| 2022 Samar boat explosion | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of Communist rebellion in the Philippines | |||||||
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| Belligerents | |||||||
 New People's Army |  Philippines | ||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||
| Benito Tiamzon Wilma Tiamzon | Edgardo de Leon | ||||||
| Units involved | |||||||
| Central Committee | |||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||
| 10 killed | |||||||
In August 2022, a motorboat carrying rebels of the New People's Army exploded in Catbalogan, Samar. The explosion killed the passengers including NPA leaders Benito and Wilma Tiamzon.
The triumvirate of the Communist Party of the Philippines, New People's Army, and the National Democratic Front (CPP-NPA-NDF) has been waging a rebellion against the Philippine government for decades.
Under the administration of President Rodrigo Duterte, the Philippine government has engaged with peace talks with the CPP-NPA-NDF. [2] Duterte would formally halt the peace talks in 2017 after both sides accused one another of repeated ceasefire violations. [3]
The Anti-Terrorism Council of the Philippine government has designated the CPP-NPA as a terrorist groups in December 2020. The same designation was placed for the NDF in June 2021. [4]
The casualties of the Samar boat explosion included NPA leaders Benito and Wilma Tiamzon who were originally arrested in March 22, 2014. [2] They were released in August 2016 on bail, to participate in peace talks to end the Communist rebellion in the Philippines in Oslo, Norway representing the Communist rebels as consultants of the National Democratic Front. [3]
Having existing arrest warrants for various crimes, they went to hiding again after peace talks collapsed in 2017. They would be tried in absentia for the kidnapping of four Army lieutenants in 1988. They were sentenced to prison in November 2020. [2]
The couple themselves would also be considered as terrorists by the Anti-Terrorism Council. [3]
A motorboat carrying ten members of the New People's Army (NPA) exploded on August 21, 2022 off the waters of Catbalogan, Samar. There is conflicting information regarding to the circumstances leading to the explosion from both the Philippine military and the Communist rebels.
The Armed Forces of the Philippines' Joint Task Force (JTF) Storm received information from a tipster of a potential movement of ten armed individuals by motorboat loaded with suspected explosives. They dispatched Special Forces to approach the boat with passengers then-suspected be affiliated with the New People's Army. [5] The incident occurred at around 4:20–25 a.m. within the vicinity of Calbayog towards Buri island which is under Catbalogan. The boat is noted to be "far" with its general direction being "offshore". [6]
The troops advised the passengers to submit themselves for an inspection through a megaphone. However the passengers reportedly refused to the demand and opened fire on the army personnels. Gunfight between the two groups lead to the explosion of the motorboat carrying the suspected rebels leading to their presumed deaths. [7]
According to the tip the boat passengers loaded boxes on their watercraft in Samar island proper and left for Canhawan Guti island off the coast of Catbalogan. [8]
The Army was unable to immediately retrieve physical evidence confirming the deaths of its passengers, which was believed to include CPP-NPA figures Benito and Wilma Tiamzon. [7]
The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) would release their own account of what transpired in Samar months later on April 20, 2023 as per internal reports of their own Central Committee. They say that the Tiamzons along with eight other members of the central headquarters' guerilla force were captured by the military while riding separated vehicles. They alleged they were subjected to beatings before being killed by the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP). [9] The communist group states that the capture occurred on August 21, 2022 before their remains were disposed off on the boat early morning of the following day. [10]
According to the CPP, the encounter at sea was a cover-up by the AFP and its US military advisers for their "fascist crime". The rebel group believes that the corpse of their ten members including the Tiamzons were loaded into a motorboat filled with explosives which was later detonated to dispose of them. [9]
The Armed Forces of the Philippines' Joint Task Force Storm shortly after the explosion, conducted search operations to retrieved the bodies of the boat's passengers. They were unable to do so including confirming that the Tiamzons were among the passengers. [11] They were able to retrieve eight cadavers but were unable to ascertain their identities. [12]
The National Intelligence Coordinating Agency would confirmed the couple's death in December 2022 based on intelligence reports and statements from their former comrades. [13]
Relatives of the Tiamzons in September 2022, reportedly sought the Commission on Human Rights to determine the whereabouts of Benito and Wilma Tiamzon. [12]
Following their confirmation of the incident in April 2023, the CPP–NPA instructed its fighters to honor the Tiamzons during the 50th founding anniversary of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines through a 21-gun salute. [10]
National Security Council director general Eduardo Año welcomed the CPP's confirmation of the Tiamzons' death while dismissed the rebel group's accounts as a fabrication by the "CPP's propaganda machinery". He believes with the death of its prominent leader Jose Maria Sison in December 2022 and the Tiamzons in August 2022 that the Communist rebellion is left with "no direction or future". [14]
The New People's Army, abbreviated NPA or BHB, is the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP). It acts as the CPP's principal organization, aiming to consolidate political power from what it sees as the present "bourgeois reactionary puppet government" and to aid in the "people's democratic revolution". Founded on March 29, 1969, by the collaboration of Jose Maria Sison and former members of the Hukbalahap led by Bernabe Buscayno, the NPA has since waged a guerrilla war based on the Maoist strategy of protracted people's war. The NPA is one of the key figures in the ongoing Communist rebellion in the Philippines, the longest ongoing conflict in the country.
The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) is a far-left, Marxist–Leninist–Maoist revolutionary organization and communist party in the Philippines, formed by Jose Maria Sison on 26 December 1968. It is designated as a terrorist group by the United States Department of State together with Sison and its armed wing New People's Army (NPA) in 2002. The European Union renewed its terrorist designation on the organization in 2019, though a 2009 ruling by the EU's second highest court delisted Sison as a "person supporting terrorism" and reversed a decision by member governments to freeze assets. According to the US' Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) World Factbook, the CPP and the NPA aims to destabilize the Philippines' economy and overthrow the national government.
Jose Maria Canlas Sison, also known as Joma, was a Filipino writer, poet, and activist who founded and led the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and added elements of Maoism to its philosophy—which would be known as National Democracy. His ideology was formed by applying Marxism–Leninism–Maoism to the history and circumstances of the Philippines.
The National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) is a coalition of revolutionary social and economic justice organizations, agricultural unions, trade unions, indigenous rights groups, leftist political parties, and other related groups in the Philippines. It belongs to the much broader National Democracy Movement and the communist rebellion in the Philippines.
The New People's Army rebellion is an ongoing conflict between the government of the Philippines and the New People's Army (NPA), which is the armed wing of the Marxist–Leninist–Maoist Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP). It is the world's longest ongoing communist insurgency, and is the largest, most prominent communist armed conflict in the Philippines, seeing more than 43,000 insurgency-related fatalities between 1969 and 2008. Because the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) which is the legal wing of the CPP, is often associated with the conflict, it is often also called the CPP-NPA-NDF conflict, or simply the C/N/N conflict, especially in the context of peace talks with the Philippine government.
The 8th Infantry Division, Philippine Army, known officially as the Storm Trooper Division, is one of the Philippine Army's Infantry units in the Visayas and under the AFP Central Command, combating local communist insurgent units, and terrorists.
The history of communist armed conflicts in the Philippines is closely related to the history of Communism in the Philippines, with various armed conflict linked to the armed wings of the various communist organizations that have evolved since 1930. The two largest conflicts have been the Hukbalahap Rebellion of 1942–1954, and the ongoing rebellion of the New People's Army, which began in 1969 under the auspices of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP). But various splinter groups have since separated from the CPP and have had a history of armed conflict with the Philippine government since then.
The following is the timeline of events of CPP-NPA-NDF rebellion, a conflict between the government of the Philippines, the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), the New People's Army (NPA) and the National Democratic Front (NDF).
The Alex Boncayao Brigade was the urban assassination unit of the New People's Army, the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines. Organized in 1984, the unit broke away from the New People's Army as a consequence of a split in ideology during the 1990s. In 1997, the Alex Boncayao Brigade allied itself with the Revolutionary Proletarian Army, the armed wing of the Revolutionary Workers' Party.
The Second Great Rectification Movement refers to a 1992 ideological campaign initiated by the leadership of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) wherein an effort was made to "identify, repudiate and rectify the errors of urban insurrectionism, premature big formations of the New People's Army and anti-infiltration hysteria". The rectification movement resulted in the once monolithic Filipino communist party fragmenting into at least eight warring factions during the 1990s.
Benito Tiamzon was a Filipino political organizer and until his arrest in March 2014 by Philippine security forces, was believed to be the Chairman of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and its armed wing, the New People's Army (NPA).
Wilma Tiamzon was a Filipino political organizer and until her arrest in March 2014 by Philippine security forces, believed to be the Secretary-General of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and its armed wing, the New People's Army (NPA).
Gregorio Rosal also known by his nom-de-guerre Ka Roger, was the leader of the Melito Glor Command of the New People's Army (NPA) in the Southern Tagalog region of the Philippines, and spokesperson of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) from 1994 until 2006.
The Office of the Presidential Adviser on Peace, Reconciliation and Unity (OPAPRU), formerly Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process is a government agency which handles peace talks and negotiations related to internal conflict and rebellion in the Philippines most notably the CPP-NPA-NDF and Moro conflicts.
Eduardo "Ed" Drueco del Rosario is a Philippine Army veteran and government official who served as the first Secretary of Human Settlements and Urban Development of the Philippines under the Duterte administration, from January 2, 2020 to June 30, 2022. He previously served as Chairperson of the now-defunct Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council which was abolished and replaced by the Department of Human Settlements and Urban Development created through Republic Act No. 11201 on February 14, 2019. Del Rosario served 37 years in the Armed Forces of the Philippines, retiring as a major general in 2012. His service included tours as commander of the AFP Southern Luzon Command and of the 2nd Infantry Division.
The National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) is a task force organized by the government of the Philippines in 2018 as part of its "Whole-of-Nation approach" to respond to and raise awareness about ongoing communist armed conflicts in the Philippines, after the administration of President Rodrigo Duterte formally terminated peace talks between the Philippine government and the New People's Army in November 2017.
Keith Absalon, a collegiate footballer who played for the FEU Tamaraws in the University Athletic Association of the Philippines (UAAP) and his cousin, Nolven, were killed when they ran over an explosive, reportedly a landmine or an improvised explosive device, that was set up by the New People's Army (NPA) in June 2021 in Masbate City, Philippines.
Antonio Gumba Parlade Jr. is a former Filipino military officer who retired as commander of the Armed Forces of the Philippines Southern Luzon Command in 2021, and was best known for his combative terms as spokesman for the Philippine Army before he was removed from that post in 2011, and later, as spokesperson of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC).
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