Tingog.com

In a recent headline the NPA admitted that they were behind the killing (assassination, murder, etc) of Daram Mayor Benito Astorga. I wrote about this last week on Thursday, and it was breaking news then. I talked to my cousin over in the region and he wasn’t surprised, and he immediately told me it was the NPA.

In a statement, the NPA Arnulfo Ortiz Command accused Mayor Benito Astorga of Daram, Samar of having committed injustices, including the killings of civilians in Barangay Birawan where he was shot dead.

Astorga, 47, was attending a benefit dance as part of Birawan’s fiesta celebration when five men attacked him. He sustained five gunshot wounds in the head, chest and other parts of the body. (via)

But, was it really the NPA? Of course, The NPA is always ready to lay claim to supposed major victories on their end, but in some cases, these claims turn out to be overstated or even false.

But what if it really was the NPA? It brings us to the question, do two wrongs make a right? Can a group really be proud of such an achievement, when they take the law into their own hands? I’ve never liked the NPA and I will never support such acts of violence. In my opinion, violence only breeds violence, and the outcome will never be the intended peace that these soldiers wish to believe they fight for.

And what if the NPA wasn’t involved? Camp Crame says that Astorga could possibly be the first victim of election-related violence for this year in the run-up to the May mid-term polls.

SIDEBAR: on the NPA and Military

My father’s side of the family is from the Samar region, and I have spent a lot of time in Western Samar, and these things are so everyday that it really doesn’t come as a shock to me anymore.

Here’s a little tidbit about the NPA and the military feud over there and how silly it can become while being deadly serious at the same time. Once, I was going back to the Province, going on vacation from Cebu, and we passed what seemed to me a brief stint of highway in which there were a few large-sized Manila paper plastered on cement walls. I asked a fellow passenger what they were, and he explained to me that this was sort of a game the military and the NPA played against each other.

You see, the NPA would write something bad about the military soldiers near the outpost in that area, saying that this area belonged to the NPA and that the military was not welcomed. The next day the military would put up their own poster and write in big letters that the NPA was this and that, and so on. It became like an elementary school feud between rival kiddie groups, which I thought was so hilarious. Here you have grown men, laying their lives on the line, and acting like children at the same time.

It’s like you’re in another world sometimes, and your neighbor could literally be an NPA soldier, you really never know.