Units of the New People’s Army (NPA)-Negros Island (Apolinario Gatmaitan Command) are determined in their efforts to attain justice for the Negrosanon masses who are victims of state terrorism and repression. These efforts include carrying out the people’s court’s orders to mete out justice against state agents behind these crimes. Those punished included spies, military and police intelligence assets, their accomplice counterrevolutionary traitors, and village criminals.

These bad elements sow terror in the villages, disturb the peace of communities, sow disunity among the people, and plague the lives and livelihood of the Negrosanon masses. They are accountable to revolutionary justice as tools and hired thugs of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and Philippine National Police (PNP) in the intensified fascism on the island. They are involved in no less than 940 cases of human rights violations by the US-Marcos regime, or an average of five cases per week in the island from July 2022 to December 2025.

The NPA-Negros Island mounted 44 operations to exact justice from 2025 until this March against these hardened reactionary elements. Assisted by the masses, the NPA carried these out in the mountains, plains and sugarcane fields, along the roadsides and even in town centers. This demonstrates the determination of the Red army to attain justice for the people.

Before actual operations, the responsible revolutionary committees in the villages, the Party branches, or NPA units assigned in the area where the accused committed their crimes conduct an intensive and careful investigation process. The people’s court is later formed and the necessary revolutionary judicial processes are implemented. These include the filing of charges against the accused and giving them the chance to explain and defend themselves. This strictly adheres to the rules of international humanitarian law.

Who were punished?

Of those punished on Negros island, 41 are intelligence assets and agents of the AFP and PNP. Some were armed by the military and police. They caused grave harm to the revolutionary movement through such acts as massacres, killings, willful killing and brutal violence against Party cadres, Red commanders and fighters, and even the rural masses.

Aside from doing intelligence work, majority were also found guilty of cases of killing, multiple killing, rape (multiple cases, victimizing their own children and relatives, and minors), land grabbing, drug pushing, and directly threatening and assaulting the masses. Some of them are hired goons and protectors of landlords and politicians, while others are members of the counterrevolutionary Revolutionary Proletarian Army. Some of them betrayed the revolutionary movement, informed on it and seriously endangered the masses.

Those punished include three involved in tracking and killing National Democratic Front of the Philippines peace consultant Ericson Acosta, and his companion, peasant leader Joseph Jimenez. Both unarmed, Acosta and Jimenez were peppered with bullets and deliberately murdered. The NPA-Southwest Negros carried out the punishment of those involved in the crime in November and December 2025.

Even having committed offenses against the revolutionary movement and the masses, not everyone is automatically meted the death penalty. Units of the NPA welcome individuals who have committed offenses but want to surrender, apologize, reform and abandon counterrevolutionary and anti-people acts and activities. There is an appropriate judicial process for those who want to submit themselves to surrender under revolutionary authority.

Embraced by the masses

For ordinary people, these punitive actions are the justice they have long aspired for, and a defense of people like them who are oppressed and exploited. The spokesperson of the Pambansang Katipunan ng mga Magbubukid-Negros Island, Ka Felicidad Katalbas, said these actions are welcomed by people like them who are victims of worsening poverty, landlessness, soaring prices of goods, low wages, and the destruction brought by calamities. Amid this poverty, they are attacked by fascist military agents.

This starkly contrasts with the desperate picture that the AFP and National Task Force-Elcac insist on projecting, that these NPA armed actions constitute senseless violence. They portray the NPA’s actions as mere “spy-tagging” or labeling someone a spy so they can deny that their own paid agents are among those punished.

Amid the state’s black propaganda, Kabataang Makabayan-Negros Island declared its determination to clarify and explain the processes and powers of the people’s democratic government, the tasks of the NPA, and the correctness of the people’s war. It said the revolutionary youth will fight the malicious and fake information spewed by the AFP, NTF-Elcac and even by the Buklod Kapayapaan representing groups of “former rebels.”