Last week, the National Task Force (NTF)-Elcac and Sonshine Media Network International (SMNI) through notorious red-tagger and reactionary mouthpiece Lorraine Badoy released a video overflowing with fabricated statements of the reactionary government’s supposed “rescue” of Ana Aures. It is being used to spread lies and red-tag legal democratic mass organizations and legal institutions in Cebu.

Badoy’s and the NTF-Elcac’s distorted storytelling is but a far cry from reality. In truth, Ana Aures, while with her family, was illegally arrested by elements of the 3rd Infantry Division (3rd ID) of the Philippine Army last November 15, 2022 in Zaycoland Resort and Hotel at Kabankalan City, Negros Occidental. Her captors deprived her of her rights based on international humanitarian laws and the Comprehensive Agreement for Respect of Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law (CARHRIHL). She is under enforced disappearance until now.

Ana Aures’ predicament is another addition to the heap of human rights violations of the AFP who has subjected her to unimaginable horrors while being detained by proven monsters of the 3rd ID.

From information we received, she was earlier detained in Iloilo City and was later transferred to 3rd ID Headquarters in Jamindan, Capiz. She was frequently subjected to mental torture and interrogation. The Philippine Army went as far as staging videos and pictures of her freely roaming around the camp she was imprisoned in and even took her to malls in Iloilo City and the Dinagyang Festival last January to take pictures of her as if enjoying her time with her fascist captors.

According to accounts from her friends whom she discreetly communicated with, Naya’s mental health has deteriorated immensely, even involving suicidal thoughts because of her detention, interrogation, and the mental torture she endures each day she is held by fascist soldiers. The NTF-Elcac’s claim of “redeeming” Ana Aures is simply condemnable. The longer she is held by the 3rd ID, the longer she suffers the cruelty of the state as she is being presented as a ‘trophy’ like Chad Booc and Nikka Dela Cruz who were murdered in cold-blood by the AFP.

Ana Aures, Ka Naya to her comrades and the masses she served, is a revolutionary working with farmers, farm workers and indigenous peoples in the hinterlands of Himamaylan City and Kabankalan City, Negros Occidental. The state’s tautologous rhetoric of branding activism as “brainwashing” undermines the fact that Ka Naya took the decisive step of joining the armed revolution after witnessing social realities of exploitation and oppression under the semicolonial and semifeudal ruling system.

She was particularly drawn to Negros Island where the monocrop sugar economy has chained the overwhelming majority to landlessness and slave-like conditions. She found purpose in dedicating her life to serving the people wholeheartedly, a notion that can never be understood by the NTF-Elcac and the AFP, or even Badoy, who have practically terrorized the defenseless to protect the interests of the elite few.

With this, the National Democratic Front-Negros demands the AFP and NTF-Elcac accord Ana Aures her civil and political rights in accordance to international humanitarian law and the CARHRIHL. We challenge 3rd ID Commander MGen. Marion Sison and VISCOM chief Lt. Gen. Benedict Arevalo to give her the right to defend herself and to just representation in proper venues instead of forcibly utilizing her as a tool to threaten the youth and malign legal institutions and organizations.

NDF-Negros also strongly encourages human rights groups, church people, lawyers, and other concerned individuals here and abroad to campaign Ana Aures’ expedited release and assist in her recovery from the adverse effects of her on-going detention under the 3rd ID. An independent investigation regarding her capture and current condition must also be launched. It is high time that the AFP, emboldened by their illegitimate, brutal and lapdog commander-in-chief Marcos, be made to answer for their long list of crimes.

As the current Marcos regime continues its puppetry to US imperialism and its brazen kleptocracy while suppressing the people through intensified illegal arrests, red-tagging, extrajudicial killings, massive enforced surrenders and many other forms of grave human rights violations, the path to revolutionary armed struggle remains the most viable solution to attain just and lasting peace. The laws of history are clear: more revolutionaries can only sprout and persevere while injustice remains; as the people’s war is for people’s peace.###