“THE WORLD OF HYPOCRICY”

Philippines — The Duterte Admin has been called out many times for its brutal and merciless campaign
against drugs, criminality, activism, and insurgency. The campaign has cost the lives of many people, and
that includes the lives of activists and innocent people that have nothing to do with the aforementioned
reasons. According to Human Rights Watch (2019), the Philippines National Police recorded 22,983
deaths that have something to do with the "war on drugs" and have now been classified under
"homicides under investigation." And the death of one victim, Kian Delo Santos, has been proven to be
the fault of the police officer.

However, we are not here to discuss that. We are here to discuss the hypocrisy of the Communist Party
of the Philippines and its armed wing New People's Army. According to Joma Sison himself, he has
mentioned every party list that includes Makabayan Bloc is part of their political front (Manila Times,
2020). The very same Makabayan Bloc that always calls out Duterte for his Human Rights Abuse.

But wait, who are these Communists and New People's Army, anyway? Let's take a look back at how this
group became the offenders of human rights abuse from being just defenders of the Japanese.

The CPP-NPA-NDF or Communist Party of the Philippines - New People's Army - National Democratic
Front that we know today starts as HUKBALAHAP (Hukbong Bayan Laban sa Hapon) or commonly called
as Huks, is a guerilla group that fends off Japanese as they invade the Philippines, they are composed
mostly of farmers. The group started due to dissatisfaction with the landowner to side with the
Japanese, thus the group was created. After the end of World War II, the group remains intact as they
search for recognition of their contribution to the Japanese invasion. In post-World War II, they have re-
entered the political stage in the name of Pambansang Kaisahan ng Magbubukid (National Peasants
Union) in short PKM, to negotiate and to address the widening gap of social injustice between
landowner and farmers. The PKM together with the PKP (Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas), created CLO or
Committee of Labor Organization, which is composed of 76 labor unions and has 100,000 members all
over Manila.

In 1946 in the formation of an alliance between CLO and PKM the Democratic Alliance was created. Even
though they know the group has a strong inclination to Communism, to make sure that they will win a
seat in Congress the DA also supported the candidacy of Sergio Osmeña. However, Manuel Roxas the
bet of the Liberal Party won the election, due to that the 6 congressmen from the DA who won the
election, together with 3 senators and 1 congressman from NP are disqualified in a resolution passed by
Rep. Jose Nueno, as he was able to gather a majority vote in Congress in grounds of election fraud and
terrorism. And that led to a more chaotic conflict between the two opposing groups, Pres. Manuel Roxas
tried to negotiate peacefully, however, with the death of 4 officials in the barrio, peace was never seen
since (Kerkvliet, 1977).

Now the former alliance of PKM and PKP, lead to the re-establishment of the newly named CPP that is
spearheaded by Jose Maria Sison. Its armed group, the NPA, is modeled according to Mao Zedong's
tactics of guerilla warfare (Saulo, 1969).

Throughout CPP-NPA-NDF's existence, they bring more chaos to the Philippines. The NPA killed 50,000
Filipinos, including civilians and government security forces, and they continue to kill. They have
displaced many native tribes because of ongoing armed conflict with the government forces. The point
of this editorial is how hypocritical this movement is. They vowed to protect the peasant and yet they
extorted them, they vowed to liberate the people from poverty yet they are taking advantage of their
ignorance. They are teaching their ideology using black propaganda. They are concealing the fact that
100 million people died due to communism; it continues today, as the CPP-NPA-NDF continues their
campaign (Satter, 2017).

The continuous denial of the current administration of its atrocities and the unwillingness of the
Makabayan Bloc to denounce the CPP-NPA-NDF, just show us how broken our Human Rights justice is.
We never know how much of those almost 23,000 people have died without due process, we never
know how willing the CPP-NPA-NDF will go to achieve their movement. Even in this pandemic, we are
still run around by politics, we have never rested with it, we always connect everything with politics. Are
we not tired of what's happening? Changes have come, but no one says for better. In the end, the
Filipinos are the ones that suffer the most, whether we like it or not, we are living in this cell we call
poverty. And it's always poverty that leads to Filipinos' death.