NPA training child soldiers - Army

CAMP AQUINO, Tarlac – Instead of studying or exploring the intricacies of Filipino courtship or simply having fun with friends, the children of communists in Northern Luzon are being trained as snipers or makers of land mines, the military Northern Luzon Command (Nolcom) said yesterday.

Nolcom chief Maj. Gen. Rodolfo Garcia said the military gathered this information from Patrick Villabrille, 6, and Jonar Edian, 17, both of Zambales, who were captured after the Army’s 24th Infantry Battalion clashed with a squad of the communist Rebolusyonaryong Hukbong Bayan (RHB) in Masinloc, Zambales.

Garcia said Villabrille, who is supposedly epileptic, admitted that he was with his "armed" parents when the firefight broke out, resulting in the death of RHB squad leader Ruperto Buensuceso, 48, of Hermosa, Bataan and the seizure of an M-16 rifle, a carbine, hand grenade, a sack of rice and voluminous subversive documents.

"This development substantiates earlier reports that communist rebels have no qualms in using minors during tactical offensives to the point of endangering the lives of these unsuspecting children," Garcia said.

The RHB is the armed wing of the Pampanga-based Marxist-Leninist Party of the Philippines (MLPP), a splinter group of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP).

Garcia said the CPP’s New People’s Army (NPA) has also been using youth in making land mines which the military found in three communist camps in Isabela province recently.

"These land mines are battery operated and are powerful enough to blast off a six-by-six truck from the ground," Garcia said.

In Camp Olivas, Pampanga, Col. Juvenal Narcise, commander of the 702nd Army Brigade, said the NPA has also been training young recruits, mostly high school students, as snipers.

Narcise said one of these snipers, who are being trained in the use of M-14 and Garand rifles, killed an Army lieutenant in Bongabon, Nueva Ecija last week.

Garcia said that the Armed Forces does not use land mines in its operations against dissidents in accordance with a United Nations protocol against the use of land mines.

Garcia said there are about 1,700 NPA rebels who operate in Northern Luzon. About 1,100 of them are based in Central Luzon while the rest are in the northern provinces. — With Artemio Dumlao