Rights group KARAPATAN hit the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC), calling its latest “tirade of lies” a desperate attempt to reinforce its flimsy encounter narrative on the killing of the Negros 19.
“The hideous red-tagging agency of the Marcos Jr. government is scrambling to cover up and evade accountability, when even an initial reading of the autopsy observations on five of the Negros 19 only buries them deeper in lies,” said Cristina Palabay, secretary general of KARAPATAN.
The group pointed out that it was the NTF-ELCAC and the Armed Forces of the Philippines that immediately concluded that the incident in Toboso, Negros Occidental was a “legitimate encounter.”
“This is not the first time these warmongers in the AFP have killed people under the cover of legitimate military operations,” Palabay said, citing previous incidents where civilians and farmers were extrajudicially killed and later portrayed as members of the NPA.
Worse, photos of the dead immediately circulated online, complete with firearms and military gear beside them. Palabay also observed the organized campaign of state agents to pin down the Negros 19 through its terror-tagging online.
“It was all done to peddle the immediate conclusion and narrative that this was a “legitimate encounter,” she said.
KARAPATAN also stood by the families who attested that the bodies of their families were turned over without the process of proper identification. “Brutality screams from their treatment not only of the bodies, but also of the families,” Palabay added.
The group emphasized that only during the autopsy of five of the victims did the family of Errol Wendel discover that the body handed to them was not his. “And the military says it was an honest mistake? It speaks volumes about how they treat those killed, as mere numbers and trophies in their war against the people, against civilians,” she said.
Most importantly, Palabay noted that initial findings showing one victim sustained gunshot wounds at the back, another was shot in the leg, and another bore signs of aspiration are “more than telling signs” of possible violations of international humanitarian law (IHL).
“They are seriously twisting the rules of international humanitarian law by insisting that everyone killed was a legitimate target in a military operation. How do they explain the findings that one of the casualties sustained a fatal gunshot wound to the leg and may have been left to bleed to death?” Palabay said.
Palabay also cited a drone video that circulated online within a week after the supposed encounter where one member of the NPA, Roger Fabillar, was seen alive and in water. Fabillar was later declared among the Negros 19 casualties. The video has since been taken down.
The group reiterated its call for an independent and thorough investigation into the killings of the Negros 19, stressing that any investigation conducted by the AFP or the PNP cannot be considered genuine or impartial.
“The Negros 19 is a massacre, by the sheer number of deaths alone. And now, seeing how the AFP and NTF-ELCAC continue to lie through their teeth despite the numerous issues pointing to an apparent cover-up, all the more we must demand accountability for these killings,” Palabay said.
“They did not merely desecrate the dead. They are hiding behind the cloak of impunity and brutality that the State has consistently wielded against the people.
