[SIGN ON] Defend Southern Tagalog! Condemn the US-Marcos regime’s all-out war against Filipino peasants!

We, the undersigned organizations and individuals, express our utmost condemnation of the militarization attacks carried out by the US-Marcos regime against peasant and land rights activists in the Southern Tagalog region, Philippines. 

Local rights group in Quezon Province reports that on August 2, 2025, bombings struck Tagkawayane, with residents spotting two AFP helicopters in the area. The following day, AFP’s 2nd Infantry Division (ID) reported an encounter between the 16th Infantry Battalion (IB) and the New People’s Army (NPA), which they claimed resulted in the death of an alleged NPA member. On August 5, a humanitarian mission investigating possible human rights and IHL violations was reportedly tailed and harassed by at least ten AFP intelligence agents.

On the other side of the region, up to 100 troops of the 4th IB conducted combat operations in the mountains of Brgy. Naibuan, San Jose, Occidental Mindoro, on August 1. Juan Sumilig, a local was shot while tending to his farm. 

For years, the region has been a hotspot for human rights violations and peasant killings, which intensified since the implementation of the whole-of-nation-approach, which basically gives the military the right to take the civil autonomy of the local government units to further the militarization specifically in rural communities. This counterinsurgency program, inspired by none other than the US counterinsurgency (COIN) guide, has been and continues to top its record of International Humanitarian Law (IHL) violations against rural peasants and indigenous communities.

Earlier this year, Filipino peasants and IPs in Southern Tagalog had taken the brunt of AFP’s intensifying campaign “to dismantle the remaining NPA presence in Southern Tagalog before year-end.” This has been marked by numerous aerial strafings that ravaged indigenous peoples’ ancestral domains and farmlands, the blocking of humanitarian aid unless the ‘aid’ in question is branded under military and their allies’ name, and the unlawful arrest of civilians on fabricated NPA charges. Military forces encamp in communities, including primary schools, before and during operations, instilling fear among the already disrupted residents. Indigenous peasants are barred from tending their crops by day and restricted by night curfews, crippling further their access to food and their livelihood. Soldiers have also burned nipa huts of kaingin farmers, claiming these could be used by the NPA. Humanitarian and fact-finding missions gathering this information have first faced harassment, threats, and intimidation from military agents.

In a show of hypocrisy, the AFP ‘commemorates’ the International Humanitarian Law Day while engaging in a broader pattern of indiscriminate attacks across the region, acts that directly violate both the 1949 Geneva Conventions and the Philippine Act on Crimes Against International Humanitarian Law, Genocide, and Other Crimes Against Humanity (RA 9851). We slam the AFP for such ploys—no amount of rhetoric can conceal the blood of Filipino peasants on their hands through their incessant war crimes.

Long a stronghold of resistance against landlords and compradors, provinces in the Southern Tagalog region also possess rich mineral resources sought after by the local ruling elite and multinational corporations. It’s not surprising that the puppet Marcos regime and its imperialist master US escalate the war on the people’s resistance in such a brutal manner. The Filipino resistance in peasant communities such as Southern Tagalog, whether legal or armed, stands united in the struggle to defend the land and uphold food sovereignty against the ills of the Philippine society.

We, people’s organizations, international networks, and the broad front of peoples resisting imperialist wars, counterinsurgency, plunder, and fascism, stand in militant condemnation of the brutal attacks on the Filipino people. We call on all democratic forces and peace-loving peoples of the world to rise in solidarity, denounce the relentless IHL violations in Southern Tagalog, and join the struggle to end the fascist violence of the US-Marcos regime.

STOP KILLING PEASANTS! DEFEND SOUTHERN TAGALOG! 

HOLD WAR CRIMINAL US-MARCOS REGIME ACCOUNTABLE!

UPHOLD INTERNATIONAL HUMANITARIAN LAW!

STOP BOMBING OUR COMMUNITIES!

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