DAVAO CITY – Philippine rebels have accused the military of detaining a humanitarian worker after being tagged as a member of the communist front in Mindanao.
The Eastern Mindanao Command said security forces captured Dominiciano Muya on October 16 after policemen and soldiers intercepted him in the village of Mankilam in Tagum City. Muya was travelling alone on a motorcycle when security forces stopped him at the checkpoint.
Capt. Alberto Caber, an army spokesman, said troops seized a pistol and a hand grenade from Muya, who is included in the government’s most wanted list for various murder cases that included the killings of policemen Marito Correos and Rey Ejercito in Agusan del Sur province in June 2004, and Lt. Lucresio Julampong, Jr, in Davao Oriental province in 2009.
He said Muya, who has a P4.8 million bounty on his head, is a regional staff member of the New People’s Army Executive Committee and was a former staff of the New People’s Army in North-eastern Mindanao Regional Committee and former Secretary of Guerrilla Front 18 of the Southern Mindanao Regional Party Committee.
But the NPA has strongly denied the military allegations. “The New People’s Army Southern Mindanao Regional Command assails the malicious and fake charges imputed against Dominiciano Muya who was presented to the media by the 10th Infantry Division as a high ranking NPA official in the region,” said Rigoberto Sanchez, who spoke for the rebel group.
“The orchestrated arrest in Tagum City – in an outrageous story line replete with standard planted grenade and .45 pistol in Muya’s possession – was not only implausible, it also showed the AFP’s mercenary scheme to siphon off the P4-million reward money at the expense of an NGO worker who had a legitimate profession as an educator and agriculture expert for indigenous peoples schools. Muya’s arrest was a shameless money-making plot of a corrupt Army unit,” he added.
He said the military manufactured the criminal charges based on pure imagination – it accused Muya as part of the Communist Party of the Philippines-Southern Mindanao Regional Committee to portray him as its enemy in order to discredit his work in the countryside as a committed educator of sustainable agriculture among indigenous peoples schools.
Sanchez said the arrest and detention of Muya is part of the military’s crackdown against peace advocates, educators and nongovernmental workers who are serving poor and neglected tribes and peasants in Talaingod and Kapalong towns and other parts of Davao del Norte, Compostela Valley and other provinces in Mindanao.
“Muya’s capture is the handiwork of a desperate Army that is fast running out of dirty tricks to harass NGOs who are closely working with the masses for basic education and other social services. The 10th Infantry Division-Eastern Mindanao Command is hell-bent in closing down indigenous peoples schools which it wantonly labels as NPA structures in order to stop genuine development in these areas.”
“The military is allergic to far-flung private schools and any mass undertaking, seeing these endeavors as impediments to foreign large-scale mining and capitalist incursions in the resource-rich forests and ancestral lands of indigenous peoples. By arresting, detaining, or harassing teachers in the countryside, they are scheming to instil fear among NGOs, activists, advocates and civil libertarians. The masses should see to these anti-people machinations and struggle against these gross human rights abuses,” he said.
There was no immediate reaction from the Eastern Mindanao Command headed by Lt. Gen. Aurelio Baladad, but he earlier commended security forces for Muya’s capture. He also ordered army forces to intensify the campaign against the rebel group which has been fighting for decades for the establishment of a separate communist state in the country. (Mindanao Examiner)
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