Photo by Lucky Dela Rosa/Philippine Collegian
Human rights alliance Karapatan assailed the Marcos Jr. regime for increasingly targeting civilians in its counter-insurgency drive.
“In the past four weeks,” said Karapatan secretary general Cristina Palabay, “we have received reports on the extrajudicial killings of at least four civilians in two separate incidents in Sarangani province and Masbate.”
Palabay cited the case of three civilian women in Masbate who were killed due to the military’s indiscriminate firing during a gunbattle between the 96th IBPA and the New People’s Army (NPA) last August 21, 2023 in San Jacinto, Masbate. “To cover up its foul deed,” said Palabay, “the 96th Infantry Battalion of the Philippine Army (IBPA) later announced that its troops had killed an NPA commander and three others, referring to the three civilian women – Jelyn Guis Dejomo, 56; Sheryl Salazar Dejomo, 29; and Divina Lubiano Ajitan, 60.”
“We have also received reports that a Moro farmer had been killed by elements of the 38th IBPA in Sarangani province last July 27, 2023,” added Palabay. “Like the three civilian women in Masbate, the farmer, Alvin Ponto, 52, was falsely portrayed by the 38th IBPA as an NPA casualty in a supposed encounter in another barrio.” Witnesses, however, said that Ponto was shot in his hut while he was cooking breakfast, and later stabbed to finish him off.
“Is this what we should expect under the Marcos Jr. regime’s newly issued National Security Policy?” demanded Palabay. “Civilians are supposed to be protected under international humanitarian law (IHL), and yet such brazen violations of IHL are rapidly becoming an indelible marker of the Marcos Jr. regime’s dirty counter-insurgency war,” decried Palabay. “We see a pattern of deliberately blurring distinctions between unarmed civilians and combatants.”
“Karapatan and others from the broad human rights community here and abroad are determined to expose and put a stop to the Marcos Jr. regime’s deliberate targeting and endangerment of civilians and its other violations of human rights and IHL, which have no place in a civilized society,” concluded Palabay.