The Apolinario Gatmaitan Command (AGC) of the New People’s Army (NPA) belied claims by the 79th Infantry Battalion of the Philippine Army (79th IBPA) that all 19 casualties in the Toboso bloodbath on Sunday, April 19, were their members.
The Negros Island Regional Operations Command of the NPA said government troops only fought with “a small squad of revolutionary fighters” led by Roger Fabillar.
The NPA said the rest of those who died were civilians documenting a peasant activity, including Bacolod City-based journalist RJ Nichole Ledesma of local alternative media outfit Paghimutad-Negros.
The group Human Rights Advocates of Negros said Ledesma was in Sitio Plaringding, three kilometers away from the original encounter site, but was later reported by government troops as among NPA fighters killed.
The NPA also said local farmer included Roel Sabillo, merely working at his uncle’s business during the incident, was later reported by the 79th IBPA, as among the casualties.
The University of the Philippines-Diliman University Student Council announced that its councilor Alyssa Alano was among those killed. The Council said Alano was in the area for an immersion tour with peasant communities and denied she was a NPA combatant.
The NPA said 79th IBPA’s narrative is a “desperate piece of fiction…quick to parade a tally of 19 casualties, claiming each was an armed combatant.”
The guerilla army noted the implausibility of 19 firearms allegedly recovered from the site as “mathematically convenient but logically bankrupt.”
“[I]t is a clumsy attempt to paint a picture of a proportionate firefight where none existed,” AGC-NPA spokesperson Maoche Legislador in a statement said.
“What the military labels a ‘battlefield success’ was, in reality, a cold-blooded assault on individuals whose only weapons were their convictions and an unwavering commitment to the rural poor,” Legislador added. # (Raymund B. Villanueva)
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DICLOSURE: The reporter is chairperson of Altermidya.
