THE New People’s Army (NPA), the armed component of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), is behind innumerable instances of atrocities and human rights violations. Pushed to the corner by inequities and state-sanctioned terrorism, it has, over the years, evolved to become a terrorist itself. But let no one forget the genesis of the madness of terror in the Philippine context: a government that rapes and robs and kills started it.
Growing up in a small town in Eastern Samar, I was 14 when Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law. I would know years later as a college student that in a string of justifications for Proclamation 1081 (placing the country under martial law, later affirmed by Proclamation 1102, aka Na Onse Na, Na-Uto Pa), the last straw was the ambush of then Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile. But after supporting an uprising that history would tentatively tag as a peaceful people power revolt, ending 20 years of Marcos’ rule (14 years of which were under a dic