MANILA, Philippines – The recent surrender of 4 former underaged New People’s Army (NPA) rebels shows that the armed communist movement in the country is still recruiting child soldiers to fill its ranks, a Philippine Army official said on Friday.

Two rebel returnees, Menard Dao-ayan and Roland Tarodan, former members of the Kumiteng Larangan Gerilya in Marco under the Ilocos-Cordillera Regional Committee of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), told the Army that they joined the NPA as minors, Army spokesman Colonel Antonio Parlade Jr. said.

The NPA is the armed wing of the CPP.

Two 17-year-old former communist guerrillas also returned to the fold of the law in Southern Mindanao in July, he added.

Parlade said that on July 3, Army troops from the 53rd Infantry Battalion in Zamboanga Sibugay captured a 15-year-old NPA member.

He also mentioned the case of an alias Ka Jinggoy who was recruited at age 13 by the communist movement and armed with an M16 assault rifle at 16.

The “child warrior” took part in several attacks against government troops before he was wounded in a firefight and surrendered to the authorities early this year, Parlade said. 

Army data show that from 1999 to 2010, the armed communist movement recruited at least 340 children, including some as young as 15 years old.

Of the figure, 209 have surrendered, 119 were captured, while 12 were killed in clashes with state security forces, Parlade said.

“These are serious evidences of children recruitment into illegal armed group that clearly substantiates the recent report of UN Special Rapporteur for Children in Armed Conflict Radhika Coomaraswamy, (who) named the NPA rebels as constant violators of children's rights,” he added.

“The NPA has been consistently cited in UN reports since 2002 up to the present as among those who continue to defy international standards against the recruitment and use of child combatants,” the Army spokesman said.

Parlade, meanwhile, said Army operations in August resulted in the capture of 15 NPA rebels and the death of 5 others.

He said 25 guerrillas also surrendered to the government in the same month.