• GILBERT P. BAYORAN
The Army’s 3rd Infantry Division has recorded at least 43 liquidations claimed by the group of slain rebel leader Roger Fabillar, alias Jhong, in northern Negros since 2021, disclosed a ranking military official in Visayas.
Maj. Gen. Michael Samson, 3ID commander, said the 43 victims were civilians suspected as military informants, former CAFGU members, and anyone seen as a “hindrance” to their revolutionary activities.
Fabillar, who had a bounty of P2 million for his arrest, was among the 19 killed in a series of armed encounters on April 19 in Barangay Salamanca, Toboso, Negros Occidental.
Even the local government units, and Governor Eugenio Jose Lacson personally requested me to stop the killings, which terrorized the people in Toboso, Calatrava and Escalante City, Samson said in a statement.
So we have a mandate to neutralize alias Jhong, he added.
The National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict has claimed that Negros is the epicenter of NPA spy-tagging killings civilians.
NTF-ELCAC executive director Ernesto Torres Jr. disclosed that 51 of the 59 documented “spy-tagging” killings and summary executions nationwide attributed to the NPA from 2021 to May 2026 occurred in Negros Island, with 49 recorded in Negros Occidental.
Torres urged the Commission on Human Rights to give equal attention to killings perpetrated and even boastfully claimed by communist rebels.
“Human rights are not exclusive to armed rebels, activists, or ideological allies. Human rights belong equally to poor farmers, church workers, tricycle drivers, laborers, former rebels, barangay officials, and ordinary civilians murdered in remote communities,” Torres added.
Of 49 rebel-initiated killings in Negros recorded from January 2025 to May 2026, 39 took place in Negros Occidental and 10 in Negros Oriental.
“This means that nearly nine out of every 10 victims recorded nationwide from 2025 to the present were killed in Negros, exposing it as the epicenter of the CPP-NPA-NDF’s campaign of terror against civilians accused of being informants or condemned by their so-called kangaroo courts,” Torres said.
In previous statements, the NPA had claimed responsibility for the deaths of civilians that they accused as military informants.*
