By Priam Nepomuceno/PNA
MANILA — To stop the New People’s Army (NPA) infiltration in schools, proactive collaboration is needed among various government organizations, parents and learning institutions, an Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) official said Wednesday.
The military issued the statement when asked what the AFP and the government could do to stop the infiltration of schools and recruitment of students by the communist rebels.
“This problem needs the proactive collaboration among different government organizations, parents, learning institutions, and other agencies. We need to keep educating them about the deceitful tactics of these communist terrorists and warn the parents, universities, and the students themselves to be discerning about the people who approach them, and the organizations they join in,” AFP Public Affairs Office chief Col. Noel Detoyato said in a message to the Philippine News Agency (PNA).
The New People’s Army (NPA), the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), is considered a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union.
Detoyato also dissuaded students from joining the ranks of communist rebels as they will only be used to further grow the terror organization.
“The students who join them are being agitated, and they use their idealism to fight for what they think is right, not knowing that eventually, they will be required to undergo ‘immersion’ in the armed group and have no other choice but to integrate in the NPA, an armed organization of the CPP-NPA-NDF (Communist Party of the Philippines-New People’s Army-National Democratic Front) as fighters,” he said.
“The schools are supposed to be places where patriotism, discipline and nation building are being inculcated to our children but the CPP-NPA-NDF (are) exploit(ing) these places,” he added.
