By AARON RECUENCO
A total of 155 communist rebels were killed while 433 others were arrested in intensified police and military operations against the New People’s Army (NPA) last year.
Police Gen. Debold Sinas, chief of the Philippine National Police (PNP), said 3,155 communist rebels and their supporters surrendered last year while 897 long and short firearms were confiscated.
Only 15 communist rebels were killed in 2019 in police-initiated communist insurgency operations.
In 2019, 28 rebels were arrested while 405 fighters and supporters surrendered.
In 2019, a total of 1,668 firearms were confiscated compared to only 897 in 2020.
Sinas said there was a significant decrease in the attacks initiated by the communist rebels in 2020. The decline in the rebel attacks could be attributed to the lockdown measures which were implemented since March 15.
The PNP leadership also claimed that that there is a waning mass support for the communist rebels as a result of the aggressive government operations.
“CTGs (Communist Terrorist Groups, referring to NPA and its political wing Communist party of the Philippines and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines) will use extensive propaganda exploitation against the government campaigns,” the PNP stated in its assessment on the anti-communist insurgency operations of the government.
The government has intensified the campaign against the CPP-NPA-NDF since the peace talks bogged down, one of them is the aggressive social media campaign which branded allegedly includes red-tagging of personalities who are members of groups that were tagged to have links with the NPA.
President Duterte, who appointed leaders of militant groups when he assumed the top post of the land, has identified Left-leaning groups as affiliated with the NPA.
Critics blamed the red-tagging as the reasons behind the deaths of several people that include lawyers and local officials amid the country’s COVID-19 problem.
