THE Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) has condemned Monday’s “horrific” police raid on a Lumad school in Cebu city in which 25 people, mainly children, were taken into custody, demanding their immediate release.

In today’s statement the party hit out at the violence of “the [President Rodrigo] Duterte regime’s fascist thugs.”

Twenty-one Lumad students, two Lumad elders and two teachers were hauled in under the country’s new anti-terror laws.

It said that the “fascist criminals will be punished,” vowing that the New People’s Amy (NPA), the armed wing of the CPP, would “do everything to avenge and attain justice for the Lumad people, the Tumanduks, the Aetas and the rest of the minority peoples, the workers, peasants and other democratic classes and sectors.”

The party claimed that the Lumad, an indigenous minority who mainly live off the land, and their schools are frequently targeted by the authorities for “teaching their children how to love and defend their ancestral land and culture.”

It blamed the NTF-ELCAC, the joint national task force to end local communist armed conflict, for recent massacres of the Tumanduk people in which nine community leaders were killed in their own homes.

“The Lumad people of Mindanao and other minority groups across the country are being punished by the Duterte fascist regime for not bowing to the armed might of the military, police and paramilitary monsters that have caused the masses untold suffering,” the statement said.

The CPP says that the indigenous communities are seen as an obstacle to the government’s plans to allow big mining companies and agribusiness, dams, energy, ecotourism and other big capitalist firms to take over and plunder their ancestral lands.

“The party, and all revolutionary forces, join in demanding the immediate release of the Lumad children and their teachers and elders, collectively known as the Lumad 25.

“We join the Filipino people to voice out their protest against this latest attack against their democratic rights,” it said.