A kerosene lamp flickers beside a Macbook in a jungle camp as aging Philippine communist leader Jaime Padilla plots the next step in one of Asia’s oldest insurgencies with a new generation of fighters.
Fueled by one of the world’s starkest rich-poor divides, a Maoist rebellion that began months before the first human landed on the moon plods on even though the country now boasts one of the world’s fastest-growing economies.
“There’s a big pool of young people who will pursue the people’s war even if it takes us a hundred or more years,” 70-year-old Padilla, one of the Philippines’ most-wanted men, said at a rare news conference for a small group of reporters.
Photo: Noel Celis, AFP
Padilla, who joined the New People’s Army (NPA) a few years after the insurgency began in the late 1960s, insisted the rebels were not concerned by President Rodrigo Duterte’s threats to end peace talks.
A self-proclaimed socialist, Duterte swiftly launched negotiations with the Maoists after winning presidential elections last year and there were high hopes he could end the rebellion, which the military estimates has claimed 30,000 lives.
But last month Duterte angrily declared there would be no more talks because the NPA continued to extort money from businesses and ambush security forces.
hoto: Noel Celis, AFP
Padilla, a slight, bespectacled ex-farmer who goes by the alias “Ka (Comrade) Diego”, heads the Melito Glor Command, one of the most important units of the NPA, the communists’ 3,800-member armed wing, military commanders said.
The unit operates across the south of the main island of Luzon, the country’s industrial heartland that lies next to the capital of Manila, typically attacking isolated security outposts and taking guns from slain police and soldiers.
It also collects “revolutionary taxes” from businesses, ranging from big power plants and even small pig farms, as well as local politicians, Padilla said.
JUNGLE DWELLINGS
The guerrillas sleep in hammocks near streams and rural hamlets, help farmers harvest crops, and melt into nearby forests to evade any approaching large military forces.
They choose only to fight smaller units, according to Padilla.
His press conference was held on a hilltop ringed with wild banana plants, about two hours’ hike from a poor, coconut-growing hamlet.
The 50 or so gunmen escorting him wore olive military-style uniforms inspired by Chinese revolutionary leader Mao Zedong (毛澤東), the movement’s ideological godfather.
Most also had on thick red makeup, many decorated with the hammer-and-sickle communist logo rendered in yellow, to conceal their identities.
While their numbers are relatively small, there continue to be frequent reports of communists killing security forces across the Philippines. Last month the rebels killed six policemen and a civilian in an ambush on the central island of Negros, according to the police, and wounded five of Duterte’s military bodyguards in another encounter in the southern Philippines.
Padilla said the rebels wanted the talks, held in Europe, to continue. But they stood ready to fight.
“We’ve been fighting for 50 years. What does it matter if it takes another 50 years,” said Padilla, who gave a slide presentation by lamplight with the help of a young female guerrilla.
Padilla defended the continuing NPA attacks, calling them a form of “self-defence” against military operations in areas where their shadow government was in place.
‘REVOLUTIONARY TAX’
He also insisted it was legitimate to demand the equivalent of two percent of any business project in revolutionary taxes, but admitted companies that refused to pay were punished “harshly,” with their equipment usually burnt.
The payments are vital to the communists’ survival.
They net the rebels up to two billion pesos each year, Philippine military spokesman Brigadier-General Restituto Padilla, no relation to the rebel leader, stated, branding the practice plain “extortion.” “This paralyzes the local economies, keeps people poor and makes it easier to recruit them. It’s a vicious cycle,” the general said.
Another key reason that the Philippines continues to host a communist rebellion when Marxism has dissolved almost everywhere else around the world is an economic system that has created huge wealth but left tens of millions in deep poverty.
The Philippines has one of the fastest growing economies in Asia and has grown by more than six percent for much of the past decade.
But 22 million, or one in five Filipinos, continue to earn a dollar or less each day, according to government data.
Padilla, the NPA leader, said millions more young Filipino adults fared little better working in low-paying contractual jobs after completing their schooling.
This made the NPA a viable option even for fresh graduates of the country’s top universities, he added.
One of them, a 25-year-old from a middle-class family who called herself Ka Kathryn, said she joined the NPA five years ago after her father, an engineer, was fired for organizing a union at an energy company.
“We are facing an enemy who has committed atrocities against the people,” said Kathryn, who had studied to become a television presenter but now carries an M-16 rifle.
“We should stand up to them and not cower in fear.”
May 6 to May 12 Those who follow the Chinese-language news may have noticed the usage of the term zhuge (豬哥, literally ‘pig brother,’ a male pig raised for breeding purposes) in reports concerning the ongoing #Metoo scandal in the entertainment industry. The term’s modern connotations can range from womanizer or lecher to sexual predator, but it once referred to an important rural trade. Until the 1970s, it was a common sight to see a breeder herding a single “zhuge” down a rustic path with a bamboo whip, often traveling large distances over rugged terrain to service local families. Not only
Ahead of incoming president William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20 there appear to be signs that he is signaling to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and that the Chinese side is also signaling to the Taiwan side. This raises a lot of questions, including what is the CCP up to, who are they signaling to, what are they signaling, how with the various actors in Taiwan respond and where this could ultimately go. In the last column, published on May 2, we examined the curious case of Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) heavyweight Tseng Wen-tsan (鄭文燦) — currently vice premier
The last time Mrs Hsieh came to Cihu Park in Taoyuan was almost 50 years ago, on a school trip to the grave of Taiwan’s recently deceased dictator. Busloads of children were brought in to pay their respects to Chiang Kai-shek (蔣中正), known as Generalissimo, who had died at 87, after decades ruling Taiwan under brutal martial law. “There were a lot of buses, and there was a long queue,” Hsieh recalled. “It was a school rule. We had to bow, and then we went home.” Chiang’s body is still there, under guard in a mausoleum at the end of a path
Last week the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) released a set of very strange numbers on Taiwan’s wealth distribution. Duly quoted in the Taipei Times, the report said that “The Gini coefficient for Taiwanese households… was 0.606 at the end of 2021, lower than Australia’s 0.611, the UK’s 0.620, Japan’s 0.678, France’s 0.676 and Germany’s 0.727, the agency said in a report.” The Gini coefficient is a measure of relative inequality, usually of wealth or income, though it can be used to evaluate other forms of inequality. However, for most nations it is a number from .25 to .50