FIFTY-five years or so — and by any reckoning that is a very long time, one-half of a century. That is how long it has taken the Communist Party of the Philippines and the New People’s Army to try to win over the nation to their revolutionary cause. That is not only a story of perseverance. It is also a clear demonstration of a point that does not stick!
I had firsthand experience of the terror of communities threatened by incursions of rebels who have ceaselessly proclaimed their advocacy of the working class, the common Filipino. The communities’ experience tells something different. In northern Cagayan, at the height of insurgency, I was invited to deliver the commencement address of a Catholic school somewhere in northwestern Cagayan. Already, the rather short land trip to the town was tense.
We were warned that we would meet either of two armed groups on the way: the forces of the government or the rebels. “Nu agawid daguiti soldado, rummuar daguiti NPA... When soldiers return to their barracks, out come the NPAs.” Those words were spoken in whispers and in dread. I was sleepless that night, awaiting the worst. I would not be disappointed. I woke up the next morning to rapid bursts of gunfire and the unmistakable sound of people in panic and scurrying to safety. When I asked what was happening, I was told that the NPAs had attacked the church of another religious denomination that they suspected was where the government’s soldiers cached their arms. When the panic ebbed, I wasted no time and decided to return home. On the way, I saw the charred roof of the church building that the rebels had burned.
Aparri, where I was for 11 years, was Northern Cagayan’s most progressive municipality — but it too was in the grip of fear as night after night, accounts were passed on of people taken in the dark by rebels, hands bound, never to be seen again. I met with the families of some victims. It certainly would be revisionism to claim that people welcomed their “liberators.” Rather, they were in fear, and nightfall was a particularly dreadful time. The former mayor of Aparri was their captive for over a year, and he would later narrate how he was constantly threatened with execution. Many were not as fortunate. They were read “sentences” earlier pronounced on them in absentia and led into the woods for execution!
The repeal of the Anti-Subversion Law was an invitation to votaries of communism to engage in parliamentary contest — to propose themselves and their manifesto to the people in elections. And while some groups in Congress, protestations to the contrary notwithstanding, are obviously communist or Red — or at least left-leaning — this has not stopped their military components from armed resistance to organized government and staging ambuscades and assaults on the forces of government.
The ineluctable fact is that, its persistence notwithstanding, the CPP-NPA has failed to win over the population. Their point just does not stick. It is undeniable that they have resorted to banditry: extorting from families, exacting “revolutionary taxes” and burning facilities — such as cellphone sites and towers — when their demands are not met. In many ways, that many rural areas remain backwater is because rebels pose a threat to government initiatives, business propositions and development programs. Recently, “red-tagging” has been a convenient denunciation of all efforts to curb rebel power and influence. “Red-tagging” has become synonymous with a violation of fundamental rights. In most cases, the opposite is true: Identifying reds and tagging them has been a way of protecting communities from harassment, intimidation and fear.
The ideology the holdouts peddle is one that has proven to be a failure. The Soviet Union — the most expansive showcase of the Leninist-Stalinist adaptation of the “Communist Manifesto” — shuddered and fell, giving rise to several independent republics, all grateful for their freedom. Even the People’s Republic of China has made tremendous — and telling — concessions to capitalism. It has created several special administrative regions where business, as in capitalist economies, thrives. On the other hand, its totalitarianism that includes its persecution of ethnic groups has left the world with ample testament to its unforgiving absolutism. Eastern Europe repudiated communism wholesale, and has interdicted the return of communist governments to power.
The deaths of young people are rightly mourned, and my heart goes out to their grieving parents. But I shall not blame the Armed Forces of the Philippines for doing what it is their bounden duty to do — neutralize armed rebel groups engaged in actual combat against government forces. Were they to lay down their weapons lest they make victims of students among rebel ranks, they would be reneging on their oath.
rannie_aquino@sanbeda.edu.ph
Rannie_aquino@csu.edu.ph
