BAGUIO CITY – Left leaning non-government organizations were able to amass some 98 million Euros or over P5 billion in foreign aid from the European Union (EU) over the past several years which was used to beef up the communist movement in the different parts of the country, a senior security official said here recently.
National Security Council (NSC) Undersecretary Vicente Agdamag, who is also serving as the Executive Director of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict, disclosed that 60 percent of the generated foreign aid were allegedly used by the reported fronts of the Communist Party of the Philippines – New Peoples Army (CPP-NPA) to purchase arms to beef up the insurgency movement in the countryside while only 40 percent went to the proposed projects in the rural areas where the foreign aid was supposed to be used.
He added that the foreign-assisted community-based projects implemented by the left-leaning NGOs were used to allegedly brainwash the people in the said villages to believe in the cause of the movement that resulted to the successful recruitment of young people to join the NPA and believe in a lost cause.
Based on the NSC, there are still 789 rebel-infested barangays in the different parts of the country wherein 47 barangays are located in the different parts of the Cordillera.
Further, Agdamag reported that to date, there are only more than 3,700 NPA rebels distributed in the different parts of the country but there are tens of thousands of sympathizers hiding under the guise of the left-leaning organizations.
The NSC official disclosed that the matter on the foreign aid being used to purchase arms for the rebels was already brought to the attention of the EU and that the government was advised to file the appropriate charges against the left-leaning NGOs that were found to have been involved in the fraudulent use of the foreign aid instead of being used for the benefit of people in the remote villages who were used to justify the funding for the community-based projects from the foreign donors.
According to him, people in the countryside must be properly informed that the primary purpose of the CPP-NPA is to overthrow the government and to succeed the same but their ideology seems not to reflect the things they are doing that is why they should not be convinced into falling into the trap of supporting a lost cause over the past five decades.
The government is inclined to crush the communist movement in the country within the remaining two and a half years of the Duterte administration through the aggressive campaign to deprive the access of left-leaning NGOs to their foreign funders so that they will no longer have the resources to sustain the purchase of arms for the NPAs and inform and educate people on the realities of life and for them not to believe on the falsehoods of the insurgency movement.
Agdamag claimed that the government was compelled to organize the national, regional and local task forces to end local communist armed conflict to help achieve the overall objective of crouching the communist movement and achieve lasting peace in the country so that development will start to be cascaded to conflict-stricken areas that were deprived of opportunities for growth due to the decades of armed struggle that prevented government from bringing the services and projects to the people in the countryside.
By HENT