Bulatlat story on Dingding omitted one crucial fact: NPA itself claimed him as communist, Red fighter

For a journalism outfit that is known to cover the CPP and the NPA even when no one does, Bulatlat seems to have missed one crucial detail in its reportage of the Cauayan encounter where University of the Philippines and Kabataan Partylist alumnys Francis Vince “Ka Poy” Dingding was killed: that he was a member of the Communist Party of the Philippines and the New People’s Army.

In its May 23 report titled “Unclear AFP custody of slain activist’s body sparks rights concerns,” Bulatlat framed Dingding primarily as a slain activist, former student leader, and rights advocate whose death raised questions about militarization, red-tagging, and the handling of his remains.

The article, which heavily cited Karapatan Central Visayas, focused on the alleged unclear circumstances surrounding the custody of Dingding’s body after he was killed in a May 16 military operation in Cauayan, Negros Occidental, together with four other members of the New People’s Army.

The report raised questions on whether Dingding’s family was pressured after the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict released a handwritten letter signed by his parents saying they would no longer claim his body and that local officials in Cauayan would facilitate the burial.

But the Bulatlat report also left out a central fact that should have shaped the story: the NPA itself had already claimed Dingding as one of its own.

Three days after the Cauayan clash, the NPA itself honored Dingding in a tribute titled “Communist, Red Army!” It called him “Ka Poy,” “a cadre of the Party,” and “a young intellectual and red fighter” who “abandoned the urban life” for “armed revolution.” These are the NPA’s own words.

When reportage takes its cue from the truth and not from a preferred narrative, the armed identity and organizational role of the dead become matters of public importance. This is especially true in Cauayan, where the organization involved is not an ordinary political groupThe CPP-NPA is an armed movement implicated in the deaths of close to 50 Negrosanons through summary executions, punitive actions, and attacks against those it accused of being enemies or informants.

That is why the public conversation around Cauayan cannot be reduced to one body, one family letter, or one funeral home. It is also about how narratives are built after every encounter, and how certain facts are highlighted while others are glossed over.

Rights groups have called for an independent investigation into the Cauayan operation. That call can stand. But any serious inquiry into the incident must also begin with a complete account of who was involved, including the NPA’s own admission that Dingding was not merely a former student leader or activist, but a communist cadre and Red fighter. Otherwise, the public is asked to examine only one side of the story

This is precisely what former rebels have warned against. They argue that the tragedy of Cauayan is not merely that a former student leader died. The deeper tragedy is that a young man who once moved in open civic spaces eventually entered an underground armed path within an organization whose operations have left many Negrosanon families grieving.

That is the harder story, one which Bulatlat and all the other “alternative media” seem to find difficult to write. It is also the story that cannot be told if Dingding is remembered only as a “slain activist,” and not also as the person the NPA itself called a “communist, Red Army.”