End of an era for CPP-NPA in Bohol
WITH the death of Domingo Compoc last February 23, a chapter of the communist insurgency in Bohol has ended. The circumstances surrounding the violent deaths of Compoc and his four comrades in Barangay Campagao, Bilar, are still being vigorously debated. The authorities on one side and on the other, the national democratic movement — the Communist Party of the Philippines and allied aboveground and underground organizations — are insisting on their respective version of events. Shootout or massacre, however, will not alter the fact that the death of the leader of the CPP-NPA Bohol marks the end of a brief era that began in 2017 when Compoc was deployed to Bohol as commanding officer of a platoon and deputy secretary of the Bohol provincial committee (Apolinario Gatmaitan Command-NPA Negros Island, March 1, 2024).
In 2010, after decades of insurgency, Bohol had been declared insurgencyfree. The late governor Erico Aumentado, the father of incumbent Gov. Aris Aumentado, is credited with turning an insurgency-plagued, povertyridden province into a peaceful tourist destination. However, in 2017, while Bohol’s police and military were busy chasing Abu Sayyaf terrorists, the NPA fired shots at a Cafgu detachment in Inabanga. More incidents of harassment followed in the next seven years, as did liquidations and encounters.
I have counted 14 murders and two attempted murders carried out by suspected members of the NPA since May 2017, but there are likely more (Bohol was not spared the previous administration’s bloody war on drugs, so the province has countless unsolved murder cases). Nine of the abovementioned attacks took place between Oct. 30, 2020 and June 26, 2021. Local folks were executed by the
NPA for being “military intelligence assets” or “government informants,” or they were members of Cafgu.
Of encounters, including brief exchanges of fire, there have been at least 13, seven of which took place in Bilar. The first one after the resurgence of the NPA was on May 15, 2018 and in Campagao, where also the most recent clash happened (Campagao is adjacent to Barangay Dagohoy from where Compoc hailed). Majority of armed clashes, liquidations and harassment operations took place in this particular corner of Bohol: neighboring or nearby barangay in Bilar, Batuan, Sevilla and Balilihan.
During the earlier part of the revival attempt, a training camp complete with CRs and connecting foxholes (2018) and a camp with 20 bunkers (late 2019) were discovered. A month after the discovery of the bunkers, the NPA used AK-47 and M-16 rifles to harass a jungle training base of the Philippine Army.
On Feb. 29, 2020, a soldier was killed in an encounter in Bilar, suggesting the growing strength of the rebels. Later that year, as many as 80 armed rebels were reportedly spotted in Batuan’s hinterlands.
The next major clash occurred on May 25 the following year (2021). The NPA lost five combatants. Romeo “Ka Marlon” Nabas, then the deputy secretary of the Bohol party committee, was among the fatalities. He was “one of the cadres tasked and deployed to Bohol [from Negros] for the party’s reestablishment and strengthening of armed struggle,” according to a statement from the CPP Bohol Party Committee dated May 29, 2021. Nabas, one of three brothers from Batuan who became rebels, joined the NPA in 1984.
Fast forward to Sept. 7, 2023, Barangay Campagao, Bilar. Six rebels, including a son of Compoc and a younger brother of Romeo Nabas, perished in a series of successive encounters. Sarangani native Kerlan Fanagel, a prominent personality in the national democratic movement’s indigenous peoples sectoral organizations, was one of the slain rebels.
There has been a barrage of statements from the CPP and aboveground national democratic organizations following the February 23 operation. However, I could only find a “Red salute” for Romeo Nabas from the CPP Bohol after the September clash. The other casualties were not even named.
Is the renewed vigor in speaking in unison a result of the Third Rectification Movement? The party’s top leadership, in a Dec. 26, 2023 article, lamented “the tendency of the legal democratic forces to overly demarcate themselves from the armed struggle in response to enemy propaganda, instead of asserting the justness of waging armed resistance against tyranny.”
But back to Bohol. The CPP-NPA revival efforts were not frustrated by the military but by the lack of support from the population. Says a local observer: “Compoc and his groups have lost the support of the people. They have murdered a lot of people who are not notorious and have not promoted justice and something positive. They have created terror in the hearts and minds of the people. … For now, the people trust the government … in terms of promoting justice, peace and development.” Good governance is the key to defeating insurgency, in Bohol and in the entire archipelago.