'We were duped about good life, education': ex-NPA rebel

From the Philippine News Agency (Apr 12, 2022): 'We were duped about good life, education': ex-NPA rebel (By Che Palicte)

FALSE PROMISES. Mars (not his real name) says he joined the communist New People's Army (NPA) under false promises and lies. He decided it was time to surrender on April 8, 2022 in Davao del Norte.

Mars and Diane were promised a good life and college education by their New People's Army (NPA) recruiters—what they found inside the communist rebel organization, instead, are false promises and starvation.

Mars, 24, and the 18-year-old Diane are two of the seven NPA guerrillas who surrendered in Davao del Norte last Friday. Except for Diane, the surrenderers are all in their 20s.

In an interview on Tuesday, Mars and Diane (not their real names) acknowledged that they had been "deceived" with rebel propaganda depicting the NPA as the defender of the poor.

The government, in the NPA's recruitment narrative, was the villain that killed and neglected the poor in the countryside and shouldn't be trusted, they said.

“I was once a normal student when they recruited me and told me to join because they will help me to continue my studies,” Mars said in vernacular. "They told me the government would not help somebody like me."

Mars said NPA recruits like him were brainwashed with an ideology that convinced him to believe the government was not pro-poor, while the NPA was the "real government."

Diane, a former student at Salugpongan tribal school, which the military has long associated with the rebels, shared the same experience, saying she also was promised "good education."

"I was expecting to succeed in the future. Instead, I was taught how to hold guns and other revolutionary tactics," she said.

Mars and Diane said they began to realize the promises were false when they were forced to walk into the mountainous areas at midnight to get supplies. They constantly suffered hunger, they said, while enduring many of the hardships and dangers in the mountains.

“I decided to surrender because I can no longer bear the hardship. If we continue, there is no future for us. We now realized that they only fooled us,” Diane said.

Mars said the rebels "did not take care of us, they starved us, and we felt we would eventually die due to hunger."

They said they were surprised when the military treated them with dignity and respect upon their surrender. This was contrary, they said, to the repeated warning by the NPA leadership that surrendering to the military means torture, or worse, death.

“I will try my very best to help the government by encouraging my comrades who are still in the armed struggle to go down and end their suffering,” Mars said.

“They indoctrinated us that the military is barbaric and brutal. It is not true. They took care of us. We have a good life here,” he added.

Mars, Diane, and the five others during their April 8 surrender yielded two AK47 rifles and an IMI Israel AR Galil rifle.

Brig. Gen. Consolito Yecla, commander of the Army's 1003rd Brigade commander, said the surrenderers are in the custody of the battalion to undergo psychological debriefing.

"They will be guided to rebuild their lives back to the mainstream of society," Yecla said.

The Communist Party of the Philippines-NPA is listed as a terrorist organization by the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the Philippines.

The Anti-Terrorism Council also formally designated the NDF as a terrorist organization on June 23, 2021, citing it as “an integral and inseparable part” of the CPP-NPA that was created in April 1973.

https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1172045