• GILBERT P. BAYORAN
The National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) has described Negros Island as the “epicenter” of New People’s Army (NPA) spy-tagging killings of civilians.
Of the 59 documented spy-tagging killings and summary executions across the country perpetrated by the NPA, 51 involved those killed across the island, including 41 in Negros Occidental and 10 in Negros Oriental, from 2021 to May 2026.
The 51 civilians killed by the NPA in Negros over the past five years included 49 murdered from January 2025 to May 2026 alone, consisting 39 victims in Negros Occidental and 10 victims in Negros Oriental, NTF-ELCAC records showed.
“This means that nearly nine out of every 10 victims recorded nationwide from 2025 to the present were killed in Negros,” NTF-ELCAC executive director Ernesto Torres Jr. said in a statement.
He added that this exposes Negros as the epicenter of the Communist Party of the Philippines-New People’s Army-National Democratic Front’s campaign of terror against civilians accused of being “informants” or condemned by their so-called “kangaroo courts”.
In numerous statements, the NPA had always claimed the deaths of civilians they accused as military informants.
Torres said the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) must no longer remain selectively vocal on these civilian killings perpetrated by the NPA remnants.
He added that the CHR must act with dispatch, fulfill its universal mandate, and demonstrate equal resolve in condemning and investigating these executions.
“Human rights are not exclusive to armed rebels, activists, or ideological allies. Human rights belong equally to poor farmers, church workers, tricycle drivers, laborers, former rebels, barangay officials, and ordinary civilians murdered in remote communities,” he added.
Torres said it is high time for the CHR to decisively put its foot down, demand accountability, and stand with the victims and their grieving families instead of allowing these atrocities to disappear beneath propaganda and ideological noise.
In February this year, 74-year-old Leonora Anguit, a civilian resident of Barangay Tapi, Kabankalan City, Negros Occidental, was murdered by NPA remnants after being accused of being an “informant”. | GB
