Quezon City, Philippines —- The recent offensive orchestrated by the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) is a blatant attempt to silence truth-telling and suppress solidarity. After the mission’s conclusion, the agency spent a lot of time and public resources to visit the participant communities, intimidate community leaders, terror-tag the delegates, and fund media statements and videos discrediting the findings of the International Solidarity Mission (ISM), warning foreign delegates against “partisan politics.”
The NTF-ELCAC—with its deep military roots and history of red-tagging, harassment, and disinformation—is once again weaponizing state machinery to attack legitimate initiatives that expose state repression and climate injustice. It is ironic that an institution claiming to uphold peace and development uses fear, lies, and veiled threats to delegitimize one of the few remaining democratic spaces where people’s realities can be heard.
Their reaction only confirms the truths revealed by the ISM: that communities across Mindoro, Rizal, Samar, Leyte, and Negros are facing intensifying militarization, forced displacement, and human rights abuses—conditions that violate both domestic law and international humanitarian law. By undermining grassroots fact-finding, the NTF-ELCAC exposes its own insecurity and hypocrisy.
The ISM stands on principled solidarity. Our mission was to listen to and amplify the voices of those systematically silenced by militarization and corporate plunder—farmers, indigenous peoples, fisherfolk, and environmental defenders whose lives are jeopardized daily.
The mission’s findings have linked corruption and militarization to the climate crisis in Philippine communities. Notably, the mission’s report on Leyte, the mission flagged the ₱1.2-billion Cancabato Bay Causeway project awarded to Sunwest Construction and Development Corp., a firm linked to former congressman Zaldy Co, who resigned amid corruption allegations. The company reportedly received over ₱6 billion in public works contracts under the Romualdez-controlled districts. Local residents warned that the project has already damaged marine ecosystems in the bay. While palay farmers across 5 barangays are unable to tend to their crops due to the imposed military lockdowns under counter-insurgency programs.
In Negros Occidental, the mission’s report on HAPI Inc.’s 6,652‑hectare forest‑management palm‑oil project in Candoni, Negros Occidental—run by the Consunji family—documents the displacement of over 350 small farmers and Indigenous residents, including the Magahat community despite a Certificate of Ancestral Domain Title, extensive forest clearing and river pollution, and unsafe, heavily monitored labor conditions with wages as low as ₱480 a day, and calls for the immediate cancellation of the DENR‑granted Integrated Forest Management Agreement and the withdrawal of military forces.
In Abra de Ilog, Occidental Mindoro, the mission observed police and military surveillance while visiting the Mangyan‑Iraya community in Sitio Malatabako, where residents face displacement from Pieceland Corp.’s land claims, a food blockade that caused hunger and the death of an Indigenous woman, and criminal cases filed under IPRA; they also reported additional threats from an 18,000‑ha energy project by US‑owned Alternative Partners Corporation and proposed mining in Barangay Cabacao’s carbon‑rich mineral reserve.
Delegates documented severe socio‑economic hardships for the Dumagat‑Remontado tribe in Sta. Inez, Tanay, Rizal—where residents earn as little as PHP 100 (≈US$2) from root‑crop sales and lack road access—while noting that downstream communities will lose 113 ha of forest to the Kaliwa Dam, part of a 28,000‑ha Kaliwa‑Kanan‑Laiban complex affecting 11,000 families across the Sierra Madre. The mission also reported state‑linked human‑rights abuses, including harassment by NTF‑ELCAC and the 80th IBPA, weekly military summons, forced surrenders, and threats of fabricated rebellion charges against those who participated in protests.
If the state and military have nothing to hide, there should be no reason to obstruct, threaten, or malign our work. We do not ‘paint’ communities as militarized, we only expose lived-in realities of communities suffering from aggressive mal-”development” and heightened militarization. The very presence of armed forces in the mission areas have only proved it. NTF-ELCAC’s actions show us who the real source of terror is: those who terrorize communities, justify repression as policy, and equate dissent with rebellion.
We will not be intimidated. Peoples Rising for Climate Justice affirms the legitimacy, integrity, and courage of the ISM. No amount of red-tagging or distortion can bury the truth that the people’s struggles for land, livelihood, and life are just—and that the true enemies of peace are those who silence them. #