• GILBERT P. BAYORAN
The National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) reported that 40 extra-judicial killings were perpetrated by remnants of the New People’s Army in Negros since 2025.
“While more than 40 civilians have been killed by the NPA in Negros Island over the past two years, the Filipino people have heard no condemnation from some of human rights groups that loudly claim the mantle of human rights advocacy,” it said in a statement.
The NTF-ELCAC, however, lauded the Commission on Human Rights for its unambiguous condemnation of the NPA’s killing of 74-year-old Leonora Anguit of Kabankalan City, Negros Occidental.
The Commission’s statement affirms an important principle that human rights protection must extend to all victims of violence, regardless of who the perpetrators are, it added.
“Human rights cannot be selective. The lives of farmers, elders, and ordinary civilians, who have been branded — without proof —as ‘spies’ and killed under the guise of so-called revolutionary justice, deserve the same protection and outrage,” NTF-ELCAC said.
It added: “Unfortunately, the impassioned defense of National Democratic Front in Negros of the more than 40 extra-judicial killings perpetrated by the NPA since last year revealed more about the practice of spy-tagging than it intended to conceal it.”
In attempting to dismiss spy-tagging as a fabrication, NDF-Negros inadvertently described the very process it sought to deny.
It explained how individuals suspected of being government informants were subjected to “investigation,” how accusations were “triangulated,” and how those deemed guilty may face punishment under what it called “revolutionary justice,” NTF-ELCAC said.
“Any killing carried out under this label of ‘revolutionary justice,’ therefore, is an execution outside the rule of law. It is murder, plain and simple, and no amount of gaslighting can defend it,” the task force said. | GB
