By DENCIO MADRIGAL
Commander, Valentin Palamine Command
New People's Army – Far South Mindanao Region
Other versions: Bisaya
May we inform the public that a certain Donita Rose Baro, a 15 year old lumad of Dungan Fekong, Matanao, Davao del Sur, who has been recently presented to the media by the 39th Infantry Battalion of the Philippine Army as another "child warrior", has never been recruited in the ranks of the New People's Army operating in Matanao or in any area of the Far South Mindanao Region.
It is alarming how, in a desperate effort to show the world that the NPA is violating the human rights law, children and minors are being used by the 39th IB – PA and paraded in public without a single concern for the psychological trauma and physical pain inflicted on them. These poor children and minors are harassed and coerced to tell lies as part of the black propaganda machinery of the Armed Forces of the Philippines. Their parents are pushed to cooperate else they be branded as "rebels" or "terrorists", creating havoc in the family and in the community.
It would be well for Col. Lyndon Panisa of the 39th IB to understand that they cannot win the war through lies and black propaganda but will isolate them even further away from the people and into the dustbin of history.
