Press Statement
25 April 2026

We will not fall for the lies.

When Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro, Jr. asks “why were they there in the first place, if indeed they were students and civilians,” he does more than echo the self-serving narrative of the Philippine Army, he presumes that the poor, the dispossessed, and those who stand with them have no legitimate place in the communities where structural violence is daily life. In the same breath, he threatens legal consequence, suggesting that presence in a peasant community “could constitute aiding and abetting or obstruction of justice.”

The Philippine Army’s 79th Infantry Battalion claims that all 19 individuals killed in the series of firefights that began before dawn on April 19 were armed members of the New People’s Army (NPA). The NPA has publicly stated that only three among the 19 were their members. The identities of the others tell a different story: UP Diliman student leader Alyssa Alano; peasant advocates Maureen Keil Santuyo and Errol Wendel; community journalist RJ Nichole Ledesma, who was reportedly conducting immersion reporting on the impact of solar farm and windmill projects on farming communities in a separate sitio; Filipino-American activist Lyle Prijoles; and several villagers. Their presence in Toboso was a conscious act of solidarity with communities facing landgrabbing, systemic neglect, and the grinding poverty that decades of counterinsurgency have done nothing to address.

AFP Chief of Staff Gen. Romeo Brawner, Jr. distinguished US citizen Chantal Anicoche from Alano, noting that Anicoche was found “not shooting” and was treated humanely, even as humanitarian workers who came to her aid were denied access to her, and even as a vlogger at her discovery site miraculously knew to address her in English upon finding her. In their official statement, the Philippine Army asked: why were they at the site of the encounter — armed and shooting?

These are the right questions to ask:

• Why would students, journalists, and advocates not be present to live alongside and document the struggles of peasant communities with long histories of landlessness, oppression, and poverty? Is solidarity now a crime?
• If IHL’s core principles — distinction, proportionality, and precaution — were observed, how is it that 19 people are dead, over 650 residents of Barangays Salamanca and San Jose displaced? What does proportionality mean when a firefight ends with no reported military casualties and 19 dead civilians and alleged combatants alike?
• Why does the military’s response to civilian scrutiny follow a now-familiar script: stage the scene, control the narrative, then blame the dead for being where they were found?
  The military narrative seeks, perhaps, to drown out the tributes from the masses — from those who buried NPA member Roger Fabillar, who apparently had a one-million-peso bounty on his head, and the students, journalists, and activists who rallied in campuses and public places to seek justice for all the victims. After all, the AFP has a documented record of violating International Humanitarian Law against civilians, persons hors de combat, and the dead — staging the remains of alleged fallen fighters in photographs with firearms, flags, and “subversive” documents, or mockingly portraying bodies as “corned beef” on their own social media pages. They have produced Photoshopped photos of “surrendered” rebels for the Task Force Balik Loob program. Disinformation is a weapon they deploy alongside the guns. But as we said, we will not be fooled.

The facts on the ground are still being established. The NUPL awaits the findings of the fact-finding mission conducted by Karapatan and other human rights organizations, and will issue a more detailed legal assessment once those findings are before us. What is already clear, and what no military press release can obscure, is that the circumstances of these killings demand rigorous, independent scrutiny — not the self-investigation of the very institution whose troops carried out the operation, and not the whitewash of an NTF-ELCAC whose mandate is to justify these operations rather than examine them.

We call for a truly independent investigation into the April 19 killings in Toboso with full and unimpeded access for humanitarian workers, independent human rights experts, and the families of the dead. We call for accountability — not just for those who pulled the trigger, but for those who ordered, tolerated, and concealed the killings. We call on the international community to monitor this case closely, as it is not an isolated incident but part of a continuing pattern of IHL violations across the Philippine countryside. ###

Reference:
Atty. Josalee S. Deinla
NUPL Secretary General
+639174316396