THE surrender of over 4,500 members of the New People’s Army is either “fake or forced and carried through deception,” the militant Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas said on Monday.
Antonio Flores, KMP secretary- general, said the surrender campaign is also a lucrative extortion racket.
He said one of the highlights of a four-day international fact-finding mission in Mindanao was the surrender campaign of the Armed Forces of the Philippines as a money-making modus operandi of both the military and the civilian bureaucracy.
The Army claimed that under Duterte’s watch, there have already been more than 4,500 surrenderees of the NPA in Mindanao, particularly in Compostela Valley and Agusan del Sur.
“These so-called ‘surrenders,’ however, are either fake or forced and carried through deception, coercion and other unscrupulous ways,” he said.
According to Flores, testimonies of the witnesses and documentary evidence showed such modus had allowed the military to access and received the reward offered by the government for NPA fighters who surrendered.
Flores said that based on their interviews with ‘surenderees’ in Agusan del Sur, including farmers, army personnel offered them firearms that they would bring if they would surrender and promised them P5,000 as livelihood assistance.
"Worse, if the farmer is still “uncooperative” after all these attempts by the military, he is included in the military 'kill list' and becomes a target of extrajudicial killing," he said.