Starting July 6, 2020, military and police forces from the 11th IB AFP & 705th RMFB launched a focused military operation in the hinterland villages of Sta. Catalina and its boundaries to Siaton and Valencia towns in Negros Oriental.

At least two Army companies, 1 PNP mobile force company and two paramilitary geographic companies were deployed in a vain attempt to destroy the NPA and its mass base, as well to suppress all forms of resistance and struggles of the farmers to assert their democratic rights and demands.

To date, several cases of rights violations and abuses has been documented by local human rights and farmers groups especially in the villages of Talalac and Nagbinlod, the epicenters of the operation.

A few weeks before the operation, Nonoy Truza, a barangay councilor and the erstwhile chairman of an association of agrarian reform beneficiaries in Nagbinlod, was assassinated by military death squad operatives.