THE National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) pulled the plug on 28 websites that immediate past National Security adviser Hermogenes Esperon Jr. had identified as associated with the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP). Since the CPP has been declared a terrorist organization by the government, any affiliate organization is deemed a promoter of terrorism by virtue of association and must be restricted.

The CPP itself, through Twitter, claimed that only seven of the 28 sites had a connection to the party and its political arm, the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) and, I may add, the New People’s Army (NPA). The seven websites of this underground trinity that were affected by the NTC order to block access to the internet included, among others, Philippine Revolution Web Central, NDFP.org and websites of less known underground organizations Revolutionary Council of Trade Unions and Revolutionary Organization of Overseas Filipinos and their Families.

Websites of sectoral organizations of fisherfolk, agricultural workers and peasant women that form part of the aboveground national democratic movement were shut down, too. Some will argue that this is “red-tagging” but to me, it is calling a spade a spade. Simply referring to, for instance, Pamalakaya Pilipinas as a “progressive” or “militant” sectoral organization is too vague and general to explain the goals and purpose of the concerned organization. Officials of Pamalakaya, UMA and Amihan, along with the long list of sectoral and cause-oriented organizations in the national democratic movement, may not be armed rebels or members of the CPP but their end goal is nevertheless the same: the socialist revolution. They have unity of purpose and push the same agenda. They are the reaffirmists after the great split in the early 1990s.

So are the NGOs found in Esperon’s list: Rural Missionaries of the Philippines and Save Our Schools (SOS) Network. The SOS Network has been the biggest recruiter for the NPA in Mindanao in recent times. Dozens of so-called Salugpongan schools under the SOS umbrella operated across Mindanao, including Davao City. Sometime in 2015, army troops uncovered the true purpose of some — not all — of the Salugpongan schools. With the schools pressured by the military, organizations belonging to the national democratic movement evacuated the affected communities to Davao City where the LGU (local government unit) was known to be friendly toward their cause. It was only in 2019 that the Davao City government finally denied renewal of business permits to Salugpungan schools, forcing SOS and its partner organizations to transfer students to Cebu. Some of the students had already been brought to Cebu for “exposure” in 2018, and the “Bakwit School” launched. The curriculum, according to the Facebook page of one of the host organizations, included Jose Maria Sison’s Youth on the March and Maikling Kurso sa Lipunan at Rebolusyong Pilipino. “Red-tagging” here is clearly an understatement.

Chad Booc, a teacher at the “Lumad Bakwit School in Cebu,” was killed in Davao de Oro last February in what authorities say was an encounter. Booc’s friends deny that he was a member of the NPA. Considering the consistency of the national democratic movement in deliberately concealing the fact that a killed colleague was indeed a full-fledged member of the NPA, we may never know the truth. I say this as someone who has been following insurgency-related news for more than 20 years. The pattern is clear; the cover-up, predictable. The issue is not whether the late Chad Booc and countless others like him may or may not have been with the NPA. Rather, the problem lies with their colleagues, who use the media to spread and perpetuate falsehood and deceit.

“Bulatlat” may have been shut out of its regular website, but its stories are accessible through a mirror site, hosted by one of its fellow alternative media