Big ‘activist’ dreams: the late Jo Lapira in action.
Most mainstream news reports and opinion pieces about University of the Philippines (UP) Manila student Jo Lapira who was among the dead following a clash between the Philippine military and the New People’s Army (NPA) in Batangas the other day report who she was to friends. Rappler, for one, cites how Lapira was “a tiny activist with big dreams.”
But according to an Inquirer report, Lapira may have been a combatant and, as such, an enemy casualty in the Philippines’ war against the NPA…
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Lapera [sic] was the 15th fatality in the encounter between New People’s Army rebels and the Philippine Air Force in Nasugbu Batangas on Tuesday evening.
Fourteen rebels were killed in the clash while two Air Force officials were wounded. Of the 15, five of them were female, [Police Sr. Supt. Alden Delvo, Batangas provincial director] said.
Lapira was also reportedly a one-time deputy chairman of GABRIELA, an advocacy group supposedly focused on furthering women’s issues but, underneath this veneer, maintains close ties with the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP).
Back in 2012, groups composed of former “Red rebels” jointly named GABRIELA as one of several militant groups that are “fronts for the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), its armed wing New People’s Army (NPA) and their negotiating panel the National Democratic Front (NDF).”
The rebel returnee groups went on to say that the Makabayan groups with sitting representatives in Congress were channeling their P70-million pork barrel to fund the NPA.
“How can party-list groups that support the overthrow of the government and the country’s political system be allowed to participate in the party-list elections?” [People’s Advocacy for Collaboration and Empowerment (PEACE) president Agnes Lopez] said in an e-mailed statement.
As an affiliate of the CPP, GABRIELA also seems to enjoy certain special “services” from the NPA. Back in 2004, the Philippine Star featured a Philippine Police report asserting how the NPA “mobilized local cadres and followers to ensure the victory of six leftist party-list groups” in the national elections held that year. Among these, GABRIELA was also named.
Senior Superintendent Rodolfo Mendoza, a senior police intelligence officer who has worked in counter-insurgency operations for the past 20 years, said CPP-NPA chairman Jose Ma. Sison has given the marching orders to the members of the local communist movement to use all means to ensure that these party-list groups gain a seat in the House of Representatives.
Mendoza identified the groups being supported by the CPP-NPA as Bayan Muna, Anak ng Bayan, Gabriela Women’s Party, Anak Pawis, Migrante and the Suara Bangsamoro Party.
What Sison meant by using “all means” to win the election is subject to debate, although most Filipinos would have a pretty clear idea what that really means.
So perhaps, Jo Lapira may have been a “tiny activist with big dreams” to her friends. But to the rest of Filipinos, she could likely be just another casualty in their country’s war against a persistent terrorist threat.
benign0 is the Webmaster of GetRealPhilippines.com.
There are casualties in war. Those who don’t make it back to a place of sound hopes and dreams. Some take on their demons alone. They are deceived into fearlessness and trampled by the hooves of their oppressor.
Besides intervention, there is little justice for the thousands-upon-thousands hacked to pieces all around us.
How dare we try to take life to the next level. Instead of merely protecting ourselves or scrounging up our next meal, we have the audacity to hope for something more — a witness for our lives who will survive alongside us.
Gosh. She spent 6 years in UP jumping from course to course. What a stereotype! There’s a reason why the cautionary tale of the worried parent telling their child about to enter UP is warned not to associate with freethinkers, fratmen and militants–these groups can ruin your lives.
It’s been apparent for years, every where in the world that communist indoctrination is subtle but very obvious in Higher Education. Colleges and Universities have professors who say that Communist and Socialism is inevitable, that they should join the international revolution, support the overthrow of the government and confiscation of property for “Equality”. It’s an ideology that preaches violence in order to get equality, and everyone is equally miserable. A system that has not worked and will never worked with almost a billion list of causalities and deaths. And for years we continue to tolerate them while they continue their little worker’s revolution.
Well they dont have to look far…Almost all commy countries have abandoned its ideology either completely or partially. Yet our local commies continue to harbor the utopia of social equality. Like they say, even our own fingers ain’t the same level lol
All indoctrination be it communist, religious, capitalist, militarist or right wing is subtle, it’s how it all works and always has. Religion gets them very young, pre-school and brainwashes them for the rest of their lives. Political indoctrination depends on the country your born into and the dominant system eg USA right of centre, China communism, Holland left of centre.
Never trust Communists, they will never surrender, their ideology is rooted in envy and a black and white view in the world where they are the good guys while the bad guys are anyone they deem “Anti-Revolutionary”
When you close with the sentence, ‘ But to the rest of Filipinos, she could likely be just another casualty in their country’s war against a persistent terrorist threat.’ do you mean she was an active participant in the NPA group when she died or that she was ‘collateral damage’ of the Philippines Military during the clash?
She was forced to join them & not really a victim of the so-called “human rights violation” or EJK by our authorities. Do you think we could fool them by their propaganda & excuses? No way, we don’t want their ideology to rule our land, and if they become the rulers to our country, it’s gonna be as worst as North Korea, Cambodia under Khmer Rouge & former Soviet Union. We will build more nuclear weapons as a “Filipino Pride” & use it to defend our country from the threat of foreign invasion while the Filipino people will starve to death, tortured & suffer from the brutal regime of Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP). They are worst than our current government in spite that it is controlled by this “corrupt” & yellow stained 1987 constitution. I think in order to end the communist problems in our country immediately & to pursue the economic development in our land, President Duterte should create a law that outlaw that kind of ideology like this one from the US which is known as the Communist Control Act of 1954; then business as usual, he’ll welcome foreign companies to invest here & tell them that it’s now safe to do business here & help them to give more jobs to the Filipino people, especially the poor ones who they are the easy magnets for the communists for the past 50 years. The Red Scare in our country should end it through an iron fist & peace in our land will finally prevail!
“Youth is wasted on the young”, they used to say. If you send your daughter or son, to a universities, like the : University of the Philippines. You send him or her, to learn about the subjects, of the field, he/she is hoping to finish and graduate. Not waste his/her time on bankrupt political ideology like : communism.
Jo Lapira, the NPA casualty is a good example. Her parents, may have been slaving to earn money to send her, to college and give her a good education. So that, after graduation; she can have a good job and a good career, to better her life.
However, she wasted this opportunity in her life, fighting for an ideology, she hardly understood. She wasted her life; and now her life ends tragically, in a clash with the AFP.
Those who still believe this communist ideology is the panacea of our country’s problems. This communist ideology is a failed ideology. It has been tested, and the communist theory of workers’ utopia, is a Delusion, and a Mirage. What you see is North Korea and Cuba. Run by dictators, and people barely surviving. Jo Ma Sison, the communist supremo, is living in a lifestyle living condition in Amsterdam, Holland. While poor idiotic young woman, like , Jo Lapira, die for him !
You shouldn’t “send your daughter or son” to a university. They’re adults who should make their own decisions about these things (preferably choosing one that’s far away from the family home so they can start living independently if they know what’s good for them).
Wonder what her “big dreams” were. If it involved imposing her beliefs and views on others, and likely they are SJW things, then it’s not a dream, it’s a nightmare. Sadly, that nightmare consumed her before she could grow out of it. Yes, another Stockholm Syndrome victim at war casualty, as I see it.
Communism died by committing ideological suicide. No missiles had to be fired to bring down the Berlin wall, nor for China and Vietnam to embrace capitalism. So the CPP-NPA no longer fights for any valid belief system. All this loser group represents now is pure unadulterated extortion -> pay up or we’ll threaten to unleash organized terrorism.
The best thing to do with these hopelessly brainwashed people is to give them “free land” in Basilan along with every brand of those Islamic trouble makers (ASG, BIFF, IS-Maute…). After 10 years, they’ll end up practically wiping each other out. End of story.
No, sent them to North Korea & treated them as a slaves for Kim Jong Un & build his nuclear toys in an inhumane way. That will teach them a lesson on siding a corrupt & evil ideology like communism & religious terrorism.
When Failipino’s finally WAKE THE FUCK UP they will see that the current form of government they have, and have had for over 60 years, is rotten to the core and that no Leader or Saviour or anything of the sort is coming to their rescue or that of the country . Meanwhile, As the country continues to sink below the likes of Bangla-FRIKKIN-desh on the ‘quality of life’ scale and Filipino’s can not find a job that would pay a decent wage anywhere in the country (Call Center Agent is not a good job, its pauper wages!) there are Young people like the young L:ady in this article that are willing to lose their life for a better way of life….that is the destruction of the current political order.
Until the current form of government in the Philippines is obliterated and the scoundrels that run the country are routed ala Robespierre and a ‘Bloody Reign of Terror’ is brought to bear on the current thieves that are laughing at the people while robbing them blind, NOTHUIBGF IS GOING TO CHANGE.
People like this Young Lady should be applauded and spurred on and followed all the way to the revolt that is necessary to change the way the people live in the country, BUT, instead they suffer derision from the likes of the commenters here at GRP and just about anywhere else in the idiotic archipelago.
When the Failipino’s realize that the ideology/government/sytem tht they live under is broken BEYIND REPAIR and that it benefits NO ONE BUT THE 1% then, and only then, will they realize that people like this Young-Lady are smarter than the likes of those that deride them and MAYBE then (BUT I DOUBT AS FAILIPNIO’s ARE DENSE AS BRICKS!) a change foe the better can occur in the sorry ass country.
get a life you mudak communist, communism only works in theory, stupid fuck
YOU are the ‘STUPID FUCK’, I did not say one word about ‘COMMUNISM’ in my comment….a different form of government is all I said, YOU SHIT FOR BRAINS !
atleast she was not yellow
Idealism is like the music by the pied piper (Joma Sison) who lured the innocent yet willing victims to their destruction. The problem with Filipinos, there is no concerted and vigorous efforts to expose the crimes of Joma Sison and his ilks before the Europeans… there’s no anti-communist network to counter the leftist propaganda… no visible organization that takes that cudgel in behalf and for the Filipinos…. it is one aspect that we Filipinos fail…