Name: Kate Desiree A.

Mendoza
Course & Section: AB Foreign Service / FS 301
Subject: International Political Economy
Professor: Jumel G. Estrañero
Date: March 5, 2018

INTERNATIONAL HUMANITARIAN LAW

IN THE EYES OF THE PHILIPPINES

The Philippine insurgency refers to various revolts, rebellions, revolutions, and guerrilla
actions fought in the Philippine Islands. It is sometimes known as the Philippine War of
Independence. Insurgency is an organized rebellion aimed at overthrowing a
constituted government through the use of subversion and armed conflict. An
insurgency can be fought via counter-insurgency warfare, and may also be opposed
by measures to protect the population, and by political and economic actions of
various kinds aimed at undermining the insurgents' claims against the incumbent
regime. Revolutions often begin within a country's armed forces, whereas insurgencies
often arise in remote areas, where they gain strength slowly by winning the confidence
of rural populations. An insurgency may be based on ethnic or religious identity, or its
roots may be basically political or economic. Since insurgencies are rarely strong
enough to face a national army head-on, insurgents tend to use such tactics as
bombing, kidnapping, hostage taking, and hijacking.

The Philippine government is unable to control and develop large parts of the country
because of the longstanding communist insurgency. The conflict has lasted more than
40 years and killed tens of thousands of combatants and civilians. Planning their attacks
and securing weapons and funds locally, the insurgents have strong roots in the
different regions where they operate and have proved hard to defeat. The communist
insurgency in the Philippines has continued so long it has ceased to receive the
attention it deserves. The international community and many in the Philippine
government have been much more concerned about armed rebellion in the Muslim
south because of the higher level of violence, the potential threat to the country’s
territorial integrity and the occasional links to international terrorism.

Communist Party of the Philippines – New People’s Army is under the firm control of a
small number of highly dedicated leaders, or cadres, who make all important decisions
regarding ideology, strategy, and management of the party. CPP-NPA has been able
to sustain its activities for the past four decades due to the structural conditions in the
Philippine society, particularly the prevalence of extreme poverty and lack of
governance in the countryside. Moreover, the CPP-NPA’s steady recruitment pools,
persistent ideology, resilient operational security, and reliable sources of money have
enabled the organization to develop and expand its influence and operations to at
least 1,000 barangays. The CPP-NPA has most closely followed the political and guerrilla
strategy of protracted revolutionary warfare. Another Communist’s strategy is to
achieve political power by presenting themselves as nationalists and joining the
moderate opposition in a post-Marcos coalition government. The CPP-NPA’s principal
objective is “to replace the current economic and political order in the Philippines with
a socialist system” and its main function is “to wage a protracted people’s war to
destroy the reactionary state power and the interventionist U.S. imperial forces, protect
the people and advance their national and democratic interests.” To achieve its
objectives, the CPP-NPA utilizes all tactical means at its disposal: military struggle, mass
mobilization, political lobbying, political subversion and International Solidarity Work
(ISW) with other left-wing organizations. In addition, the CPP-NPA has announced its
intention to engage in peace talks with the Government of the Republic of the
Philippines (GRP), although this initiative may have been occasioned by the NPA’s
designation by the United States and the European Union in 2002 as a foreign terrorist
organization.

CPP and NPA can be considered as terrorists. Considering the fact that there is no
exact definition of terrorism in the international community, they provided
circumstances in order for an individual or organizations to be considered terrorist. It is a
premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against non-combatant
targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents. According to Matusitz (2013),
terrorism includes the use of violence or threat in the pursuit of political, religious,
ideological or social objectives. It reaches more than the immediate target victims and
is also directed at targets consisting of a larger spectrum of society. It is both mala
prohibita (i.e., crime that is made illegal by legislation) and mala in se (i.e., crime that is
inherently immoral or wrong). In the posits of international law, CPP and NPA can be
considered as terrorists. Also, just recently the Department of Justice (DOJ) formally
seeks court declaration of CPP-NPA as terrorists. This is a bitter end to the peace talks
that President Duterte resumed when he took over the presidency. The talks have since
collapsed, although the National Democratic Front or NDF’s legal counsels said the
talks cannot be considered officially terminated if there is no mutual agreement
according to reports. “The CPP and NPA are merely buying time by deceiving the
Philippine government in entering into peace talks, while their main purpose is to
mobilize all their forces in preparation for the people’s war aimed at overthrowing the
duly constituted authority, seizing control of the Philippine government and imposing a
totalitarian regime,” the DOJ said in its petition.
Under the international law, belligerents signifies a stage of the civil war in which there
are two contenders for power that can be placed on a platform and there is
something like a state of war, and not only civil conflicts. Considering the international
definition, CPP – NPA could be considered as belligerents as they are engaging civil
wars with the same individuals, organizations particularly against the government in the
same country which is the Philippines. The Communist Party of the Philippines–New
People’s Army (CPP-NPA) seeks to overthrow the Philippine government in favor of a
new state led by the working class and to expel U.S. influence from the Philippines.
While there is not much information on individual attacks, the CPP-NPA is one of the
most active militant organizations in the Philippines and has waged the world’s longest
Communist insurgency. The Armed Forces of the Philippines has identified the CPP-NPA
as the nation’s most serious threat, and in 2013, the CPP-NPA claimed responsibility for
nearly a third of the fatalities caused by terror attacks that year. Their records could
strengthen the notion that they could be considered as belligerents in the Philippines in
relation to the international law.