united front is for the armed struggle... Both the revolutionary armed struggle and the united front have their respective ways of arousing, organizing and mobilizing the broad masses of the people. The revolutionary armed struggle has made possible solid mass organizing and building organs of political power in the countryside. The united front has aroused, organized and mobilized the people in the entire country in order to facilitate their eventual organization by the Party. Legal united front work has directly helped in the organizational work of legal democratic mass organizations.89 85. The CPP also asserts that the “legal united front work has directly helped in the organizational work of legal democratic mass organizations”90 and that its Party members are recruited “from the armed revolutionary movement and the legal democratic mass movement.”91 With this, it is a given that that the CPP would be recruiting leaders among the masses who would promote its ideological agenda. 86. To be sure, mere belief in the communist ideology is not a crime, with RA 7636, repealing RA No. 1700, or the Anti-Subversion Act of 1957.92 What remains outlawed is the participation, in its varied forms, in rebellion against the state. 87. While some members of certain organizations may support the armed struggle, it is very likely that most of the other members recruited into these organizations have no idea on what communism or revolutionary struggle is about, or even that their leaders might be supporting the NPA. Many of them may be devoid of revolutionary ideology, joining movements merely to articulate discontent, or to advance specific advocacies, such as the preservation of ancestral domains, or the implementation of agrarian reform, or improvement in the delivery of justice, health care, education, and other social services. The existence of these groups and the freedom they exercise in articulating issues should be viewed as badges of a vibrant democracy, and not as attacks against the State. 88. Thus, it troubles this Commission that members of ICCs are quickly tagged as NPAs or sympathizers of the armed struggle, simply on account of membership in organizations which seek to defend ancestral domains. Tribal 89 Philip Alston, Report of the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions: Mission to Philippines A/ HRC/8/3/Add.2 16, April 2008, FN 16(citing CPP, Ang Bayan, Message of the Central Committee, “Further strengthen the Communist Party of the Philippines to lead the people’s democratic revolution) at 31.85 Commission on Human Rights of the Philippines (CHRP), Submission to the Universal Periodic Review – Philippines, June 2012, para. 33. 90 Id. 91 Id. 92 Section 2 of the law provided that “the Communist Party of the Philippines [is] an organized conspiracy to overthrow the government of the Republic of the Philippines for the purpose of establishing in the Philippines a totalitarian regime and place the government under the control and domination of an alien power. The said party and any other organization having the same purpose and their successors are hereby declared illegal and outlawed.” Section 4 of the law punished “whoever knowingly, willfully and by overt acts affiliates himself with, becomes or remains a member of the Communist Party of the Philippines and/or its successor or of any subversive association as defined in section two.” 21