Two more non-combatants were among those slain in last Sunday’s bloodbath in Toboso, Negros Occidental, bringing to at least five civilians killed in alleged indiscriminate firing by government forces, farmers organizations revealed.
The Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) and Tanggol Magsasaka (Defend Farmers) said peasant organizer Maureen Keil Santuyo and community researcher Errol Wendel were among the 19 victims in what the Armed Forces of the Philippines reported as a 12-hour gunfight with the New People’s Army (NPA).
Santuyo and Wendel joined University of the Philippines (UP) student councilor Alyssa Alano, Paghimutad-Negros editor RJ Nichole Ledesma, and local farmer Roel Sabillo in the list of identified civilian victims by rights organizations conducting independent investigations on the incident.
The 79th Infantry Battalion of the Philippine Army said it killed 19 casualties in a 12-hour gunfight, claiming them all to be Communist armed insurgents.
The NPA regional command in Negros Island, however, said only a small unit of Red fighters was involved in the armed encounter and not all of the reported casualties were their fighters.
READ: NPA belies all 19 Toboso casualties were members
Who were Maureen and Errol?
KMP and Tanggol Magsasaka said Maureen was a graduate of UP Open University and a member of the National Network of Agrarian Reform Advocates-Youth (NNARA-Youth) before taking on the role of a full-time peasant organizer in Negros Occidental.
Errol on the other hand was an organizer of the Unyon ng mga Manggagawa sa Agrikultura (UMA) who went to Negros as a community researcher of sugarcane workers. He was a cultural worker, formerly affiliated with the Artista ng Rebolusyong Pangkultura (ARPAK).
“Both took on peasant advocacy after being exposed to the reality of widespread landlessness firsthand in the countryside and the extreme poverty experienced by farmers and rural communities,” the farmers organizations said.
“The military’s framing of the incident as a conventional clash serves to obscure the reality on the ground, and evade accountability. Labeling slain civilians as ‘NPA fighters’ to justify state killings is a familiar tactic used to sanitize atrocities and deflect scrutiny,” they said.
The organization said the killing of peasant advocates, organizers, and progressive individuals in Negros is part of government’s “State of Lawless Violence” campaign under former President Rodrigo Duterte’s Memorandum Order No. 32, placing the island under intensified military operations. # (Raymund B. Villanueva)
