EDITORIAL | Weapon

The Court of Appeals’ decision on Friday affirming the conviction in the so-called Talaingod 13 case is not about the closure of Lumad schools or about criminalizing compassion. It is not about weaponizing the law against humanitarian work. And it is certainly not about denying the Lumad the right to education.

It is about the Lumad children. More precisely, it is about the children who were knowingly and willfully placed in harm’s way by adults who understood the risks, understood the context of armed conflict, and who knew exactly who was really calling the shots—but proceeded with their plan anyway.

The ruling is clear on this point. What happened in November 2018 was not a spontaneous act of mercy. It was a deliberate operation carried out in a conflict zone, involving minors, without safeguards, and under circumstances that any reasonable adult, especially seasoned political actors, would have recognized as dangerous. 

For more than seven years, the so-called Talaingod 13 and the CPP’s legal and political machinery have insisted on a simplified, misleading narrative: that they were mere “rescuers,” that the children were passive victims of state attacks, and that the mission was purely humanitarian. The courts, both the Regional Trial Court and the Court of Appeals, after weighing evidence and testimony, rejected that version. They saw through the half-truths and omissions, particularly the careful avoidance of responsibility for the consequences of the act.

In the heated public debate—whether the ruling was an “attack on compassion” or simply the law catching up with those who broke it—one voice has been consistently sidelined: the Lumad communities themselves. Because they have already decided.

In July 2024, after the RTC’s promulgation convicting the Talaingod 13, more than 500 Lumad leaders and parents took to the streets to make clear that they want accountability. They want those responsible to face justice. They do not demand to reopen the Lumad schools established by the CPP. They want schools provided by the government that protect children and do not double as political or logistical instruments for the CPP-NPA. They want sustained support that addresses the material conditions, such as poverty, limited access to services, and neglect, that made their communities vulnerable to radicalization in the first place.

What they do not want is to be used again as symbols, shields, or slogans.

The CPP and its legal fronts will certainly elevate the case to the Supreme Court. But if public discourse continues to erase Lumad agency, if we continue to refuse to put the Lumad front and center in this struggle for their future, if narratives are allowed to harden without challenge, we risk making yet another jurisprudence—another myth like “red-tagging”—to be turned into a weapon.