This week the spokesperson for Haran surrendered and laid bare the NPA's links to the IP community.
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| https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1169859 |
A communist rebel who was once the face of the controversial UCCP-Haran "bakwit" (evacuee) saga in this city has surrendered to the government.
Jong Monzon, former secretary-general of the "Pasakaday Salugpongan Kalimodan" (PASAKA), confirmed suspicions that the Communist Party of the Philippines-New People's Army (CPP-NPA) was behind the ploy to use the Indigenous Peoples (IPs) in a public campaign to demonize the military.
Several military officials have accused the rebels of exploiting tribe members to pressure government troops in abandoning hinterland areas under the influence of the CPP-NPA.
In a virtual press conference organized by the Army's 701st Brigade (701Bde) Tuesday afternoon, Monzon--whose real name is Cristoni "Jun" Latiban Monzon--said the Haran evacuees were also "exploited" by the CPP-NPA to gain financing for their anti-government activities.
"I think the media can still remember my name: I was assigned in UCCP-Haran (in Davao City) where the IPs were gathered to pose as evacuees (bakwits in local dialect). We were there, as mandated by the leaders of the CPP-NPA, to act as their best defense. We were told to cry for human rights violation," Monzon, 29, said.
"The role of IPs in the CPP is to pose as their "proof" that there is indeed harassment against them by military troops. In truth, this is only being used...to show to the potential sponsors or partners. The CPP profits a lot by asking support from the international community, universities, and hospitals here," Monzon alleged.
It's rather interesting that Monzon did not say who exactly is sending money to the CPP. If he knows its being done then he should know who some of these donors are. Of course it could be that he did name them but the reporter censored it.
One ex-NPA leader says his surrender will cause a domino effect spelling the end of the NPA in Mindanao.
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| https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1170313 |
With the surrender of the face of the controversial UCCP-Haran "bakwit" (evacuee) group recently, a former rebel leader said the New People’s Army’s (NPA) "urban parliamentary struggle" is heading for collapse.In an interview, Ariane Jane Ramos, former secretary of the NPA Guerrilla Front (GF) 55, Sub-Regional Committee 5 (SRC)-Southern Mindanao Regional Command (SMRC), said the surrender of Jong Monzon has caused a massive blow to the “bakwit” school.Monzon is the former secretary-general of the "Pasakaday Salugpongan Kalimodan" (PASAKA), the Indigenous People's group behind the "bakwit" controversy that the military said was a front for the Communist Party of the Philippines-NPA (CPP-NPA).“The Haran will now protect its legality. As we all know, Jong is the legal face of Haran. However, they are now exposed, and they are now left with two options: to surrender or become members of the NPA,” she told the Philippine News Agency Monday night.Ramos said the collapse of the Haran group would create a domino effect on the entire SMRC.“The stronghold of SMRC in the entire region is Haran. With what happens, they will find it hard to recruit and organize as other organizations are also affected,” she said.The NPA’s urban parliamentary struggle, Ramos, is primarily conducted through protests and rallies involving members of the rebel group's unarmed legal fronts.
These legal fronts are likely what Monzon meant by the CPP soliciting money from the international community and universities. Despite the AFP's assertion that these groups are fronts for the CPP they remain legal while the CPP is listed as a terrorist group. If these groups operated the way as claimed why have they been allowed to exist for so long? Rather than shutting them down all the government can do is red-tag them. A former rebel claims the charge of red-tagging is just a cover by the communists to protect their legal fronts.
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| https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1170297 |
A former rebel has revealed that "red tagging" is a term concocted and being used by the Communist Party of the Philippines-New People's Army-National Democratic Front (CPP-NPA-NDF) to protect their so-called "legal fronts" such as Party-list groups Kabataan, Anak Bayan, Bayan Muna, Gabriela, Karapatan and ACT-Teachers from culpability.
“Red tagging is a word used by the communist group to cover and protect its legal fronts which the Commission on Election has unwittingly accredited via the party-list system. We can see them in Congress," Cristoni “Jong” Latiban Monzon alias Ka-Franco said during Monday’s virtual press briefing of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC).
Monzon, who had just recently surrendered to government forces along with two other rebels, served as a former political instructor of the CPP-NPA-NDF’s Regional Operations Command, Southern Mindanao Regional Committee.
He confirmed that Kabataan, Anakbayan, Bayan Muna, Gabriela, Karapatan and ACT-Teachers are part and parcel of the CPP-NPA-NDF, and cautioned students and other young voters not to be swayed by the deceitful propaganda of the communist movement's so-called legal fronts.
This guy is being completely disingenuous. If only those alleged fronts were labeled as such by the AFP then he might have a point. But the fact is many people and groups are maliciously red-tagged by the PNP and AFP who later on have to issue an apology. This week two bookstores were vandalized and red-tagged.
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| https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1572750/__trashed-105 |
Solidaridad Bookshop in Manila was vandalized on Tuesday, the same day that the Quezon City-based Popular Bookstore’s metal gate and signage were sprayed with red graffiti.
According to Solidaridad employee Cesar Quinagan, he and his coworkers discovered the signboard sprayed with red paint as they were preparing to open the store around 7 a.m.
“There were no words written,” he told the Inquirer. In the case of Popular Bookstore, the words “NPA Terorista” were spray-painted, referring to the New People’s Army, the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP).
Groups expressed alarm on Wednesday over the vandalism of the two bookstores, with progressive faculty and academic staff at the University of the Philippines saying it was “no doubt another attack on academic freedom and critical thinking.”
“The hostile environment against learning appears to be the handiwork of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-Elcac), the same state entity that instigated the pullout of progressive books in some libraries since 2021,” the Congress of Teachers/Educators for Nationalism and Democracy said in a statement.
The management of Popular Bookstore, founded by Joaquin Po in 1945 and carrying works by authors from both the Left and the Right, said the NTF-Elcac and its allied groups might have been behind the vandalism.
Asked to comment, NTF-Elcac spokesperson Lorraine Badoy expressed ignorance of Popular Bookstore’s existence, saying: “I don’t even know [it].”
She added: “I will not dignify this obvious CPP-NPA-NDF (National Democratic Front of the Philippines) hogwash with an intelligent response.”
Last Oct. 21, Demetrio Anduyan Jr., director of the Commission on Higher Education (CHEd) in the Cordillera, issued Regional Memorandum No. 113 calling on colleges and universities to take part in the “regionwide removal of subversive materials both in libraries and online platforms.”
These materials were described as “literatures, references, publications, resources and items that contain pervasive ideologies of the communist-terrorist groups.”
Anduyan said the CHEd was supportive of the Duterte administration’s “whole of nation” approach in establishing the NTF-Elcac.
The NTF-ELCAC may not be behind the vandalizing of these bookstores but Lorraine Badoy's comment is quite telling. Is she insisting that the Reds vandalized these bookstores to make the NTF-ELCAC look bad? They already look bad by their constant red-tagging. Of course Badoy claims there is no such thing as red-tagging.
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| https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1170503 |
No one is “red-tagging,” National Task Force to end Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) spokesperson for sectoral concerns and Presidential Communications Undersecretary Lorraine Badoy said on Wednesday.
In a statement, Badoy said “the term red-tagging is just a tool” of front organizations of the Communist Party of the Philippines-New People’s Army-National Democratic Front (CPP-NPA-NDF), to silence those who speak against them “to blow their cover.”
“There is no such thing as ‘red-tagging’. No less than the Supreme Court has ruled that there is no danger to life, liberty, and security when one is identified as a member of the CPP-NPA-NDF,” Badoy said.
She noted the NTF-ELCAC is standing firm in its duty of telling the truth to the Filipino people.
“The time for silencing us is long past. It is now time for the CPP-NPA-NDF to shut up,” she added
It's incredible how much of a liar Lorraine Badoy is. Did she take an oath to lie every time she speaks? The fact is she and the NTF-ELCAC have repeatedly red-tagged groups and individuals placing them in harms way.
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| https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1573277/badoy-says-red-tagging-not-dangerous-but-427-slain-activists-show-otherwise |
While Lorraine Badoy said that red-tagging is not dangerous, at least 427 activists—slain after they were red-tagged—could show otherwise, according to the human rights group Karapatan, which itself had been red-tagged.
The “Danger in Dissent: Counterterrorism and Human Rights in the Philippines” report by the International Commission of Jurists stressed that red-tagging often has deadly consequences, saying that there were people who were killed after they were red-tagged.
This, however, did not stop Badoy, one of the spokespersons of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-Elcac) from saying that Vice President Leni Robredo is conspiring with communist rebels.
Last March 14, Badoy said that since Joma Sison, the founder of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), endorsed Robredo on Twitter, it was proof “that this marriage made in the bowels of hell has been consummated.”
Even without evidence, Badoy said that the Makabayan bloc’s endorsement of Robredo was an endorsement of the Central Committee of the CPP, New People’s Army (NPA) and the National Democratic Front (NDF).
Robredo and the CPP dismissed Badoy’s “new low”. The Vice President, who is running for president, said no coalition government is being contemplated while the CPP said it has not made any agreement with anyone.
The trail of those left in the wake of being red-tagged is very long and includes even a young lady who set up a community pantry. Lorraine Badoy is also wrong about the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court has never issued any ruling saying red-tagging does not endanger a person or that red-tagging does not exist.
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| https://verafiles.org/articles/vera-files-fact-check-badoy-wrong-ph-courts-did-not-say-red |
Although the CA decision, penned by Associate Justice Mario Lopez, indeed said there is lack of “substantial evidence to establish the petitioners’ allegations” against the government’s violation and threat to their rights to life, liberty, security, and privacy, among others, nowhere in the ruling does it assert there is no red-tagging.National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers (NUPL) Secretary General Edre Olalia, in an April 7 Facebook (FB) post, said Badoy was taking the decision out of context. He said:“She got it all wrong and mixed up. SC never said that. CA ruling was pro hac vice and is in fact pending review by the SC … If she was a lawyer, she would have been disciplined for wrong attribution and erroneous citation for cherry picking out of context.”
The Mayor of Baguio was maliciously red-tagged because he ordered the take down of anti-terrorism posters.
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| https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1567759/baguio-mayor-bans-red-tagging-posters-tarps |
Mayor Benjamin Magalong has directed the police in Baguio City to take down any tarpaulin or poster that imply or explicitly tie local activists to the communist movement and its military arm, the New People’s Army.
Magalong, who chairs the Cordillera Regional Peace and Order Council, gave this order to Col. Glenn Lonogan, the city’s police director, on Saturday during a dialogue with activists, including students, who said they felt unsafe in the city after they were harassed online because they were falsely linked to communist rebels.
Members of the Cordillera People’s Alliance (CPA) and its affiliate organizations met Magalong, after these groups were declared persona non grata by two Baguio villages and labeled as “communist front organizations” in several other towns and provinces in the Cordillera.
Magalong said he would also ask for a review of how the Cordillera’s anti-insurgency program had been executed.
He acknowledged the “evil” that red-tagging does to the psyche of young people, adding it robbed “people of their dignity, especially if [these actions] are designed to destroy the reputation of people.”
“If you don’t feel safe in Baguio, that means I have problems as the chief executive,” Magalong told the group
Louise Montenegro, a student of the University of the Philippines Baguio, said she had been “humiliated” and threatened with rape or physical assault online because of social media posts identifying her as a “communist terrorist” that could have been generated or shared by the police and some government agencies.
Montenegro was among the students who petitioned a local court for a writ of amparo in March 2021, which required the police to track and shut down 24 Facebook accounts responsible for a smear campaign targeting the youths, said their counsel, human rights lawyer Francesca Macli-ing Claver.
Six of these accounts turned out to have emerged from official social media pages of police offices in the Cordillera, which were eventually taken down, she said.
“We are not communists [and] we are not rebel combatants,” said Jeoff Larua, secretary general of Tongtongan ti Umili, but were labeled as such even by the police, endangering their lives and their families.
If the PNP or AFP have any evidence that a group or person is a terrorist then the right course of action is to take them down and arrest them. Hanging up posters or sharing Facebook posts condemning them will not solve the problem.
Funnily enough Senator Lacson, who baselessly claimed that Leni Robredo had formed an alliance with the CPP-NPA, says it's unfair to accuse Mayor Magalong of protecting terrorists.
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| https://www.philstar.com/nation/2022/03/23/2169347/lacson-unfair-accuse-baguios-magalong-protecting-communist-rebels |
"It is very unfair to accuse Mayor Magalong of protecting the CPP/NPA/NDF (Communist Party of the Philippines-New People's Army-National Democratic Front)," Lacson told Philstar.com in an online exchange on Wednesday.
"He risked his life so many times when he was still an AFP (Armed Forces of the Philippines) and PNP (Philippine National Police) officer fighting the communist rebels and urban insurgents and the worst that anyone can do is to accuse him of protecting them," Lacson, a former chief of the PNP, said.
The hypocrisy of Lacson knows no bounds. He was willing to red-tag Robredo based on unsubstantiated claims but is not willing to do the same with this guy. Why? Because Lacson is just another politically motivated hack.
The NTF-ELCAC has not stayed silent about this matter. They have publicly condemned the Mayor and linked him with the Reds.
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| https://www.ntfelcac.org/post/on-mayor-benjie-magalong-s-directives-that-give-cover-to-the-cpp-npa-ndf-front-kabataan-partylist |
Mayor Magalong’s recent directive to the police force of Baguio to forbid the posting of tarpaulins that speak the truth about KABATAAN- that it is a front of the CPP NPA NDF is in direct violation of our President’s directive and when posted in private property is a violation of the freedom of expression.
And so are his orders for them to take down these tarpaulins that educate our children about these deceitful partylist that asks our trust in the coming elections while at the same time lying to us about who it is they truly are.
Magalong also uses the term, redtagging, a weapon he fully knows is used by the CPP NPA NDF to silence anyone who speaks the truth about their deceitful fronts and that our courts including the Supreme Court have already clearly ruled: “there is no danger to life, liberty and security when one is identified as a member of the CPP NPA NDF”.
Mayor Magalong claims he is doing all that because he cares for our children- while at the same time lending his powerful protection to the terrorist CPP NPA NDF front, KABATAAN Partylist- the top recruiter of our children into the criminal NPA for which an UNBEARABLE number of them have died while fighting government troops and an even more UNBEARABLE number of them now lie in shallow unmarked graves across the country, lost to the mothers and fathers who, doubtless, searched the ends of the earth for them.
The tragedy to all these is Mayor Magalong is fully cognizant of all these.
The only silver lining to this betrayal by Mayor Magalong of not just the people of Baguio but the Republic of the Philippines is that he has made it exceedingly clear to our people why this communist terrorist scourge has lasted as long as it has: it’s not just because of the tenacious deceit of the terrorist CPP NPA NDF but also because of politicians like Mayor Magalong who participate in the deceit and who would put our children in harm’s way and who think nothing of continuing the grief, the bloodbath and the destruction of our country for their own selfish political gains.
Clearly Mayor Benjie Magalong is no Mayor Digong Duterte whose love for country can never be questioned and whose courage to defend and protect us from these terrorists is legendary and unparalleled.
The author of this statement is Lorraine Badoy who is the red-tagging queen and is being sued for being such. Is she so stupid and unaware that Duterte, while Mayor of Davao gave his full support to the CPP-NPA? He told people to pay the NPA taxes, he personally gave them millions of pesos, he welcomed them and agreed with their cause (though not their methods), and he publicly thanked them for voting him into office.
I would disagree whole heartedly with Badoy's assessment of why the Communist Revolution has lasted for 53 years. A lot of the blame must be assigned to the bungling AFP. I have written extensively about the insurgency and the fact that the AFP have no idea what they are doing. They have declared areas insurgency free only for them to flare back up again! When Duterte leaves office if the NPA gains strength people will blame the President. Even more so if the winner is not Marcos. But the cold hard fact is the AFP will be to blame.
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