The National Democratic Front-Eastern Visayas today exposed as farce the military-made associations that have been sprouting up in different parts of Leyte as a result of the forced surrender campaign by the 802nd Infantry Brigade.
“These associations are fake because their members are victims of the military’s forced surrender campaign. Their members cannot assert their right to genuine land reform. Rather, these associations put forward the interest of the big landlords and the 802nd IBde to drive the peasants out of the land that is rightfully theirs, thus worsening the land monopoly in the Leyte countryside,” the NDF-EV said.
The NDF-EV issued the statement in reaction to newly-founded “integrated peace and development workers’ associations” in at least five towns in Southern Leyte. At least one was also founded in Ormoc City, Leyte. According to the 802nd IBde, these groups are composed of “former rebels.”
But the NDF-EV said that these areas were also the focus of intense militarization in recent months, particularly those in Southern Leyte, the fifth congressional district of Leyte province and Ormoc City. “Most, if not all, members of the military-made associations were ordinary civilians or former NPA members who have long retired but were threatened into surrendering in the midst of the intense military presence and psy-war campaign.”
Last September, the AFP dropped at least three bombs on the hills bordering Albuera and Javier towns, unsuccessfully hitting a single Red fighter while terrorizing the peasant masses in the area. Military operations also continue in Ormoc City and Kananga to secure millions worth of road projects and big business of landlords such as the Torres clan.
The military also announced that the Leyte-Tandaya Integrated Peace and Development Workers Association is led by president Thelma “Ka Mayang” Pundulanan. According to the NDF-EV, Pundulanan is a traitor to the peasant masses and serves as a soldier of the 802nd IBde.
“In 2019, the 802nd IBde and big Leyte landlords connived with Pundulanan to identify members of peasant organizations in San Isidro, Calubian and Kananga, Leyte whom they will force to ‘surrender.’ They red-tagged and broke up these genuine peasant organizations, and used the E-CLP program to fool and threaten them into leaving the land they have been tilling.
“Now, the military has replaced them with associations which they themselves have founded, are led by their own troops, and are composed of victims of forced surrender,” the NDF-EV said.
It maintained, “The 802nd IBde has been putting up these fake ‘workers’ associations’ as part of their psychological warfare against the peasant masses in Leyte. The military attempts to conjure the illusion that the masses have willfully given up their struggle against the big landlords and big compradors.
“But it would have been impossible for the NPA in Leyte to have persevered in the midst of the sustained military operations had it not enjoyed the support of the peasant masses, who are intensely desirous of ending their feudal and semifeudal exploitation by waging people’s war.
“In the end, it is laughable how there are hundreds of members of these associations but the 802nd IBde also repeats that Leyte is ‘insurgency-free.’ Their operations continue without end as more and more civilians are forced to surrender. They are the ones exposing their own lies.”
The NDF-EV called on all Leyteños to expose these fake associations. “They must reject the surrender campaign of the military and to continue their struggle for genuine land reform.
“In the face of the enemy’s all-out war and worsening crisis, it is even more important to build revolutionary mass organizations in the barrios and carry out agrarian revolution and armed struggle to attain genuine development,” the NDF-EV ended.
PRWC Newsroom 