The National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) on Sunday said recent encounters in Toboso and Cauayan, Negros Occidental, have shattered what it described as the illusion of the so-called armed revolution in Negros.
“What remains visible today are not heroic narratives, but the ruins of a violent movement that consumed generations of Negrenses through deception, terror-grooming, spy-tagging killings, fear, and ideological exploitation,” the task force said in a statement sent to DAILY TRIBUNE.
“For decades, Negros became vulnerable to communist agitation because of undeniable social inequities, agrarian tensions, and poverty. But history has now delivered its verdict. While Negrenses demanded justice, reform, and dignity, they ultimately rejected violence as the path toward change. The armed struggle did not liberate Negros. It buried its youth, terrorized its communities, and wasted countless futures,” NTF-ELCAC Executive Director Undersecretary Ernesto C. Torres Jr. said.
According to Torres, the 19 April encounter in Barangay Salamanca, Toboso, where 19 armed Communist Terrorist Group (CTG) members were neutralized, marked what he described as the collapse of the remaining terrorist infrastructure in Northern Negros.
Among those killed was Roger Fabillar, whom security forces and local communities had long identified as one of the most feared CTG figures in the area.
“The operation exposed not merely an armed unit, but the dying remnants of a movement already abandoned and despised by the very people it falsely claimed to represent. What proved even more revealing was the disclosure of 3rd Infantry Division Commander Major General Michael Samson that local officials, barangay leaders, and ordinary residents themselves pleaded with authorities to finally end the reign of terror of Fabillar and other CTG remnants. Communities had grown exhausted from intimidation, extortion, executions, coercion, and fear,” Torres said.
“The people of Negros were no longer protecting the insurgency. They were helping dismantle it as shown by the Toboso and Cauayan encounters,” he added.
Torres said the deaths of former activists-turned-NPA combatants RJ Ledesma, Alysa Alano, Maureen Santuyo, Errol Wendel Chen, Vince Francis Dingding, Fil-American Lyle Prijoles, American national Kai Dana-Rene Sorem, and other underground operatives were proof of what the government had warned about for years: the existence of a “terror-grooming pipeline” targeting vulnerable youth, students, activists, and idealistic individuals and drawing them into clandestine structures and armed conflict.
“For years, CTG-linked front organizations mocked these warnings and dismissed them as state propaganda. Today, the bodies recovered in Toboso and Cauayan expose the truth with brutal clarity,” Torres said.
“These young individuals did not die pursuing peaceful reform or democratic engagement. They died carrying the burden of a failed violent ideology that manipulated their idealism and converted them into instruments of armed conflict,” he added.
