The National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers (NUPL) welcomes and supports the decisive initiative of United States Representative Pramila Jayapal, together with ten other US legislators, demanding an independent, impartial, and credible investigation into the bloody April 19 massacre in Toboso, Negros Occidental.

The congressional letter addressed to Philippine Ambassador Jose Manuel Romualdez echoes the very alarms consistently raised by human rights defenders, lawyers, and civil society organizations on the ground. For months, the 79th Infantry Battalion (IB) of the Philippine Army has aggressively peddled the manufactured narrative that all 19 victims of the armed encounter were combatants of the New People’s Army (NPA). However, an independent fact-finding mission has resolutely laid bare the truth: up to nine of the victims were unarmed civilians, including US citizens Kai Sorem and Lyle Prijoles, journalist RJ Nichole Ledesma, land rights defenders Maureen Santuyo and Errol Wendel, and university student Alyssa Alano. 

We share the grave concerns of the US lawmakers regarding the systemic barriers effectively crippling domestic accountability mechanisms. The Commission on Human Rights (CHR) is being obstructed by the military’s deliberate refusal to cooperate. By denying independent investigators access to official records and monopolizing control over the crime scene in the critical hours following the massacre, the military and the Philippine National Police (PNP) have shamelessly attempted to sanitize the narrative and cover their tracks.

The Toboso Massacre does not exist in a vacuum. As the US legislators rightly pointed out, it occurred within the broader context of the state’s counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism campaigns. Through the deadly practice of red-tagging, state forces routinely obliterate the principle of distinction between armed combatants and unarmed civilians. This is deliberately compounded by the weaponization of terror laws, which conflate armed conflict with terrorism to cast a dragnet over the armed movement and the legal democratic movement falsely associated with it. By deploying these tactics, the state suffocates civic space and places a target on the backs of rights defenders, journalists, community organizers, and humanitarian workers. 

International solidarity is crucial in shattering the culture of impunity in the Philippines. We stand firmly with all eleven signatories of the letter: Senators Jeffrey A. Merkley, Adam B. Schiff, and Chris Van Hollen, alongside Representatives Pramila Jayapal, Maxine Dexter, Jesús G. “Chuy” García, James P. McGovern, Kweisi Mfume, Johnny Olszewski, Jr., Delia C. Ramirez, and Rashida Tlaib. We reiterate their call for a truly independent, impartial, and credible investigation into the Toboso killings. We further demand the full cooperation of the Philippine Army in turning over critical evidence and allow the active participation of independent civil society actors to ensure the facts are objectively brought to light. 

The perpetrators of this massacre, as well as the commanding officers who orchestrated and enabled it, must be held fully accountable and brought to the bars of justice. ###

Press Statement

Reference: 

Atty. Josalee S. Deinla

NUPL Secretary General

+639174316396

(Photo credit: Bulatlat)