Days before the inauguration of Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Junior as president, a survivor of one of the most brutal massacres committed during the dictatorship of Marcos Senior was recently arrested and detained by state forces in Northern Samar.

Enriqueta Toling, a publicly-known survivor of the 1981 massacre in Barangay Sag-od, Las Navas, was forced by authorities to pay at least P40,000 to be bailed out of trumped-up charges filed against her, the New People’s Army in Northern Samar reported.

Toling was handcuffed and detained after she and 24 other residents of Sag-od were forced by troops of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) to report to a military camp in the aftermath of a tactical offensive of the NPA-Rodante Urtal Command (RUC) outside their barrio last June 22.

Toling has already been freed, according to an initial report received by the NPA-RUC, but the actual charges filed against her are still unclear.

State troops are now retaliating against civilians as they suffer consecutive losses in their at least 400 person-strong military campaign against the NPA in a forested area frequented by people from Sag-od and nearby Barangay San Isidro.

In the midst of the military operations, peasants from Sag-od, San Isidro, and other barangays in Las Navas have stopped working in the farms and have left their homes in fear of being red-tagged or being coerced to surrender by soldiers conducting operations. The intensified military presence in the farms has been reported since early May, and much earlier within the barrios.

NPA-RUC spokesperson Ka Amado Pesante condemned the AFP for using the old Marcosian tactic of retaliating against unarmed civilians after suffering losses against the people’s army.

In 1981, paramilitary troops of the Marcos dictatorship then looking for a “Commander Racel” of the NPA strafed and killed in cold blood at least 46 men, women and children, almost wiping out the entire population of Sag-od.

Only 13 people survived the harrowing incident, including Toling, who was then 19 years old. She survived together with her nursing infant and has since then been the face of an alliance of survivors and relatives of victims of the Sag-od massacre. She has served as one of many voices exposing the truth behind Marcos’ martial law and untiringly sought justice in the name of the peasant masses victimized by state-sponsored violence.

But 40 years and several pseudo-democratic regimes later, she and her fellow villagers from Sag-od continue to be victims of state fascism and martial rule in the barrios.

Pesante noted that such state policy is sure to continue under the ever rotting semicolonial and semifeudal society, which also allowed for the emergence of the dictator Marcos Senior, the rehabilitation of his hated family and their return to power through Marcos Junior.

“Fascist terrorism by the state forms part of the desperate effort of US imperialism and the local ruling classes, especially the ruling Marcos-Duterte faction, to stabilize the current system by all means necessary, including stifling dissent and waging an all-out war that also targets civilians,” Pesante said.

“But militarization, state terrorism, the narrowing democratic space, and the increasingly unreliable judicial system of the puppet regime only further push the people toward the path of armed resistance as the only way towards a just and lasting peace. The worsening fascist attacks of the AFP are, in fact, giving rise to conditions favoring the growth of the NPA and the reactionary army’s own undeniable defeat.”