Opinion: When children are forced to join the NPA

Opinion piece in the Manila Times (Jul 12, 2021): When children are forced to join the NPA (By Marit Stinus-Cabugon)

NATIONAL democratic organization Karapatan is calling for the compassionate release from jail of 66-year-old "political prisoner" Antonio Molina who has been detained at the Puerto Princesa City Jail since late 2019. Molina, identified by authorities as New People's Army (NPA) leader Domingo "Ka Tino" Ritas, has been diagnosed with cancer in addition to numerous other existing ailments. The court recently granted his request for a five-day medical confinement.

Molina and six companions were arrested at a checkpoint in Puerto Princesa on Oct. 4, 2019. At the time of the arrest, Karapatan referred to all seven as "human rights workers" or "volunteers" without disclosing their identities except for one: Glendhyl Malabanan. She was, prior to her arrest, known as the former Karapatan Southern Tagalog secretary general. But we have seen the video of a uniform-clad Malabanan participating in a firearms drill in an NPA camp in Palawan in 2016. Four of the others arrested, including Molina/Ritas, are seen in other video clips from NPA camps. Among the seven arrested "human rights workers" was the wife of Alimar Toting, the NPA Palawan commander who surrendered a month later.

Karapatan insists that Molina, a member of the Katipunan ng Samahang Magbubukid-Timog Katagalugan (Kasama-TK), is not Ritas who is charged with murder. Of course, there have been too many cases of mistaken identity where innocent people have suffered. Molina is unlikely to be one of them. Shin, 19 years old when she presented herself to the military in November 2019 after having appeared as No. 14 wanted NPA personality in Palawan, used to take care of Molina. She was only 14 years old when she became an NPA member on probation as a personal aide to Molina or Ka Tino as he is called by his comrades. Shin told Palawan News in a November 2019 interview that one of her tasks was to remind Tino to take his medicines as he was already then suffering from many ailments.




Shin also had something to say about Glendhyl Malabanan or Ate Glen as she referred to the Karapatan official. It was Malabanan who took Shin, her mother and two brothers from Luzon to Palawan in 2008 where they would live under assumed identities. Two older sisters, a brother and a stepbrother were left behind in Luzon (the family is from General Nakar, Quezon province). Shin's late father was chairman of Kasama-TK, the same organization that Karapatan says Molina belonged to, until his death in April 2003. The father and Karapatan Southern Tagalog Secretary General Eden Marcellana were abducted and brutally murdered in Oriental Mindoro in April 2003. While the Palawan News article doesn't mention the name, Shin's father could be no other than Eddie Gumanoy.

This is what I could piece together: In 2008, Shin's two sisters decided to leave the movement. Rose Ann, 21, had been wounded and captured in an encounter in General Nakar in April that year. She was operated on and treated at V. Luna, the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) hospital. She faced rebellion charges but Karapatan put up the bail in late May. She and Fatima, 17, then stayed at a Karapatan safe house. However, by July, they made a decision to leave the movement. They contacted AFP personnel whom they had met at the V. Luna Hospital. On the day the two sisters were supposed to meet up with their mother, they defected.

Their mother, through Karapatan, tried to compel the AFP to produce Fatima who at 17 was still a minor. But the daughters made it clear that it was their choice to leave the NPA and the movement that had been a part of their lives since birth.

Their decision also meant painful separation. Karapatan, through Malabanan, took Shin, her mother and two brothers to Port Barton in Taytay, Palawan. "This was to pressure us to return to the NPA," the eldest daughter told Palawan News. It also effectively prevented their mother from following their example, should she ever have considered it.

It took 11 years before the sisters were reunited. Sadly, their mother died in 2012.

Shin was three when her father was murdered, eight when separated from her older siblings and a younger stepbrother. At 14, two years after her mother died, she was made to become an aide to an NPA commander. She was brave and ran away three years later. What happened to her father in 2003 was a crime and that it was perpetrated by state forces seems undisputed. However, that does not in any way justify what Karapatan and their associates did to Shin and her family. We have to ask how many other families have gone through similar suffering. How many children have been forced to join the NPA because the adults in whose care they were, chose it for them?

https://www.manilatimes.net/2021/07/12/opinion/columns/when-children-are-forced-to-join-the-npa/1806679