12 Dulangan-Manobo NPA members surrender to 6th ID

CAMP SIONGCO, Maguindanao --- Twelve more New People’s Army guerillas, three of them Dulangan-Manobo datus, bolted from the group Sunday.

The 12 NPAs operated in hinterlands in the adjoining Lebak, Kalamansig and Palimbang towns in Sultan Kudarat, bastions of the Teduray and Dulangan-Manabo indigenous communities.

Datu Gawa, Datu Ume Digan, Sultan Tirso Gantangan and companions took turns telling officials of the Army’s 6^th Infantry Division, during a dialogue here Sunday, that NPAs from outside misled them into joining the group with promises of protection from logging firms and agricultural companies intruding into their ancestral domains.

“We did not get any protection from the NPA at all. We were merely used for its advantage,” Digan said in Filipino, in the presence of 6^th ID’s acting commander, Brig. Gen. Eduardo Gubat.

No fewer than 200 NPAs from upland towns in Sultan Kudarat, South Cotabato and Sarangani provinces, all under 6^th ID’s jurisdiction, have bolted from the rebel group and pledged allegiance to the government in the past 24 months through the joint efforts of units of the division.

“We have realized that there is no way that the NPA can defeat the government in its senseless communist insurgency,” Datu Gawa told 6^th ID officials and reporters.

Gubat said the 12 NPAs yielded through the backchannel intercession of Col. Michael Santos, commander of the 603^rd Infantry Brigade and officials of the 37^th Infantry Battalion led by Lt. Col. John Paul Baldomar.

Gubat said they shall be reintegrated into mainstream society with the help of local government units. (John Unson)