DEEP DIVES | Money, Messaging, and the Mask: How ISMs Fund and Front for the CPP

Part One showed how “solidarity missions,” like the recent International Learning and Solidarity Missions in Mindoro, Negros and Eastern Visayas, are quietly choreographed by CPP-aligned networks to shape narratives and recruit sympathizers. This second installment follows the money and the command chain, as we trace how curated field visits become grant pitches and personal appeals, how funds move through legal fronts into guerrilla logistics, and how centrally directed task forces convert overseas goodwill into pressure campaigns that reinforce the movement’s “white area” struggle at home.

MANILA, Philippines—One rarely discussed function of ISMs is fundraising, not only for public-facing campaigns but for the armed struggle itself. Testimonies from former rebels and ex-urban operators, along with CPP documents and memoranda, indicate that a share of these funds is funneled into the Party’s campaign machinery, from media production and propaganda to procurement and other logistical needs in rural guerrilla zones.

Building on that, organizers use the exposure trips to legitimize funding proposals to international donors, NGOs, rights advocacy groups, and church-institutions abroad. Once foreign participants witness first-hand (yet skewed) accounts of suffering and hear testimonies framed by Party-aligned spokespersons, it becomes easier for organizers to use the narrative for different line works of the Party.

From there, the play is simple: package grant proposals or “humanitarian aid” for supposedly distressed or harassed activists, unionists, development workers, human-rights defenders, or “beneficiary communities.” Arlene, a former officer of a union under a national democratic–aligned federation and labor center, said that when she was a full-time cadre for a labor institution clandestinely run by the CPP, they could secure quick grants upwards of ₱200,000 per individual case of a “harassed unionist” from foreign funding agencies.

In parallel, they keep a domestic pipeline running by routing money through local front organizations. A former full-time CPP cadre who worked in a church-based NGO said they drafted proposals based on “issues” that were curated during solidarity missions in IP areas of Mindanao, then used community-based groups established by the Party to receive foreign donations and quietly purchase hammocks, backpacks, radios, and other field essentials for NPA units. “The key there is what we call ‘credible reality,’” the source said. “It’s essentially creative nonfiction that reports donations as aid to IP communities when, in practice, a portion is diverted to guerrilla fronts.”

At the same time, a more personal stream is cultivated from the delegations themselves, where organizers solicit individual donations from emotionally-invested delegates. Organizers prime this by curating site visits (bereaved families, wounded “community volunteers,” shuttered Lumad schools) and staging tightly guided conversations that emphasize urgency, neglect, and moral clarity. 

The narrative arc is classic donor psychology: witness, be outraged, mobilize agency. Delegates are handed “immediate needs” lists (food packs, school kits, legal fees, transport for displaced victims), QR codes for instant transfers, while larger gifts are routed through partner NGOs that can issue acknowledgments or tax receipts. After the trip, chat groups and email briefings act as stewardship pipelines to share selected photos, “impact updates,” and fresh appeals (“another raid,” “a volunteer arrested,” “children displaced again”). 

Some international solidarity work teams tier contributions (one-off gifts, monthly “solidarity tithes,” sponsorships of specific families or “community workers”), and use memorialized stories such as anniversaries of martyrs or killings to trigger repeat giving.

The Real Command Behind the Curtain

While public-facing national democratic groups claim independence, multiple Party memoranda reviewed by this reporter, which were sourced from seized documents and materials surrendered by former rebels, indicate that real direction flows from the CPP’s central organs, particularly the Executive Committee or the Politburo. The on-the-ground execution is carried out by embedded Party members operating through urban-based Party groups or committees. These organizers, often legally untouchable because they work inside registered NGOs and networks, are strategically placed to steer “solidarity missions” while maintaining a veneer of institutional autonomy.

On the ground, that central guidance often turns into direct regional control. A clear example is the 2018 Talaingod, Davao del Norte “solidarity mission” involving former Bayan Muna Rep. Satur Ocampo and ACT Teachers Rep. France Castro, who ferried Lumad students and teachers without coordinating with parents and authorities, an episode later prosecuted in Tagum City. On July 15, 2024, RTC Branch 2 convicted Ocampo, Castro, and others of child abuse under RA 7610, sentencing them to up to six years and eight months in prison. The defendants posted bail and have appealed to the Court of Appeals, while allied groups mounted campaigns to “reverse the unjust decision.”

According to a former CPP cadre with intimate knowledge of the events, as the episode unfolded, national-democratic organizations belatedly recast the incident as a “solidarity mission,” a public damage-control move. Former Reps. Ocampo and Castro were never meant to ferry the students and teachers themselves out of Talaingod. The regional CPP committee, said the source, maneuvered to send them anyway, both to confer a veneer of legitimacy on the “rescue” and to deter possible intervention by authorities. The fallout, especially the subsequent court case, reportedly strained relations between the regional committee and the national leadership, with the latter questioning the judgment behind the move. 

Tightly Run

Otherwise, most of the time the façade holds because the backroom is tightly run. Party documents and insider testimonies describe “Central Task Forces” that coordinate international work under direct mandates from the CPP’s International Department, which ensure that Party-led NGOs and coalitions provide a respectable front while strategy is set elsewhere. 

At the height of the International Department’s influence, these task forces choreographed travel circuits in the U.S., Europe, and Asia and sent sectoral delegations (indigenous leaders, women, workers, church advocates) to parliaments, conferences, and university forums abroad to lobby for sanctions or aid conditionalities, reaffirm talking points, and cultivate donors. Crucially, many hosts were former participants of Philippine solidarity missions who now reciprocated by arranging venues, media, and meetings. 

Political education ran in parallel. ISM participants received modules that reframed their field notes within Marxist-Leninist-Maoist analysis. During the pandemic, the program migrated online. Sources recount how Zoom and Google Meet became routine classrooms for exposure debriefings, cadre-led readings, and assignment of follow-on campaign tasks. 

All of this feeds back into the “white area” parliamentary struggle, where international endorsements, open letters, and hearing testimonies are looped into legal campaigns, campus resolutions, and legislative lobbying at home. These tactics give the movement dual pressure points: sympathetic audiences abroad and policy levers in urban institutions that amplify the same narrative.

The White Area Struggle: Parliamentary as Complement to the Armed

The so-called “white area,” a revolutionary term for urban and legal engagement, is where ISMs most effectively operate. The missions serve as a convergence point between legal activism and illegal revolutionary work.

With that blend of legality and compelling narrative, participants who return home from solidarity missions are often tapped to convert their “witnessing” into pressure campaigns. They lobby their own governments and parliaments to suspend aid, training, or security cooperation with the Philippine state. They organize protests, campus tours, webinars, and media briefings that frame AFP operations as human-rights crises, and serve as validators who publish travelogues, run and campaign for open letters, brief NGOs and church networks to legitimize the national-democratic movement’s narrative for international audiences. Over time, these activities create a feedback loop where diplomatic and donor pressure rises abroad. Local actors, in turn, cite that pressure to amplify allegations at home, and the same solidarity networks present the resulting headlines as proof that their initial claims were true.

In essence, these missions act as international extensions of the Party’s mass line, ensuring that while bullets are being fired in the countryside, pens and microphones are being wielded abroad.

To be sure, not all participants of these solidarity missions are aware of their complicity in a larger violent political agenda. Many, if not most, are genuine in their desire to help impoverished communities. But the selective framing of facts, ideological slant of facilitators, and absence of contextual balance results in participants being emotionally swayed into advocacy that directly benefits insurgent groups.

One European activist, speaking on condition of anonymity, expressed surprise upon learning of the links. “We came to help farmers, not fund an insurgency,” she said. But now I realize the narratives we were told were tightly controlled. The presence of armed elements was never mentioned. We were shown only what fit their message.”

Pulling Back the Curtain on Revolutionary Diplomacy

International solidarity, when grounded in transparency and accountability, can be a powerful force for good. But when humanitarian ideals are co-opted by armed revolutionary movements, the line between activism and insurgency becomes dangerously blurred.

The International Learning Solidarity Mission, as organized recently in Mindoro, Eastern Visayas and Negros under the direction of Party-aligned groups, serve not so much as to expose injustice but to expand revolutionary influence, recruit cadres, and raise funds for an armed struggle that has claimed tens of thousands of lives over the decades.

As the international community continues to engage with grassroots struggles in the Philippines, due diligence, critical scrutiny, and ideological neutrality must become non-negotiable. Otherwise, well-meaning global allies may find themselves unwitting participants in a war they neither chose nor fully understand.