Last week during the Senate joint hearing presided by Senator Ronald Bato dela Rosa, chairman of the Senate committee on public order and dangerous drugs, and Senate committee on national defense and security at the Senate, it was heart wrenching to hear mothers on our television screens attending the Senate hearings in their most emotional state admitting before the Senators that their children mostly senior high school and college students, went missing and were believed to be recruited by leftist groups identified as Anakbayan.
We heard Mrs. Jovita Antonio tell the hearing about her 17-year-old daughter who grew up obedient and cheerful, but things changed since she joined a leftist organization. She declared “Wala na akong alam kung nasaan ang anak ko, isang taon na syang hindi umuuwi at hindi namin nakakausap (I have no idea where my child is, it’s been a year since she went home and a year since our last contact).” We also heard Mrs. Relissa Lucena become emotional while talking about her missing daughter.
Finally after decades of knowing what these Left-leaning organizations have been doing to aid the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) while recruiting members for the New People’s Army (NPA), finally netizens have realized that these organizations have only broken precious family ties that bond Filipino families together. I’m glad that finally the Senate came up with that hearing where we learned that the mothers of five missing students recounting their ordeal when their children became estranged and lost contact with them.
Three of the missing were senior high school students of state-run Polytechnic University of the Philippines (PUP), while one was a student of Far Eastern University (FEU) and another from the University of the East (UE) Manila. We all saw on our Facebook page the photographs of those missing students. I’m surprised that the University of the Philippines (UP) was not mentioned this time when many years ago… most of those that joined the leftist groups came from UP.
At this point, we also learned from Philippine National Police (PNP) chief Gen. Oscar Albayalde who after that Senate hearing, dared Anakbayan to answer the allegations of the parents of five students who went missing after they were recruited into the militant group. Albayalde said that Anakbayan should face the worried parents of the students and tell them about their fate.
Mind you, it has been 51 years since the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) was founded on Dec. 26, 1968 and that’s a long time ago. Mind you, Martial Law was declared by then Pres. Ferdinand E. Marcos to fight the New People’s Army (NPA) and in the end, it was good for people like CPP Chairman Jose Maria “Joma” Sison to have people hate the Marcoses for declaring Martial Law in this country. Thankfully, the Military arrested Joma Sison in November 1977 where he was imprisoned for nine years, unfortunately he was released after Pres. Cory Aquino took over the Presidency after the EDSA Revolt overthrew the Marcos dictatorship.
But what many of us who belong to many anti-communist groups (in Cebu we had the People’s Alliance Against Communism (PAAC) led by then Cerge Remonde) were surprised when Tita Cory Aquino released Joma without any official reason why she did so, despite the fact that Sison was charged with serious criminal offenses. Thus it only strengthened many conspiracy theories that indeed, the Aquino politics benefited from their connection with the CPP/NPA/NDF. Today, Joma Sison lives in a luxurious exile in Utrecht, Netherlands. Call it a self-imposed exile.
At this point, it is high time for us to expose the members of Anakbayan, and those whom they had brainwashed to believe in that fallacy that Communism works because it has failed in the Soviet Union where it originated. Perhaps it is time for research groups to get the total number of Filipinos missing or killed because they joined the CPP/NPA/NDF. How many mass graves did we find in Inopacan, Leyte and many in Samar? We know too well that whenever the NPAs “purge” their own ranks, they kill even their own members and bury them in mass graves.
Today we have killings in Negros Oriental because of the NPA and it is high time for students to be aware that after 51 years, the CPP has not achieved anything for the nation except killing those people who disagree with them. At this point, the release of retired Army Major General Jovito Palparan who lost his case simply because the Communists have a better propaganda machinery than the military where they called Gen. Palparan a “Butcher” when he is in fact a great anti-communist fighter!
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