New People's Army

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The New People's Army, or NPA, is a communist-based revolutionary group in the Philippines, formed in March 29, 1969. The NPA is the military wing of the Maoist Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP). The NPA is classified as a terrorist organization by the Philippine Government, the US, EU [1]and other Western countries.

The NPA's roots can be traced from the Hukbalahap, a resistance group formed during the Japanese occupation of the Philippines during World War II. The Hukbalahap were under the leadership of Luis Taruc and Jose Lava from the 40's to 50's. By the early 1960's, the armed resistance was waning with isolated pockets of resistance.

1 Formation
2 Second Great Rectification Movement
3 Post 9/11
4 External links

[edit] Formation

On March 29, 1969, the CPP reformed the armed resistance in the Philippines and renamed the Huk fighters the New People's Army. The date also marks when the guerilla resistance against Japan was formed in 1942 during World War II.The formation was created when José María Sison and Senator Benigno Aquino, Jr. met with a former Huk commander Dante Buscayno.

The NPA claims to be fighting for national democracy and liberation. Starting out with 60 fighters and 34 rifles, the NPA quickly spread throughout the Philippine Islands during the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos. After the declaration of Martial Law in 1972, thousands of students came into the ranks.

At its peak, there were believed to be over 25,000 Red fighters in the early 1980's.

However, leadership from the CPP were jailed in the middle of the 1970s, including Jose Maria Sison. The remaining leadership of the NPA continued guerilla warfare but began committing human rights violations, extortion, kidnappings and urban insurrection. This deviated from the NPA's political line of guerilla warfare and mass work in the countryside.

[edit] Second Great Rectification Movement

In the 1990s, internal criticism about mistakes in the 1980s led to the Second Great Rectification Movement, launched in 1992 and largely completed in 1998, leading to a resurgence in the Philippine revolution. The Second Rectification ended a massive internal purge of the movement that killed thousands of partisans and members on accusations of being deep penetration agent by the Armed Forces of the Philippines and the Philippine intelligence community. Former NPA fighter Robert Francis Garcia chronicled the wild murders in his book To Suffer Thy Comrades and organized the Peace Advocates for Truth, Healing and Justice (PATH), a group composed of survivors of the "purges" and the families of victims and their friends and supporters.

[edit] Post 9/11

This group was designated as a foreign terrorist organization by the United States in August 2002 [2]. The NPA's founder, Jose Maria Sison, lives in the Netherlands in self-imposed exile. The NPA operates mostly in the rural areas. The NPA's targets often include politicians, military, police, criminals, landlords, business owners and occasionally U.S. agents in the Philippines.

The NPA claims responsibility for the assassination of U.S. Army Colonel Nick Rowe, founder of the U.S. Army Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape course, in 1989. Colonel Rowe was part of a military assistance program to the Philippine army.