NPA to heighten attacks to celebrate 50th founding anniversary

LUCENA CITY – The communist New People’s Army (NPA) vowed to intensify attacks against government forces to celebrate its 50th founding anniversary this month, the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) said Sunday.

“We are celebrating the NPA’s 50th anniversary as its units carry out tactical offensives across the country to punish the worst of the Duterte regime’s fascist agents and defend the people’s rights, advance their struggle for land reform and build the people’s organizations and organs of political power,” the CPP information bureau said in a public advisory to its cadres, Red-fighters and revolutionary forces, a copy of which was forwarded to the Inquirer.

Group calls for end of NPA anniversary celebration

If not killed in an ecnounter, alias Apol could have became a responsible and useful member of the society.

This was the narration of the group Kilusan at Alyansa ng mga Dating Rebelde (KADRE), which is composed of former communist rebels. 

Ka Louie, who formerly belonged to the Regional Youth of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), said joining the New People’s Army (NPA) has wasted the lives of many people, especially the youth, including Apol.

As the NPA remembers its anniversary on March 29, KADRE is calling for an end in the yearly commemoration of the NPA anniversary. 

Ka Louie, who was a professor in a well-known and big university in the country, said Apol became his student but was later killed in an encounter in Tanay, Rizal.

Ka Louie lasted eight years in the underground movement, dating back in 1980 until 1990.

He became the chief of the Regional Youth of the CPP in the National Capital Region before deciding to bolt the armed organization to pursue and finish his studies, which became fruitful when he became a professor.

Louie said Apol was one of his students and he was surrpised when he later learned that she was a member of the communist movement. 

He added that Apol was a bright and intelligent student, which was why he had done everything he could to discourage her from continuing to be involved in the armed struggle because it would just waste her talent.

Aside from Apol, Ka Louie also advised other young members of the Communist Terrorist Group. Among then was Ka Czes.

Czes and Apol were both smart and full of dreams ahead of them. They were both members of the NPA’s Collective Unit. Apol was a Student Council Vice President while Czes was the Political Science Society President.

It came to a point that people in the movement offered them to be Political Officers of the NPA in Rizal and conduct Rural Integration.

But Ka Louie told the two to finish their studies and slow down in their participation in the communist group, knowing that the CPP-NPA’s power and popularity is dwindling and eventually becoming a group invovled in gangsterism.

Czes believed Ka Louie and decided to finish school but Apol went on and joined the NPA in the mountains, causing their friendship to break.

Apol was angered why Czes chose education and uplift the lives of her family rather than joined the armed movement.

Currently, Czes has become the head executive assistant of a known senator and she is currently pursuing law school.

Apol, meanwhile, continued to join the NPA where she involved with terrorism, landgrabbing and extortion activities. She was later killed in an encounter with the armed private group of a politician.

NPA foundation

After an ideological split with a 1930s era pro-Soviet communist party that was defeated by the military in the 1950s, former University of the Philippines professor Jose Maria Sison set up on Dec. 26, 1968, the revitalized CPP with a Maoist-oriented ideology.

On March 29, 1969, the CPP founded the NPA in a village in Tarlac province. The first ragtag Maoist-inspired guerrillas were armed with automatic rifles, single-shot rifles and handguns.

The CPP urged the revolutionary forces to also wage “all forms of information, educational and propaganda activity to broadcast the call for waging people’s war. Let us rouse the people to support and join the NPA”.

“Let us show why the NPA is cherished by the masses as their true people’s army. Let us belie the ‘terrorist tagging’ of the US-Duterte regime and show who the real terrorists are,” it said.

The military trumpeted that the ranks of Red warriors have been wracked by mass surrenders of tired and disgruntled NPA rebels.

The government estimated that the NPA rebels across the country are now less than 5,000 armed combatants.

In an earlier interview, Sison claimed that the total number of armed NPA rebels “are far beyond 5,000 in more than 110 guerrilla fronts in 73 provinces, and are intact, alive and kicking.”