AFP focuses on students in anti-insurgency drive

CEBU - In its drive to minimize or totally scrap insurgency in the region, the Civil Relations Service of the Armed Forces of the Philippines in the Visayas region has strengthens its insurgency awareness drive especially among the students.

The AFP’s main target as of the moment is the students whom the agency exposes to seminars and fora discussing how the National Democratic Front tries to infiltrate campuses to entice students to join rebellion.

Lt. Col. Oscar Lasangue, head of the CRS of the Central Command, said that the students are just one of their target subjects that they are trying to protect.

Like the labor sector, farmers’ group, and fisherfolks’ organization, he said the studentry is a major group in the society, which, if lured to rebellion, could create trouble.

Lasangue said that NDF strategically tries to use the students because they are idealistic and want the country to move forward. With the fire of desire for change in the country, he added they can easily be mobilized to paralyze the streets and the whole industry.

In seminars and fora, Lasangue said the CRS presents the methods of NDF to brain wash the students, like the use of hot issues concerning them and complicate these issues to encourage students to revolt. One of these common issues is the hike in tuition fees.

Lasangue said CRS believes that education is their number one weapon to protect these students from the front organizations of NDF who are trying to infiltrate the campuses. “Kung mai-educate kasi sila, di sila maloloko,” Lasangue said.

“We just want to save them. These front organizations of NDF first change their views of things and make them more radical. They also do immersions which are often kept to their parents. Parents don’t know na nadoon na pala sa bundok and anak nila. Malalaman na lang nila, kapag patay na dahil napasama sa engkwentro,” Lasangue said.

The military official told students that there is nothing wrong with being radical and nobody seizes those who shout in the streets that they are communists or they oppose the government.

“It’s okay to believe but do not take arms,” Lasangue said, adding they are trying to avoid students’ participation in the New People’s Army. People should not be deceived by the NDF whose main goal is to paralyze the economy of the country so they could create a revolting mass to overthrow the government for themselves, he explained.

“Kapag na-paralyze ang ekonomiya, magugutom ang mga tao. Mas madali silang kumbinsihin to revolt because we get more angry when we are hungry,” Lasangue said.

Lasangue said they just present the strategies of the NDF and the evaluation is left to the people to decide. However he said students in Cebu are intelligently radical that’s why they are not easily deceived.

“Okay lang mag-rally just make sure you are not destroying yourself by having bad grades for being absent in class,” he said.

But he said that insurgency in Cebu is very minimal that is why “Cebu is going to grow and grow.”  — Jessica Ann R. Pareja/WAB      (THE FREEMAN)