A letter of warning to parents

I got this open letter sent to me by the 3rd Civil Relations Group, which is self-explanatory. I only reprinted it now as I was out in Baguio for most of last week. I feel this letter should be of interest to many parents out there who do not know the activities of their children.

“An Open Letter to Bobit Avila: Student’s NPA Exposure This Summer

The Armed Forces of the Philippines has pursued with its advocacy in educating our people with the deceptive tactics of the Communist Party of the Philippines, which has been a threat to our internal security for 40 years now. Because of the communist deception, a lot of our countrymen, women, farers, workers, fishermen and especially from the youth and student sector had lost their precious lives.

Just recently, Central Command has received intelligence reports that students legally recruited in the colleges and universities will be brought into the countryside for exposure with the armed group New People’s Army this month of May. It is in this regard that we are warning parents to be watchful on the whereabouts of their children especially this summertime. The parents should check the activities of their children as to where they will go this summertime to save them from the danger in the countryside. “We can never regain back the lives of the students once these are lost.”

CPP/NPA/NDF organizers will disguise the activity as an ordinary outing if the student is not yet aware on the armed struggle, but mostly students who go on exposure is really aware of it. This has been the trend of the CPP/NPA/NDF that occasionally student activists visit rebel camps for exposure trips as a requirement once they will be part of the underground movement until such time that they will become a fulltime party member.

Centcom is still monitoring the bulk of students from Cebu who will be among the contingents to be brought to the countryside for an exposure trip with the NPA. The latest victim because of NPA exposure is Rachelle Mae Palang, a student from Velez College and the President of the College Editors Guild of the Philippines (CEGP) who died in a military encounter in Negros Oriental. Palang was in an exposure trip also but was encountered by members of the 79th Infantry Battalion in Negros Oriental.

Some of the students who died in Cebu are Marvin Marquez of Southwestern University, Jerry Badayos of the University of San Jose-Recoletos and Guillermo Alburo of the University of the Visayas.

Signed LTC Oscar S. Lasangue PAF Group Commander, 3rd Civil Relations Group. AFP, Centcom”

I’m glad that Col. Lasangue mentioned the name of Marvin Marquez because this fellow became a student activist and was lured by the “romance” in the fight for the cause of the poor and the oppressed that the CPP/NPA/NDF sells to the poor and innocent youth, who do not realize that their struggle has already gone for 40 years where they never achieved the strategic stalemate that they have long dreamed of. Worse, this struggle is being waged by remote control by Jose Maria “Joma” Sison in the safety of Utrecht, Netherlands. His minions fight for someone who does not want to hide in the hills of his own country.

I remember when Marvin Marquez was killed more than 10 years ago in an encounter with the NPA in Mabini, Bohol (the NPA no longer has a presence there). I won’t forget that the allied front organizations of the CPP like Bayan or Gabriela cried out that a grave injustice has been done to a poor and innocent student leader. Even the mainstream media cried injustice in chorus with the underground!

But a few days later, to the grave embarrassment of their allied front organizations and some people in the media, no less than the official spokesman of the NDF openly admitted and declared that Marvin Marquez had joined the NPA! I was probably the only columnist who wrote that Marvin Marquez (whom I had inside info was already with the underground) wasn’t an innocent victim of a crossfire between the NPA and the military. He was armed and he was trying to prove his worth in trying to kill a soldier.

I guess Rachelle Mae Palang didn’t know that she too was lured into joining the NPA. If only they had known the story of Marvin Marquez, they would never have joined the NPA especially here in Central Visayas where their numbers are dwindling; worse, they have resorted to banditry and extortion.

Let this open letter be a warning to parents, who dream that someday their sons and daughters would become something. No one dreams of their children to be freedom fighters, especially the kind that the CPP/NPA/NDF has been waging in the last 40 years because they simply cannot win against the might of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP).