Robert Reid | Chairperson FFPS
Friends of the Filipino People in Struggle (FFPS) strongly condemns the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) for its continued propaganda of declaring so-called “insurgency-free” or “NPA-free” zones across the Philippines, even as it escalates indiscriminate military operations that violate international humanitarian law and endanger civilian lives.
Across Mindanao, the Visayas, and parts of Luzon, the AFP has launched bombing raids, artillery shelling, and combat operations, even in areas falsely labeled as “cleared” of “insurgent” presence. These result in widespread terror, displacement, and destruction of livelihoods. Entire towns have been emptied due to fear, with communities caught in the crossfire or deliberately targeted for their perceived support to revolutionary movements.
The AFP also resorts to fabricating encounters and parades so-called former rebels and surrenderees—many of whom are civilians forced, bribed, or threatened into signing false affidavits or posing for staged photographs. These operations serve multiple purposes: to inflate performance metrics for promotions and funding, to maintain the illusion of counterinsurgency “success,” and to justify ongoing military occupation of civilian communities.
In Isabela province, soldiers opened fire on civilians in two separate cases falsely labeled as clashes with the NPA. On April 20, troops attacked a house in Barangay Dicam, Jones town, and apprehended two youths, claiming they were NPA fighters. The next day, April 21, soldiers fired at five Ifugao indigenous residents who were fishing—three made it home, while two remain missing.
In Masbate, on April 23, the 2nd Infantry Battalion of the Philippine Army staged a fabricated encounter, firing their own weapons and falsely claiming to have seized NPA equipment. The incident sparked fear and confusion among nearby residents. Just days earlier, the 56 year old Isabela delos Reyes, was unlawfully arrested and publicly presented as a supposed NPA member without any evidence.
Such tactics are in clear violation of international humanitarian law. The indiscriminate use of aerial bombs and heavy artillery in civilian areas, the coercion of non-combatants into military operations, the systematic military occupation of civilian communities and the use of psychological warfare all constitute grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions, echoing US counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrines and bearing disturbing resemblance to the brutal Israeli tactics employed in Gaza. The AFP’s “counterinsurgency” program, rebranded under the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC), systematically blurs the line between combatant and civilian in order to justify these attacks.
These systematic violations reflect the fascist character of the Marcos Jr. regime, which is determined to crush any form of dissent through militarized violence and deceitful narratives. Furthermore, the Marcos regime has failed to resume the peace negotiations with the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) which were broken off during the presidency of now-jailed Rodrigo Duterte. Instead of addressing the genuine demands put forward by the Filipino people, the Marcos government, the NTF-ELCAC, the AFP and its military generals continue to further sabotage the peace talks and monger war against the Filipino people.
The declaration of “insurgency-free” zones is a cruel farce and political fiction, belied by the continuing displacement, suffering, and militarization of the countryside.
In reality, the NPA continues to flourish and recruit amongst the basic masses in all major provinces in the Philippines. Time and time again the AFP has to re-iterate its false narrative of military victory as it encounters NPA units in areas it had previously declared “insurgency-free.” As the root causes of the armed conflict – landlessness, poverty, joblessness, plunder of natural resources and foreign domination – remain unaddressed, the revolution continues to grow stronger.
FFPS stands in solidarity with the Filipino people resisting these attacks. We echo the calls of revolutionary mass organizations in the Philippines for an immediate end to aerial bombings and militarization of communities. There can be no genuine peace while the reactionary state wages war on its own people. True peace will only be realized through the fulfillment of the people’s democratic aspirations not the fabrication of “surrender” statistics.
