DAVAO CITY–Some 26 members of the New People’s Army (NPA) raided and burned down several equipment of a resort in Davao Oriental for supposedly failing to pay revolutionary taxes, police said.
Police Regional Office 11 (Davao) spokesperson, Chief Insp. Milgrace Driz, said the rebels were looking for the owner of Adam’s Haven Mountain Resort in Barangay Ompao in the town of Tarragona at about 6 a.m. Wednesday.
Driz said upon learning that the owner, identified as engineer Ariel Mosquera, was not around, the rebels told the staff the establishment owed the NPA an unspecified amount of taxes.
The rebels then proceeded to burn several equipment of the resort, such as a power generator, an electric steel cutter, and a multicab vehicle.
Driz said the armed men were led by commanders Jeckol and Jegs, and a certain Boyaks, who are under the NPA’s Pulang Bagani Command 8.
Police estimated the cost of the damage at PHP600,000.
Driz said Mosquera, the resort owner who is also a government employee in the province’s capital city of Mati, had received a letter directing the latter to pay revolutionary taxes to the group.
PRO-11 condemned the incident, describing it as a “desperate act” on the part of the communist rebels.
“If they need help for their survival, they can seek help from the government by means of surrendering and to lay down their arms so that they can be a recipient of the government’s livelihood program,” the PRO-11 spokeswoman said. (Armando B. Fenequito Jr./PNA)
