By Mario Casayuran
Senator Imee R. Marcos said child warriors who have died in combat or who have not returned to their families after being recruited by the New People’s Army (NPA), the armed component of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), should be remembered every December 28, on the Feast of the Holy Innocents.
Senator Imee Marcos (Senator Imee Marcos Official Facebook Page / FILE PHOTO / MANILA BULLETIN FILE PHOTO)
Marcos, daughter of former President Ferdinand E. Marcos, issued the statement to express support for the grieving mothers who demonstrated against the CPP on its 51st anniversary Thursday.
“Parents continue to grieve for those who had died or who have remained missing because the innocence of their children were used by the CPP in its war against the national government,” she said.
Children, under Republic Act (RA) 9262, or the law defining violence against women and children, are those below 18, or older but who cannot care for themselves.
Marcos said it was clear that the NPA violated the law when it used the children to further its ends.
Marcos has sought to amend the Anti-Terrorist Act via Senate Bill 630, which classifies rebellion, kidnapping, and their glorification as acts of terrorism that are subject to heavy penalties.
Besides urban recruitment in universities, Marcos cited the “more atrocious” recruitment of child warriors as young as five years old and rape of teenagers in the rural network of NPA indoctrination centers that masqueraded as schools for indigenous peoples (IPs), known as the Salugpungan Tatanu Igkanugon Community Learning Center Inc.
Tribal leaders Datu Awang Apuga, Datu Joel Dahusay, and Bae Magdalina Ilagan have testified as witnesses and as former Salugpungan students who were victims of NPA atrocities themselves, in a hearing of the Senate committee on cultural communities chaired by Marcos.
The Feast of the Holy Innocents is a Catholic holiday that recalls the random slaughter of children in biblical times, ordered by King Herod who feared the coming of a newborn king, as prophesied.