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Philippines designates NDF as terrorist group


The Anti-Terrorism Council (ATC) has designated the National Democratic Front (NDF) as a terrorist organization over its links to the communist rebels.

According to the ATC, the NDF is “an integral and inseparable part” of the Communist Party of the Philippines-New People’s Army (CPP-NPA), which were designated as terror groups last December.

“Article X [of the 2016 CPP Constitution] shows that the NDF aka NDFP (National Democratic Front of the Philippines) is the core and most consolidated group that provides support to the armed and organizational expansion of the CPP-NPA,” the ATC said in a resolution dated June 23.

“Members of the NDF aka NDFP continue to lure and/or recruit people to join the NPA, while the CPP itself admitted and maintained, through public media releases as well as in CPP documents and revelations of former members, the direct and indispensable role of the NDF aka NDFP in its armed operations,” it added.

The designation would trigger the government’s authority to freeze assets of the NDF, which was established in April 1973.

A request for delisting may be filed before the ATC within 15 days from publication of the designation.

Last April, the ATC designated as terrorists exiled CPP founding chairman Jose Maria Sison, his wife Julieta, and the rest of the 19-member central committee of the CPP.

Sison dismissed the designation as “arbitrary and dubious.”

Petitions challenging the constitutionality of the anti-terror law are pending before the Supreme Court. — RSJ, GMA News

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