The Apolinario Gatmaitan Command Negros Island Regional Operations Command (AGC-NPA) strongly condemns the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP)’s 3rd Infantry Division for their crime spree in Negros Island during the 2nd quarter of 2025 under their focused military operations (FMOs) in hinterland barangays.
Division-led operations mobilized the 79th Infantry Battalion (IB) in Northern Negros, the 62nd IB in Central Negros, and the 94th IB in South Central Negros—under the guise of ‘chasing down NPA remnants’ in so-called ‘dismantled guerilla fronts’—committed atrocities against peasant and indigenous people communities. This covered the towns of Calatrava, Toboso, Don Salvador Benedicto and the cities of Escalante and San Carlos in Northern Negros; Guihulngan City in Central Negros; and Binalbagan town and cities Himamaylan and Kabankalan in South Central Negros especially in the months of May and June.
As per usual, the mercenary troops targeted civilians and perpetrated human rights violations including threats, red-tagging, theft, illegal arrest and detention, assault, and murder. Even the encounter last April 27 in Barangay Tapi, Kabankalan City—according to initial reports—involved a degree of foul play (execution) towards wounded Red fighters (hors de combat) in blatant disregard to International Humanitarian Law (IHL). To reach their quarterly quota of engagements, the 3rd ID despite their pretense that the island is now ‘insurgency-free’, the AFP’s actions express the stark opposite—showing their despair to crush the armed revolution that has been rooted to the masses for more than five decades.
3rd ID Commander MGen. Michael Samson and his troops should be slammed for giving out awards to troops after staging a fake encounter and murdering a farm worker in Himamaylan City. While this is no surprise coming from them, this serves to normalize fascism in the AFP as something to be glorified instead of being vehemently condemned. Like rabid dogs, battalions compete in which one commits the most heinous crime in exchange for promotions and laurels.
To appease themselves and their US masters, they wallow in desperate propaganda and fake news. But the masses in Negros continue to be appalled by their division- and brigade-led operations scouring barangays in search of ‘remnants’, in unwitting admittance that the NPA is undefeatable nigh impregnable.
The five guerilla fronts in the island continue to operate and engage in the integrated work of armed struggle, agrarian revolution, and mass base building. The AFP’s continued rampage against the masses only serves to ignite the exploited people’s courage, and the deaths of revolutionary martyrs inspire them to tread the same path in forging a national democratic future for the masses of farmers and workers long brutalized by the chronic crisis under the semi-colonial and semi-feudal ruling system.
With this, the AGC-NPA and the guerilla fronts under its command vow to seek justice for the reactionary state’s victims of countless human rights abuses. NPA units will continue to mount tactical offensives and other actions against those who have crimes against the revolution and the people.
