The Center for Trade Union and Human Rights (CTUHR) joins people’s organizations and the human rights community in the Philippines and abroad in condemning the human rights violations being perpetrated by the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) in Abra de Ilog town of Occidental Mindoro. We demand an immediate end to, and an investigation into, these violations.

On January 1, the AFP carried out arial strafing and bombing in Barangay Cabacao, with human rights group Karapatan in Southern Tagalog reporting the death of three indigenous Mangyan-Iraya children and of Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila or PLM student and researcher Jerlyn Rose Doydora.

Filipino-American activist Chantal Anicoche went missing immediately after the military operations but was later found and arrested by soldiers. Despite the military’s claims that Anicoche is at present in Camp Capinpin in Tanay, Rizal and despite efforts by human rights organizations to get in touch with her, she remains incommunicado to this day.

Military attacks that do not discriminate between armed rebels and ordinary civilians and especially children are violations of international humanitarian law. The death of civilians and children in the military’s operations in Abra de Ilog are red flags that should push the government to stop the operations, investigate the human rights violations committed, and hold those responsible accountable.

Arial strafings and bombings of rural communities are legacies of the Rodrigo Duterte administration that continue under the presidency of Ferdinand Marcos Jr. Despite the political quarrel between the Dutertes and the Marcoses, they are clearly fundamentally the same in implementing the government’s counter-insurgency programs that target civilian populations.

We also raise the alarm over the hyperactivity of pro-military pages and trolls on Facebook in recent weeks who basically call for and justify attacks on armed rebels even when these result in human rights violations and demonstrably target civilians. These social media operations are trademarks of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) which Marcos Jr refuses to abolish and continues to fund.

Human rights are indivisible, and a government that violates rights in far-flung rural areas cannot be expected to consistently uphold workers’ rights even in urban areas. Government funds that should go into monitoring the state of labor and human rights and protecting these rights are visibly going into military operations that kill and harm civilians and violate rights and into social media operations that call for blood, mock victims of rights violations, and justify children’s deaths.

We are calling for respect for Chantal Anicoche’s rights and her immediate surfacing. The rights violations in Abra de Ilog should be investigated and those responsible should be held accountable. Military operations similar to that conducted in Abra de Ilog should be stopped. The NTF-ELCAC’s social media operations must be stopped and the agency must be abolished.

The government should address the root causes of the armed conflict rather than resorting to militaristic non-solutions embodied in its counter-insurgency programs that are worse for rural communities and all