Fil-Am group slams CPP-NPA’s recruitment, fundraising in US
By Marita Moaje / Philippine News Agency
MANILA – A group of Filipino Americans in New York on Sunday called on the Communist Party of the Philippines-New People’s Army (CPP-NPA) to stop its recruitment activities and the fund-raising activities in the United States.
The Filipino-Americans Against Crime and Terrorism (FACT) made this appeal after groups of young Filipino Americans held a rally outside the Philippine Consulate General in New York on June 11 during the 123rd Philippine Independence Day.
FACT said the protesters were composed of Bayan-USA, Anakbayan-USA, Migrante-USA, and Malaya Movement.
Aside from denouncing the Philippine government and seeking to overthrow President Rodrigo Duterte, the youth groups also demanded the US government to stop its military support for the Philippines.
During the rally, one of the speakers extolled the CPP-NPA, saying the communist terrorist group (CTG) and its members are the true heroes the Filipinos should honor.
“We in the Filipino-Americans Against Crime and Terrorism (FACT) are aghast by the audacity of these groups to praise the CPP-NPA. They did this in open defiance of the United States government, which is one of several countries that had designated the CPP-NPA as a terrorist organization,” FACT statement read.
FACT said the US Department of State listed the CPP-NPA as a foreign terrorist organization in August 2002 due to its involvement in countless atrocities not only against the military but on innocent civilians, including women and children.
It said that despite the repeated denials of Bayan-USA, Anakbayan-USA, and other organizations of their links with the CPP-NPA, the youth groups’ actions outside the Philippine Consulate reflect otherwise.
The protesters’ actions also confirmed what the FACT members have been saying all along that the CPP-NPA cadres are actively operating in the US.
“These CPP-NPA cadres are right here in our midst. They are actively recruiting members and sympathizers from the Filipino-American Community and raising funds to support their goal of overthrowing the Philippine government through their so-called armed struggle. In case the Filipino-American Community is not aware, the ultimate objective of the CPP-NPA is to install a communist dictatorship in the Philippines,” the group said.
FACT said the US-based members of Bayan, Anakbayan, and Migrante have been trying to convince the Filipino Americans to support them through deception.
“These CPP-NPA cadres conveniently omit the fact that communist terrorists in the Philippines have been involved in some of the worst atrocities committed against the Filipino people in the past five decades,” the group said.
CPP-NPA atrocities
The Fil-Am group said the CPP-NPA committed 1,506 atrocities against civilians and police and military personnel from 2010 to 2020, according to the Center for Law of Armed Conflict of the Armed Forces of the Philippines.
This included the killing of 77 soldiers and 296 civilians as well as 532 incidents that resulted in damage to civilian property.
In June 2021, NPA members killed Kieth Absalon, a 21-year-old college football varsity player of the Far Eastern University, and his 40-year-old cousin in an ambush in Masbate by detonating an anti-personnel mine that is already banned.
The United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs stated that “anti-personnel landmines are prohibited under the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on Their Destruction (or Mine Ban Convention), adopted in 1997”.
The UN said more than 150 countries have joined the said treaty.
From 2010 to 2020, a total of 141 incidents that involved the use by CPP-NPA terrorists of banned anti-personnel mines against government troops and civilians were recorded.
The above atrocities still did not include the massacre initiated by CPP-NPA terrorists of 39 people—22 children, 10 women, and seven men, that belongs to the Bagobo-Tagabawa tribe while they were worshiping inside a chapel in Digos City on June 29, 1989, and the murder of several Americans in the Philippines, that include bemedaled Vietnam War veteran Col. James Rowe who was ambushed and killed by the CPP-NPA in Manila on April 21, 1989.
Disassociate your groups from CPP-NPA
FACT said if indeed Bayan-USA, Anakbayan-USA, Migrante-USA, and the Malaya Movement do not have links with the CPP-NPA as they claim, and if it is true that they are human rights defenders, they should disassociate themselves from the terrorist group.
It also urged the youth groups to denounce CPP founder Jose Ma. Sison and the atrocities the NPA terrorists have committed against the Filipino people.
“If they will not, we will be compelled to take non-violent courses of action to protect ourselves and our families here in the United States and back home from the threat posed by CPP-NPA-NDF terrorists to the Philippines and the Filipino people,” the FACT said.
The United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the Philippines also listed the CPP-NPA as a terrorist organization. (NPA)