Lawyers urge public to reject unverified claims on Toboso 19 killings

MANILA – Reject unverified claims. 

This is the statement of lawyers’ group, Movement Against Disinformation (MAD) as unverified information about the killing of 19 individuals in Toboso, Negros Occidental continue to circulate online. 

The Philippine Army claimed that the 19 individuals who died during a supposed encounter last April 19, 2026 were combatants. This was refuted by their organizations. The New People’s Army Negros Island Spokesperson Maoche Legislador said in a statement that only a small squad led by commander Roger Fabillar (Ka Jhong) were killed on that day. 

MAD said “disinformation thrives when claims are amplified faster than facts, when doubt is dismissed rather than examined, and when scrutiny is framed as hostility.”

In a recent statement, Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) Chief General Romeo Brawner Jr., claimed that University of the Philippines student council member Alyssa Alano was found “wearing a combat rig with magazine pouch.”

The AFP also questioned the presence of Alano and others in Toboso. 

“She was a UP student leader engaged in research and immersion work among farmers in Negros. Her presence in the area has been confirmed by academic and community sources. She, RJ had an identity, purpose and a life rooted in service – not in armed combat. To erase that reality without proof is to participate in disinformation,” MAD said in a statement. 

The National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers (NUPL) also assailed Defense Secretary Gilbert Teodoro’s statement questioning the presence of Alano and others in Toboso.

The lawyers’ group said that Teodoro’s statement echoes the Philippine Army’s narrative and suggests that the poor, and those who support them, don’t belong in these communities. Teodoro also warned that being present in such areas could lead to charges like “aiding and abetting or obstruction of justice.” 

The NUPL asserted, “Their presence in Toboso was a conscious act of solidarity with communities facing landgrabbing, systemic neglect, and the grinding poverty that decades of counterinsurgency have done nothing to address.”

The group added that instead of questioning their presence in the communities of Toboso, the right questions that should be asked are: 

• Why would students, journalists, and advocates not be present to live alongside and document the struggles of peasant communities with long histories of landlessness, oppression, and poverty? Is solidarity now a crime?

•  If international humanitarian law core principles — distinction, proportionality, and precaution — were observed, how is it that 19 people are dead, over 650 residents of Barangays Salamanca and San Jose displaced? What does proportionality mean when a firefight ends with no reported military casualties and 19 dead civilians and alleged combatants alike?

• Why does the military’s response to civilian scrutiny follow a now-familiar script: stage the scene, control the narrative, then blame the dead for being where they were found?

“The military narrative seeks, perhaps, to drown out the tributes from the masses — from those who buried NPA member Roger Fabillar, who apparently had a P1 million bounty on his head, and the students, journalists, and activists who rallied in campuses and public places to seek justice for all the victims,” NUPL said. 

After all, they added, “the AFP has a documented record of violating international humanitarian law—targeting civilians, mistreating those no longer in combat, and disrespecting the dead.”

“There have been cases where bodies were staged with weapons and propaganda materials, mocked online, or falsely presented as ‘surrendered rebels’ through altered images. Disinformation has become part of their tactics. But we will not be fooled,” NUPL said.

Both groups said that verified information has yet to be established on what really transpired on April 19. MAD said that what this moment demands is truth – verified, documented, and made public and accountability without exception.

“Disinformation is not a side issue in this case; it is central to whether justice will be done. Truth is a public right. Verification is a democratic obligation,” they added. 

The NUPL meanwhile said that what is clear and cannot be hidden by military press release is that the “killings need a thorough, independent investigation, not one conducted by the same institution involved in the operation, nor by a body like NTF-ELCAC [National task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict] whose role is to justify such actions rather than scrutinize them.” (RVO) 

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