CWTS

NSTP NOTES
 Known to his friends as baron, the 19 year old Mark Welson Chua was an aspirant to the
position of ROTC corp commander.
 As a class cadet officer, he observed some anomalous practices at the department of military
science training DMST of university of Santo Tomas.
 His idealism moved him to submit his complaint to the university’s administrative officials. While
in the process of investigating and consolidating mark’s, together with other witnesses’ written
testimonies, prof. zenaida famorca, then director of student welfare and development board
under the office for student affairs, one day received a text message that mark was missing.
 The message said that he was last seen at the Tinoko Park together with the other members of
his group called anak bayan in the evening of March 15, 2001.
 Three days after he was reported missing, mark’s body, wrapped in a carpet bound by strips of
cloth and packaging tape, was fished out of the pasig river under the Jones bridge. Investigation
was immediately conducted by the pnp, nbi and the philippine army.
 The death of mark made the public angry. It scared the parents of the cadets. It pulled down the
marks of the rotc program to its all time low so much that people called for the abolition of rotc.
These events led the legislators to take immediate action.
 Little did mark know that his action, to divulge the persistent issues on corruption within the
ranks of ROTC, would be a catalyst for a much improved service program? It led to the passage
of the national service training program law or republic act 9163

On the 13th June 2004 during the opening mass of the university, Mark Welson “baron” Chua was given
a posthumous award, the san Lorenzo ruiz medal of courage, a medal conferred to students who have
shown exceptional and exemplary courage in standing up for the truth and thomasian ideals.