President Rodrigo Duterte on Thursday said there are now fewer New People’s Army (NPA) activities taking place since the creation of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) and its regional task forces to address armed conflicts at the local level.
Duterte acknowledged that the Communist Party of the Philippines-NPA (CPP-NPA) continues to perpetuate violence by killing soldiers, police, and civilians in the country, but in “a very small scale” this time.
“There has been really quite a reduction of the NPA activities. They are in Mindanao but limited to Northern Mindanao including Davao City. May mga dalawa nalang o almost pawala na. At sana naman ganun ang mangyari sa ibang regions (There are just two or almost none. And I hope it will also happen in other regions), I said, because violence is really despicable to me,” he said in a speech in Lucena City. He also thanked the NTF-ELCAC members for consistently standing up against the communist insurgency in the region.