The government’s peace initiative has been gaining ground as more former leaders and members of the Communist Party of the Philippines-New People’s Army-National Democratic Front (CPP-NPA-NDF) returned to the fold of the law, an official of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) said.
“Our campaign for peace that is free of armed conflict is gaining ground. And we thank former leaders and members of the CPP-NPA-NDF for heeding the government’s call and for claiming their right to peace as well,” said Undersecretary Severo Catura, spokesperson of the NTF-ELCAC on human rights, peace process and international engagements, said in a recent virtual dialogue with non-government organizations and civil society groups that sought clarification on the status of the country’s peace process.
Catura, also executive director of the Presidential Human Rights Committee Secretariat, said stories must be told behind the thousands of former members of the CPP-NPA-NPA who have surfaced and availed of projects under the Philippine government’s reintegration program.
“This is not just about people who, for various reasons, once fought the government and have decided to come back to the fold of the law, it is about people who want peace for themselves, their families and their communities, and seeing that this peace can be achieved at this time by ways of peace,“ Catura said. “They are people who are claiming their right to live in peace.”
Recent records of the NTF-ELCAC’s Task Force Balik-Loob revealed that more than 18,000 confirmed CPP-NPA-NDF members have surfaced and turned themselves in.
Executive agencies concerned have provided housing assistance, social welfare grants, livelihood and skills training, employment, bank credit assistance for crop and livestock production, and medical assistance under a consolidated reintegration program.
“Let’s give credence to these former CPP-NPA-NDF members for their courageous decision to get back into society’s mainstream,” Catura said. “Let us acknowledge their wish to give the government’s reintegration program and its community development components a fair chance to work.”
The NTF-ELCAC’s Barangay Development Program (BDP) has successfully rolled out development projects in 822 former village strongholds of the CPP-NPA-NDF that have been cleared.
Each of these villages is provided with the BDP’s five core projects, namely farm-to-market roads, school buildings, water and sanitation, health stations, and livelihood programs, of which more than 2,000 of these projects have been implemented by Executive offices concerned.
“While the peace process allows for sustained armed response to threats to national security, the option to address these threats by peaceful means remains always open,” Catura said. “And that peaceful option where we welcome back our fellow Filipinos with open arms is what we will always prefer.”
“All members of our armed forces and police are more than willing to give their lives in defense of our country and our people, but how they would wish it would not mean taking the lives of fellow Filipinos.” “Our people serving in our armed forces and police – they who have seen the horrors of conflict – are the ones who want peace more than anyone else,” he added.
Catura, a career service executive, was one of the pioneering junior officials of the Office of the Peace Commissioner in the first Aquino administration and the National Unification Commission in the Ramos Administration. After a brief stint as director of the Commission on Human Rights in the Estrada administration, he later served as executive director of the Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process in the Arroyo administration.
“In my 32 years in government, my work has always been anchored on the peace process, and anyone who has worked that long and even longer – as many of NTF-ELCAC colleagues have – could only pray that peace can indeed be realized in our lifetime,” Catura said.
Source: Philippines News Agency
