The Armed Forces of the Philippines massacred 19 people in the community of Toboso, Negros Occidental, on 19 April. The AFP says that all the dead were armed rebels of the New Peoples Army (NPA). However, the NPA has said that only three of its members were killed. The other 16 victims include local peasant leaders, a journalist, a student council member from the University of the Philippines, and several visitors who had come to observe community development work in the municipality.
Toboso is one of the most impoverished municipalities in the sugar-producing province of Negros Occidental, where extreme poverty and harsh repression have long been realities of life. The province has seen several previous massacres by the military, which regularly conflates community organisation with the guerilla movement. In recent months, human rights organisations have been raising the alarm over increased military harassment of local development workers and human rights defenders. Human rights organisations believe that the notorious National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) is behind this strategy of harassment, extra-judicial killings, and repression.
The Toboso Massacre is the worst so far under the Marcos Jr. administration. One of the Toboso victims, Lyle Prijoles, was a member of the International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines in the United States (ICHRP- US), which, like CHRP-UK, is a member of the global ICHRP human rights network. ICHRP-US, CHRP-UK, and other members of the ICHRP global network, regularly send members to the Philippines to work with communities and NGOs to gain a better understanding of the issues facing ordinary Filipinos in the cities and the countryside. They are civilians not engaged in any armed conflict. We can only express our outrage at these latest killings.
We grieve with the families and friends of all the victims of this massacre and vow to continue our campaigns for social justice and human rights for the Filipino people and to stop state- sponsored killings.
CHRP-UK joins human rights organisations in the Philippines calling for:
- A full independent inquiry into the Toboso Massacre
- An end to the harassment and red-tagging of development workers and human rights defenders
- Respect for International Humanitarian Law
- The abolition of the NTF-ELCAC
Source: https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/2218078/independent-probe-sought-into-deadly-negros-encounter