The Ignominy of War

June 12, 2021 Sideglance

As far as collateral damage goes the savage death in Masbate of Kieth Absalon, a 21-year-old bemedalled football player for Far Eastern University (FEU), brought about by the explosion of a landmine planted by members of the New Peoples Army (NPA), is a rude wake up call and revelation of the despicable and abhorrent nature of war.

Now is the time to impress upon the people of this republic that the armed conflict being waged by the communist insurgents has no place in a civilized and modern society, in a democratic nation that values life and human rights. The sudden and violent death of Kieth and his cousin Nolvin is truly an injustice and an extreme debasement of the human right to life.

What makes this injustice more grave is the fact that Keith and his cousin Nolvin were killed by an instrument of war, a landmine, that was supposed to be prohibited by various international laws of the world.

In fact in March 16, 1998 in the Hague, Netherlands, a comprehensive agreement was signed between the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP) and the National Democratic Front (NDF), the political wing of the CPP-NPA representing it in peace negotiations, on respect for human rights and international humanitarian law, which included a ban on the use of landmines.

In the incident that snuffed out the lives of Kieth and his cousin in Masbate it is now revealed that the communist insurgents apparently had no intention of abiding in the agreement to ban the use of landmines. We then must ask, do these so called NPA rebels really adhere to what they claim that they are staunch defenders of human rights and fighters for the downtrodden and oppressed?

If they claim to value human life then in the war that they continue to wage against the government they should have the decency stop using landmines. It is important to understand that a landmine as it is defined, “are basically explosive devices that are designed to blow when triggered by pressure or a tripwire.

These devices are typically found on or just below the surface of the ground. The purpose of mines when used by armed forces is to disable any person or vehicle that comes into contact with it by an explosion or fragments released at high speeds.” In other words these type of explosive devices does not discriminate. It basically has no specific and definite target except those unlucky enough to step on them.

In general, as claimed by the NPA rebels they placed the landmines to maim and kill government soldiers and destroy their military equipment. But such is the nature of the said explosive that it can also be detonated not only by soldiers and their tanks but also civilian vehicles and noncombatants such as what happened to the Absalon cousins.

The Absalon cousins are rightfully victims of a war that has been going on for the past fifty years. They have become part of the so called collateral damage in a conflict that is now being aggressively confronted by the government with the aim to finally end it.

By this tragedy we now also realize the senselessness and futility of an armed conflict wage by a communist group whose only objective is to topple the existing democratic government and replace it with a kind of government that they may call their own.