The National Democratic Front-Eastern Visayas (NDF-EV) received an additional report after six months on the death of New People’s Army (NPA)-Northern Samar (Rodante Urtal Command) Red fighter Edwin Ventura (Ka Alas). The said report stated that Ventura was not killed in an armed encounter but was captured and deliberately executed by the 78th IB.

Ventura was initially reported as one of the two killed in the 78th IB raid on an NPA camp in Barangay San Jose, Mapanas, Northern Samar on August 27, 2025. The additional report this February revealed that Ventura was conducting mass work when he was captured.

According to the NDF-EV, Ventura’s killing violated the rules of war stated in the Comprehensive Agreement on Respect for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law (CARHRIHL), the 1949 Geneva Conventions, and even reactionary law, which prohibits harming a combatant already incapable of fighting.

The NPA-Northern Samar honored Ventura in a statement released last September 2025. He came from a peasant family in Barangay Senonogan de Tubang, Silvino Lobos. He embraced the program of the people’s democratic revolution as a youth in their village because of the absence of social services like education, the collapse of their meager livelihood, and severe poverty.

He became a member of the Kabataang Makabayan and joined the NPA upon reaching the appropriate age in 2017. Ventura served as an NPA squad officer and became a Communist Party of the Philippines member by the end of 2017. “He carried out politico-military tasks in the army with diligence and vigor while continuously remolding himself,” the unit said.

According to the NDF-EV, NPA units across the region must keep striving to frustrate the fascist all-out war of the Marcos regime. “They must bravely persevere in the path of people’s war to win justice for all victims of the fascist state and achieve lasting peace for the people,” spokesperson Ka Celine Manlimbasog said.