New People’s Army raids mining company in Philippines

According to Rigoberto F. Sanchez, spokesperson of the New People’s Army-Southern Mindanao, the Red fighters of Comval-Davao Gulf Subregional Command-New People’s Army raided RAM Aggregates, Inc., a nickel mining company in Brgy. Puntalinao, Banay-banay, Davao Oriental. The raid on the mining company occurred on Jan. 4, at 4 a.m.

The New People’s Army (NPA) confiscated one Garand rifle with sniper’s scope, one M79 grenade launcher, two shotguns, one caliber .45 pistol, one caliber .357 pistol, 100 rounds of assorted ammunition and several other items of military equipment.

Mining equipment, including six backhoes, one bulldozer and one dump truck, were also gutted.

The government’s Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) soldiers belonging to the 28th Infantry Battalion, who, along with a private security agency, served as the company’s guards, scampered away during the raid.

The sanction is in line with the Communist Party of the Philippines’ policy of protecting the environment by destroying destructive foreign large-scale mining companies, and those firms which engage in foreign-owned economic activities which sap the country’s natural resources while victimizing workers and peasants.

RAM Aggregates Inc. exports nickel to foreign companies abroad while keeping mining workers’ wages at a pittance and causing the degradation of resources and the environment in the area.

The NPA sanction is also directed against the U.S.-Duterte regime, whose sycophantic allies in the reactionary congress are now hell bent in pushing for federalism through a constituent assembly in order to open the country for full-scale imperialist plunder.

As the neoliberal purveyors in Duterte’s administration are milking the masses dry – with disproportionately excessive taxes under the newly-minted TRAIN law in favor of landlords, bourgeoisie compradors and bureaucrat capitalists – the entire revolutionary movement is taking the elite and oligarchs to task by dismantling their parasitic hold of the country’s economic resources.