• GILBERT P. BAYORAN
The National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) on Wednesday condemned the Communist Party of the Philippines for romanticizing the deaths of its members and using them as propaganda for recruitment and ideological purposes.
In a statement, NTF-ELCAC Executive Director Ernesto Torres Jr. criticized the CPP’s remarks regarding the deaths of five individuals killed in Cauayan, Negros Occidental, including former student leader Vince Francis Dingding, who is also affiliated with the Kabataan party-list group.
The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) confirmed that the five individuals martyred in Cauayan, Negros Occidental, were revolutionaries of the New People’s Army (NPA).
Torres said the five fatalities should not be portrayed as revolutionary symbols or used to advance political narratives. Instead, he described them as victims of what he called the decades-long “deception, manipulation, and terror-grooming machinery” of the CPP-New People’s Army-National Democratic Front (CPP-NPA-NDF).
According to Torres, the communist movement has long recruited students, workers, peasants, and activists by promoting the idea of heroism and revolution, only for recruits to later become “expendable assets” in an armed struggle.
“Once recruits enter the armed movement, they are transformed from sons and daughters with dreams and futures into mere numbers in casualty reports and names in martyr posters,” he said.
In a separate statement,, the Apolinario Gatmaitan Command-NPA described the Cauayan 5 as revolutionary organizers and Red fighters involved in peasant, youth, and mass work in Negros.
The NPA’s regional command also condemned the AFP’s handling of the incident and maintained that the deaths of the five would not weaken the revolutionary movement in Negros.
The NTF-ELCAC accused the CPP of glorifying death and using grief as propaganda material to encourage more young people to join the armed movement.
Torres said that behind every fallen rebel is a grieving family left searching for answers.
“The CPP-NPA-NDF did not elevate these lives. It consumed them,” Torres said.*
