine National Police personnel deployed there since June last year did not bring progress and government service, but fear and harm to residents and inconvenience to their daily life.
In November last year, barangay officials of Lahug, Tapaz sought the help of the Commission on Human Rights regarding the fear and anxiety brought about by the conduct of the CSP team to their community. On December 30, 2020 nine leaders and members of the Tumandok communities were killed and 16 arrested in a massive army and PNP operation allegedly to serve search warrants against “high value communist leaders.”
The CSP teams in full battle gear went house-to-house and told some residents their names were included in its list and so they must “surrender” so that their names can be “cleared”. The persons in the list were those residents accused of being New People’s Army members, recruiters and supporters. Many of these residents submitted themselves to the army camp and signed surrender forms. There were those who refused because they did not want to admit to being what they are not nor to any wrongdoing that they did not commit.
Barangay residents became very apprehensive as government troopers gave out the warning that if an NPA camp was discovered or if an encounter happened near one’s house, he could be accused of violating the Anti-Terrorism Law.
In barangays where CSP teams were deployed, curfew was imposed, disrupting the livelihood activities of the people who normally go out to their farms early at dawn. Residents in sitios were forced to transfer to barangay centers. The armed troops encamped in the school building, day care center and other public facilities in the middle of the community, exposing the residents to harm in case a shoot-out occurs.
Many of the victims of the December 30, 2020 massacre and arrests of the Tumandok have signed “surrender” papers in compliance to the CSP teams, but that did not save them. Imposing fear and heaping more injustice on the people who already suffer poverty and hunger are not a way of ending the armed conflict, as proved time and again. Hence the inherent futility and wrongness of the CSP.
We call for the scrapping of such a program as well as the abolition of the NTFELCAC, and the rechanneling of its massive budget to programs that could truly remedy the poverty and injustices being suffered by the people. – BAGONG ALYANSANG MAKABAYAN – PANAY <bayanpanay2014@gmail.com>
