RP to contribute to museum on victims of communism
By Rodney J. Jaleco, ABS-CBN North America News Bureau | 06/28/2009 4:52 PM
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WASHINGTON D.C. - The deadly purges conducted by communist New People’s Army (NPA) cadres in the 1980s will have a place in a planned museum for an estimated 100 million victims of communist repression, from Stalin’s Soviet Union to Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge, that is set to rise in the capital of the Unites States.
“We have been asked to contribute evidence of the atrocities committed by Philippine communists,” Minister Carlos Sorreta, Philippine deputy chief of mission here, revealed to ABS-CBN’s Balitang America.
The Philippines has one of the world’s longest-running communist insurgency.
At its peak in the mid-80s, the CPP-NPA and its legal front organization, the National Democratic Front (NDF), had an estimated 30,000 “Red fighters” and a million mass-based supporters spread across the archipelago – making it the largest non-governing communist organization in Southeast Asia.
Terrorist organization
The US classifies the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP-NPA) as a terrorist organization. American troops on annual joint training exercises are helping train Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) troops fight the communist rebels aside from Muslim rebels as well as bandits and terrorists.
The US has been indirectly involved with the AFP’s counter-insurgency campaign since the CPP-NPA was established over four decades ago, providing critical equipment like radios, helicopters and bomber aircraft.
The hardware goes mostly to the fight against the CPP-NPA, although lately a large portion also goes to defeating al Qaeda-affiliated Abu Sayyaf in Mindanao.
About 1984, the NPA started fielding “Sparrow units”, urban assassination teams. Among their victim was decorated Green Beret Lt. Col. James “Nick” Rowe, killed in an ambush near his office in Quezon City in April 1989.
The dramatic success of the NPA partisans however reportedly fueled an internal debate on tactics – Sison reportedly insisted they stick to the Maoist strategy of encircling the cities, but others purportedly believed sparking an insurrection within the cities was more effective.
The arrests of NPA chief Romulo Kintanar, CPP Secretary General Rafael Baylosis, Central Committee member Benjamin de Vera and 20 other ranking leaders from April to March 1988 reportedly exposed the purported deepening schism in the rebel underground.
The remaining rebel leaders believed the military was tipped off.
The communist underground conducted “purges” beginning in 1985 reportedly to ferret out suspected infiltrators. The pogrom became known by their underground codenames – Ahos, Zombie, Olympia, Missing Link, etc.
Some 1,500 cadres –- mostly in northern Mindanao, Southern Luzon and Eastern Visayas -- were reportedly questioned. As many as 900 were allegedly executed and buried in common graves, that have since earned the reputation as “Philippine killing fields”.
Victims of communism
The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation was established by the US Congress in December 1993.
A memorial that features a bronze replica of the Goddess of Democracy statue that was first erected by pro-democracy demonstrators in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in 1989, stands at a corner of Massachusetts Avenue.
“Washington is a city of memorials, a lot of US and global history is commemorated in the many memorials here,” Sorreta explained.
“This memorial stands in the memory of those who lost their lives, families that have been shattered by the acts of communism as an ideology,” he added.
The foundation claims that 100 million people have perished under harsh communist regimes.
“The victims were struck down in an unprecedented imperial communist holocaust,” it proclaimed, “Totalitarian terror countenanced no challenge from individuals, institutions, political parties or faiths.”
The memorial chronicles the excesses of communism’s rise, from Russia to China to Ukraine to Cuba.
Documentation
Sorreta said the Foundation has asked them to contribute testimony and artifacts of CPP-NPA atrocities in the Philippines, including the series of purges.
“We have excellent documentation on the atrocities they have committed, even on the members of their movement,” he stressed.
There are no official figures on the number of Filipinos killed or injured from 41 years of strife, but some put the number as high as 250,000.
“On top of the memorial in downtown DC, the next step of the foundation is to create a museum, like the Holocaust Museum, where they will enshrine the atrocities and so we will never forget,” Sorreta told Balitang America.
The Holocaust Museum is located near the National Mall, and houses many interactive displays depicting the wholesale murder of six million Jews in World War II.
The foundation has already launched a virtual museum that Sorreta explained will be an interim facility while waiting for the construction of a physical home for the victims of communism memorial.
“They’re starting to collect the materials already, and we’ve been asked to contribute evidence of the atrocities committed by Philippine communists,” he averred.
He said they are turning over testimonies and photographs, but the foundation also wanted artifacts.
“Any artifact we’ll be giving will have to be with the consent of the victims’ families,” Sorreta added.
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