Now it’s the Left exposing the NPA’s terror!

In case you’ve already forgotten, today is the second anniversary of one of the horrors that this world has ever seen on live television... the Beslan school hostage crisis where armed Muslim terrorists took more than 1,200 school children and adults at School Number One (SNO) in the Russian town of Beslan in North Ossetia.

After a three-day standoff, shooting broke out between the hostage-takers and the Russian security forces, ending in the deaths of 344 civilians, 186 of whom were school children, and hundreds more wounded. Chechen Warlord Shamil Basayev (who was recently killed) took responsibility for this attack. This was to be the worst terror-related human catastrophe in the history of Russia.

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Now back to our homegrown terrorist group, the New People’s Army (NPA). Let me just say that I was a bit amused that finally, a famous leftist in the person of Rep. Etta Rosales came up with a privilege speech denouncing the NPAs for burning the truck of AlterTrade, an exporting company purportedly run by former NPA members.

This is what I’ve been harping about since I became a journalist 20 years ago... that the NPA is nothing but a bunch of bandits who are out to sow terror among our people in the guise of having a Maoist ideology. Thus, it is unfortunate that many left-leaning organizations are always sympathetic to the cause of the NPA... and practically everyone who claims to be a leftist.

Recently, we’ve written articles about the NPA’s war against Globe Telecom, whose 30 or more cell sites have been targeted for bombing, arson and what have you. Strangely, the cell sites of the other telecom carriers, which are just a stone’s throw away from the Globe Telecom cell sites, have been spared from the bombings... leading us to our dead reckoning, which is just a simple deduction... that since Globe Telecom refused to pay the NPA’s revolutionary taxes, then they waged their war against Globe to the tune of 30 plus cell sites destroyed! Now how come no one is asking questions as to why the other cell sites were spared?

Mind you, if you count the number of businesses that paid up against those that they burned... I’m sure that the NPA has kept a hefty sum to run their terror operations and buy enough food and ammunition to wage a war in the last three decades. It is for this very reason why I saluted Cebu Gov. Gwen Garcia for calling an all-out war against the NPAs in Cebu province, and that call also triggered no less than President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo (GMA) to issue the same call. Believe me, Cebu’s lady governor is the only governor I know who has the "balls" to make such a bold declaration!

Call it a coincidence that a friend of mine forwarded to me a text message just a couple of days ago... and let me reprint it: "Dis is Benjie A. Based on my actual field experience d CPP/NPA has evolved into d biggest national and international criminal syndicate using communist ideology n revolutionary struggle as a pretext 2 extort, rob, coerce people to amass funds n ader resources n expand influence/control. We must stop dis banditry!"

Last Wednesday, I wrote about my conversation with Presidential Chief of Staff Michael Defensor where I told him, "The real problem that bugs the Philippines is that we do not solve our problems." We wrote about our traffic problems and how to move forward so finally we could bring back sanity to our streets. That was just an example of how we do not fix our problems. The LTO and the LTFRB have been run in the past by so many people... as a reward to retiring police officers who could never hope to bring out new ideas for the better handling of our traffic problems and instill discipline in our streets.

I guess you can say the same thing about the Communist Party of the Philippines and the NPA, which have been around since time immemorial. I’m sure that Etta Rosales knows that many communist cadres have grown sick and tired of fighting in the hills; they want to have a normal life. But then how can they do that when the NPAs extort money from them?

In fact, if Etta Rosales is to be believed that the people running AlterTrade are former NPA members, then they should consider themselves the lucky ones for they were not murdered by the NPA for deserting their cause and turning into a life of capitalism, which is anathema to the communists. So it would be great if the nation unite against the CPP/NPA and finally get rid of this cancer eating up our society.

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Talking about the cancer of our society... there is no question that vigilantism is one of them. It exists because the present system of justice has practically failed. Since Ninoy Aquino’s assassination, we have yet to see speedy justice permeate the land. What we see are long arduous legal cases taking years to finish (just look at the case of Erap, which is far from over) that people often accept the killings of thugs and known felons (we call them in Cebuano... sagbot sa katilingban) or petty criminals even by vigilantes for as long as the innocent ones are not the victims. This poses a grave danger when society accepts what we call "extra-judicial" killings.

In Cebu, we, too, have our share of vigilante killings where 167 petty criminals have been mysteriously killed since 2004. People have always wondered, who is behind these killings? Is it an elected public official or is it the police? So far, investigations have reached a blank wall.

Enter Atty. Alex Tolentino, president of the Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP) Cebu City chapter, who claims to have the identities of the vigilantes and their mastermind. He says that his source is a civilian who is familiar with the vigilante operations... that there is even a financier behind the group and its training operations. If you ask me, this is the best news that we’ve heard since the guns of the vigilantes killed the 167 people.

However, there is a hitch... Atty. Tolentino admitted that his information couldn’t stand up in a court of law. Hence, we are literally back to square one on this case. If you ask me, Atty. Tolentino should have just kept his mouth shut if he can’t haul those killers to court. If his source is correct, he might just find himself a victim of these bloodthirsty killers. If he survives even just a week, then people will say that his source was not accurate at all.

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For e-mail responses to this article, write to [email protected]. Bobit Avila’s columns in The Freeman can also be accessed through The Philippine STAR website. He also hosts a weekly talkshow, "Straight from the Sky," shown every Monday, 8 p.m., only in Metro Cebu on Channel 15 of SkyCable. Bobit’s columns can also be accessed at www.shootinginsidecebu.blogspot.com.