they accuse Rural Missionaries of financing communist terrorism

Some 16 people, including some religious, were charged with the alleged crime of financing the New People’s Army, the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines. The court could issue an arrest warrant. Rural missionaries defend the environment and the rights of local indigenous people.

Manila ( / Agencies) – The Philippines Department of Justice has accused 16 people, including several nuns linked to the Rural Missionaries of the Philippines, of sending funds to the New People’s Army, the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP-NPA). ).

The accusations were presented yesterday before the regional court of the city of Iligan by the lawyer of the Department of Justice Mico Clavano, based on an investigation carried out by the Commission against money laundering. The alleged crime, not subject to bail, was registered under the Terrorist Financing Act, which penalizes anyone who makes available to persons or groups designated as terrorists by the government, “goods or funds, financial services or other related services” .

The Rural Missionaries of the Philippines (RMP) were qualified as such in december 2020 by the Anti-Terrorist Council, but already the previous year his bank accounts had been blocked by the Anti-Money Laundering Commission on suspicion of financing the communist insurgency. In June of this year the government closed its website. An arrest warrant could be issued for the accused in the coming days.

The Rural Missionaries are a group of lay people and religious from various congregations who work in Mindanao – the southern island of the Philippine archipelago – in defense of the environment and the aboriginal peoples. Yesterday, when the accusations against them were presented, they had just celebrated the 53rd anniversary of their presence in the country.

Rural missionaries share life with farmers and fishermen in one of the poorest regions of the Philippines. In recent decades, theland grabbing” (land grabbing) for timber export or large-scale agriculture has gone hand in hand with the erosion of the rights of local indigenous tribes. The Rural Missionaries documented human rights violations against them, such as the murder of 47 people.

In 2011, Father Fausto Tentorio, a PIME missionary who had helped the Manobo Indians organize themselves into agricultural cooperatives and called on Manila to recognize the right of the local Indians to their land, was also murdered in Arakan.

The rural missionaries were born in 1969, a few months after the formation of the New People’s Army, an armed organization with a Maoist tradition that has waged a guerrilla war against the Philippine state for half a century with the aim of establishing its own government. From 350 members in 1971 it grew to more than 20,000 in the late 1980s. In some rural provinces the CPP-NPA has succeeded in setting up local administrations that operate independently of Manila, for example by collecting income taxes to finance themselves. In the 2010s the group received $7 billion in logistical and financial support from former Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi. In December 2019, former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte announced the end of peace talks with communist groups, after having framed them as terrorists in 2017.