It’s far stranger than it sounds — by Matt Florence

For people unfamiliar with what is happening in the Philippines here is the short version of events. There are communist rebels in the poorest rural farming areas of the Philippines called the New People’s Army of the Philippines (NPA) and these rebels are currently at war against the government of the Philippines. Recent attempts at a peace deal between the Filipino government and the Communist rebels failed in early 2017 due to the Filipino government breaking its promise to release communist political prisoners.

Yesterday a radio station belonging to the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) called Katropa DWDD posted photographs on their Facebook page showing a school which they claimed was burned down by the NPA communist rebels. The Facebook post with the photographs were accompanied with the following caption:

“School facilities were burned by the NPA when their extortion attempts failed. The rebel group asked their share in the fund which was intended for the feeding program for the students. The teachers refused to give in to their demands so the NPA resorted to such terroristic acts.”

The Facebook post accusing the NPA communists of destroying a school.

This Facebook post currently has 11,649 shares and 4,400 reacts on Facebook. However this story was questioned by the English speaking Filipino news website davaotoday.com which says they interviewed the head of the City Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office of Valencia City who clarified “that the school allegedly burned by the New People’s Army was actually gutted due to short circuit.”

The NPA communists do often impose taxes on businesses and large landlords within territory with high communist activity, however there have been no known cases of NPA communists terrorizing schools or even charging said taxes from ordinary working class Filipinos. The Filipino communists responded with their own Facebook post on Philippine Revolution Web Central which is a Facebook page belonging to the Communist Party of the Philippines, the democratic non-armed wing of the NPA communist rebels. According to the Communists:

The Communist rebels of the Philippines are armed with grenade launchers, modern rifles and light machine guns, yet according to the Filipino military these heavily armed communists trained in guerrilla warfare somehow failed to steal lunch money from children.

There is currently no proof that the NPA communist rebels ever touched this school and given the available evidence it seems most likely that this is a false accusation. The timing is also very convenient since the NPA communists were celebrating their founding anniversary the very same day these arson related accusations were made.

For further information on the communist rebels watch the videos below: