NPA to heighten attacks to celebrate 50th founding anniversary

From the Philippine Daily Inquirer (Mar 3, 2019): NPA to heighten attacks to celebrate 50th founding anniversary
The communist New People’s Army (NPA) vowed to intensify attacks against government forces to celebrate its 50th founding anniversary this month, the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) said Sunday.

“We are celebrating the NPA’s 50th anniversary as its units carry out tactical offensives across the country to punish the worst of the Duterte regime’s fascist agents and defend the people’s rights, advance their struggle for land reform and build the people’s organizations and organs of political power,” the CPP information bureau said in a public advisory to its cadres, Red-fighters and revolutionary forces, a copy of which was forwarded to the Inquirer.

After an ideological split with a 1930s era pro-Soviet communist party that was defeated by the military in the 1950s, former University of the Philippines professor Jose Maria Sison set up on Dec. 26, 1968, the revitalized CPP with a Maoist-oriented ideology.

On March 29, 1969, the CPP founded the NPA in a village in Tarlac province. The first ragtag Maoist-inspired guerrillas were armed with automatic rifles, single-shot rifles and handguns.
The CPP urged the revolutionary forces to also wage “all forms of information, educational and propaganda activity to broadcast the call for waging people’s war. Let us rouse the people to support and join the NPA”.

“Let us show why the NPA is cherished by the masses as their true people’s army. Let us belie the ‘terrorist tagging’ of the US-Duterte regime and show who the real terrorists are,” it said.

The military trumpeted that the ranks of Red warriors have been wracked by mass surrenders of tired and disgruntled NPA rebels.

The government estimated that the NPA rebels across the country are now less than 5,000 armed combatants.

In an earlier interview, Sison claimed that the total number of armed NPA rebels “are far beyond 5,000 in more than 110 guerrilla fronts in 73 provinces, and are intact, alive and kicking.”

https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1091544/npa-to-heighten-attacks-to-celebrate-50th-founding-anniversary