CTGs now engage online to recruit students

 By: Jayson R. Aucensillo

Zamboanga City, Apr 02 (PIA) -- Most of the youth especially students have access to several online educational applications today and thru this, the Communist-Terrorist Groups (CTGs) consider the platform as an advantage to convince more students to join their movement against the Philippine bureaucracy.

The National Intelligence Coordinating Agency (NICA) affirmed that the CTGs online gathering is one of the major concerns of the National Task Force - Ending Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC), as they couldn’t stop students from joining these virtual engagements.

“They are really aggressive in using virtual applications like twitter and per our monitoring, somewhere here in our country, almost every day they conduct virtual indoctrination and radicalization of wrong ideologies among students,” NICA Director General Alex Paul I. Monteagudo said in an interview with the Philippine Information Agency (PIA)-9 during his visit recently.

The Director General also clarified that inevery activity, the Communist Party of the Philippines - New People’s Army - National Democratic Front (CPP-NPA-NDF) injects political angles to the discussions such as the laws, sexual exploitations and the failures of Philippine justice system.

“They talk these things to the youth and eventually, they (youth) will blame the whole bureaucracy and the whole system of the government that will challenge them to replace the system because of injustices,” Director General Monteagudo said.

He also emphasized that CTGs are really good at teaching hatreds.

Meanwhile, the NTF-ELCAC is really at the peak on strengthening the virtual information campaign as social media is currently the most effective in information dissemination in countering the CPP-NPA-NDF’s narratives at the digital warfare.

“The CPP-NPA-NDF propaganda is like a virus. When it is planted in your brain even a little, this will grow,” he said.

The Director General advised the youth as they are the future and the most vulnerable to CTGs recruitment, to always be cautious in attending political forums and not believe the persuasive speeches of the leftist groups.

“Ang mga sinasabi nila may katotohanan pero sinasabayan ito ng mga kasinungalingan, kaya hindi ninyo namamalayan na niloloko na kayo. Kaya huwag na huwag magpapaloko!” Monteagudo concluded. (NBE/JRA/PIA9-Zamboanga City)