DUMAGUETE CITY – A village chairperson in Guihulngan City, Negros Oriental on Tuesday belied the claim of the Communist Party of the Philippines-New People’s Army (CPP-NPA) that a police officer was killed during an event in the area.
Barangay Trinidad chair Luciana Montecino, said in a video recording no police personnel was killed during a Local Peace Engagement in her village, as claimed on social media by the Leonardo Panaligan Command (LPC) of the NPA Central Negros.
“It is fake news, there is no truth to it,” Montecino said in the Cebuano dialect.
The statement and the video clip, shared to the media by the 62nd Infantry Battalion, showed Montecino saying on that particular day, the rebels fired from a distance, to disrupt the event and scare the attendees.
Montecino condemned the incident and hoped that it would not be repeated in the future.
She also told the people not to be misled by the “fake news” being spread by the NPA as “part of their propaganda”.
Montecino called on the NPA rebels to return to the fold of the law and avail of the government’s Enhanced Comprehensive Local Integration Program which helps returnees in starting a new life.
She also promised to help them in their surrender and avail of government programs and benefits while giving out her mobile phone number and the hotline numbers of the 62IB.
The CPP-NPA is listed as a terrorist organization by the United States, European Union, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the Philippines.
The National Democratic Front has been formally designated as a terrorist organization by the Anti-Terrorism Council on June 23, 2021, citing it as “an integral and inseparable part” of the CPP-NPA created in April 1973. (PNA)