Speaking before members of the US-Philippines Society headed by its Executive Director Hank Hendrickson and President, Ambassador John Maisto, PCOO Undersecretary Lorraine Badoy said the communist terrorist group has wounded the Filipinos’ psyche by teaching the language of hate and mistrust against even the most sincere and hardworking public servants.
“And they do this because in agitating us, in keeping the poor stuck in poverty, and by obstructing progress are where they stand to gain the most," Badoy said in a forum at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC.
She said the extensive organizational structure of the CPP-NPA and the National Democratic Front (NDF) has infiltrated all sectors of Philippine society such as women, youth, farmers, media, church, indigenous peoples (IPs), and even the United Nations system.
“And that now spans continents and is in 39 countries including North America via its legal fronts, which have used the poorest among Filipinos and their indigenous brothers and sisters as their milking cow, asking for funds from unwitting international organizations and governments which are fed patent lies about the country to get those funds,” she added.
Badoy, who is PCOO Undersecretary for New Media and External Affairs, lamented how these donations are used to fund terrorism and poverty in the country.
She added that communists use alternative schools to turn IP children into child warriors so that they become killing machines when they reach 10 years old or even younger.
“They have destroyed the culture of the IPs by stealing cultural concepts and terms and making it mean what they want it to mean to further their violent agenda,” she said told the audience consisting of officials of United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and US State Department, and PhD students of Cornell University and Georgetown University.
What is also appalling, Badoy said, is that the group that has been declared a terrorist by the USA has reached their shores through the CPP-NPA’s legal fronts.
“The ones responsible for spreading outright falsehoods and made up data about the Duterte Administration like the 30,000 EJKs -- a number they pulled out of thin air,” she said.
CPP-NPA as US-listed terror group
It can be recalled that then US Secretary of State Colin Powell announced in August 2002 the designation of the CPP-NPA as a foreign terrorist organization, as defined under US law, after an "exhaustive review of this group’s violent activities."
The terrorist designation makes it illegal for US citizens to provide support to the CPP-NPA, which maintains ties with leftist groups in western countries. It also requires financial institutions to block assets and makes representatives of the CPP inadmissible to the United States or subject to deportation.
"Take action as we have to isolate the terrorist organizations, to choke off their sources of financial support and to prevent their movement access international borders," Powel statement said.
He added that the CPP-NPA has killed, injured or kidnapped numerous Philippine citizens, including government officials.
The CPP-NPA is also listed as a terrorist organization by the European Union, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the Philippines.
When asked about left-leaning groups’ losses in the recent mid-term elections, Badoy made the significant attribution to the whole-of-nation approach of Executive Order 70 signed by President Rodrigo Duterte on Dec. 4, 2018 to end insurgency by prioritizing and harmonizing “the delivery of basic services and social development packages in conflict-affected areas and vulnerable communities”.
“For the first time, the government is taking its full force to end the 50-year-old communist terrorism through EO 70 which institutionalizes a whole-of-nation approach in attaining inclusive and sustainable peace, and created the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict,” she added.
https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1073312
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