Monday, December 11, 2006 Capillas: Propaganda war By Stephen Capillas The Lowdown
THIS writer happened to pass by the Divisoria area in Cagayan de Oro last Thursday and was surprised to see a crowd gathered at the City Kiosk where a feature film showing the evils of communism was playing.
If memory serves, the day before there was a lecture given on religion and the church, which may signify something.
Whether the two were related one can only speculate but the timing is interesting due to a summit on human rights that was supposed to be held yesterday at one of the restaurants here in the city.
One thing that was noticed though is the presence of soldiers patrolling the area around the City Kiosk and the crowd that gathered to watch the film, which may be loosely based on the "Knowing The Enemy" tapes distributed sometime ago.
The showing came as the country is experiencing turbulent political and social times ahead.
As most people know by now the militant groups have been accusing the military of a host of killings that claimed the lives of their own as well as members of the national and local media.
In turn, the military hits back by saying the accusations are unfair and that it is the communist New People's Army (NPA) that had also been responsible for killing former militants who returned to the fold of the law.
Hence the military decided to fight back and engage in its own propaganda efforts by holding feature film showings that contain the same material as the "enemies of the state" film that had been denounced by some media groups in the past year or so -- groups like the National Union of Journalists in the Philippines (NUJP) which was reportedly identified by the military as being among those linked to the communists.
This was denied by the military of course in hopes of avoiding the media as enemy and then it began showing feature films that clearly identified some of these groups like Sanlakas, Karapatan, Gabriela, Bayan Muna, Bayan, Kilusang Mayo Uno and Anakpawis as legal fronts of the Communist Party of the Philippines-National Democratic Front-New People's Army (CPP-NDF-NPA).
Hence, whenever there are reports of killings of people identified with these and other suspected legal front groups these militants identify the military as the culprits since they were included in the "enemies of state" list.
But then these groups have yet to issue their stance on the many killings done by the NPA on suspected double agents during the "Operation Ahos" more than two decades ago.
Having said that, the military and the police should continue with their programs -- after all, there is freedom of information as well as freedom to discern and decide for oneself which is true and which are lies -- if only to give the public yet another aspect of the ongoing war against the insurgency.
For questions and comments please write to sunspot12002@yahoo.com or warpath1232@yahoo.com
