OP-ED | Ceeka Garzon and the CPP-NPA’s Pattern of Ironic Exploitation

Charlize “Ceeka” Garzon, known as “Ka Kaye” inside the movement, was captured by government forces on March 29, 2026, during an armed encounter in Sitio Salafay, Barangay Monteclaro, San Jose, Occidental Mindoro. She is a magna cum laude graduate of De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde, where she earned a degree in Arts Management.

From the perspective of someone who was once part of the revolutionary movement, Garzon is a victim—but it would be simplistic to claim that it is the government that victimized her. She is a victim of the New People’s Army (NPA) and the organizations linked to it.

Well-educated young people like Garzon do not suddenly decide to join the NPA on their own. They are usually recruited through a process of ideological grooming. The movement identifies idealistic students, slowly introduces them to its ideology, and gradually convinces them that armed struggle is the only solution. This grooming explains why someone with a bright future would leave school and family to join an armed group.

Garzon’s case is particularly unfortunate. Her mother, who is a solo-parent, worked hard and spent a lot of money to send her to a prestigious university. Instead of using her education and talent productively, she was going to spend her prime years serving the CPP-NPA. But now that she’s captured, she will probably be spending it in jail, given being charged for the death of an Army Officer, and wounding two others. She’s looking to lose these important years of her life. But for the organization, this is not just an unfortunate event. It can be an opportunity to do propaganda and finance work.

If convicted, she will likely spend several more years in prison. Her former comrades will call this a “sacrifice for the masses.” However, many of those who recruited her and sent her to the field are not the ones risking their lives in actual operations. They stay in safer positions while young recruits like Garzon face the consequences. We have a saying when I was still in the movement: “Kung hindi mo kayang sumampa, magpasampa ka!”

The movement is expected to claim that Garzon was illegally arrested or abducted by the state. They will use her situation as material for propaganda and human rights campaigns, glossing over the very obvious fact that she was captured during an armed engagement with NPA combatants. This has become the standard response of our previous “legal”  organizations. They will call for people to rise up to what they call “an injustice,” claiming she was indeed just a mere activist.

This tactic creates a deeper problem for the movement itself. By repeatedly describing active NPA members as “innocent activists” or “abducted civilians,” its spokespeople gradually weaken the credibility of genuine human rights concerns. When every encounter is framed as government abuse, regardless of the circumstances, public trust eventually erodes. People begin to doubt even legitimate allegations of violations. Ironically, this narrative also strips the NPA of the very political identity it claims to uphold. The movement often portrays joining the armed struggle as a conscious and heroic “higher form of sacrifice.” Yet when someone like Ceeka Garzon is captured in the course of that struggle, the same organizations suddenly deny that she was a combatant at all. In trying to protect the narrative, they end up contradicting it.

This contradiction becomes even clearer when we listen to the slogans by national democratic mass organizations (NDMOs) now circulating in the campaign for Garzon’s release. For years, these same organizations have urged young activists to resist what they describe as a “rotten system” and to dedicate their lives to a national democratic revolution, with armed struggle as the highest form, the primary and real solution. But when a young activist actually follows that path and faces the consequences of joining the armed movement, whether capture or death, the message abruptly changes. Suddenly the revolutionary fighter becomes “just an activist,” and the armed struggle they once praised is being denied. Oh no! They’re just harmless civilians and activists doing research work! Armed struggle? What’s that?! The irony is difficult to miss: a movement that glorifies revolutionary sacrifice cannot fully acknowledge it when it happens.

What’s the ideology behind that contradiction? To me, it’s no longer a tactic hiding behind ambiguity. It’s cowardice of leaders sitting comfortably in their positions. It’s the mandate of these leaders making the campaign line a defensive line. For them, the real principles of revolution, which is the advancement of communist ideology to the masses, is a hindrance to their way of life. Particularly, these leaders in the legal parliamentary struggle.

Garzon is not the first educated youth drawn into this cycle, and she will not be the last. As long as the CPP-NPA-NDFP legal fronts continue to recruit young people to be pawns and place them in dangerous situations while senior cadres remain protected, similar cases will keep happening. 

It is true that there are systemic problems that need to be addressed, but we’re at the point in history where the victimization of the youth at the altar of armed struggle is not the true solution. Their energy must be channeled to constructively resolving the issues of society.  

In the case of Ganzon, and many others like her, the issue is the systematic exploitation of young idealism for a struggle that no longer matches the realities of the country today. The Filipino people do not need more young graduates carrying arms in the mountains. They need capable individuals who can contribute through productive work and peaceful means especially in times of global war and crises. 

(The author is a former member of the revolutionary movement and is currently involved in peace and development programs in Southern Luzon.)