MANILA, Philippines – Ten days after a deadly military operation in Negros Occidental left 19 people dead, a regional bloc of current and former Southeast Asian lawmakers urged the Philippines, as chair of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), to lead by example in protecting dissent.

“As the 2026 ASEAN Chair, the Philippines must lead by example — not by silencing those who speak truth to power but by protecting them,” read part of a statement of the ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights (APHR).

APHR, a network of current and former legislators formed in 2013, has members who advocate for human rights inside and outside their governments, working with civil society groups and conducting fact-finding missions across Southeast Asia. It was created by progressive lawmakers seeking coordinated responses to abuses that do not stop at national borders.

Their statement followed the April 19 incident in Toboso town in the Negros Island Region, where the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) asserted that troops engaged and killed communist rebels in a fierce encounter.

Among those killed were community journalist RJ Nichole Ledesma, University of the Philippines students Alyssa Alano and Maureen Keil Santuyo, community researcher Errol Wendel Chen; Filipino-American advocates Kai Dana-Rene Sorem and Lyle Prijoles, local resident Roel Sabillo, and two minors.

Ledesma, regional coordinator of the Altermidya Network, was not at the initial clash site and was allegedly killed separately in Sitio Plariding during a military operation.

Alano, a UP Diliman student council member, was living with farmers in Negros Occidental, while Santuyo and Chen were reportedly there to document the conditions of sugarcane workers.

Prijoles, a Filipino-American activist from San Diego, California, was reportedly undergoing community immersion at the time.

APHR chairperson Mercy Chriesty Barends, a member of theIndonesian House of Representatives, sharply criticized the Philippine military. “Nine civilians were killed in Toboso, including a journalist and two minors. An operation that cannot distinguish between armed combatants and community workers is an indiscriminate attack that violates international humanitarian law. The AFP must be held accountable,” she said.

The organization reminded Philippine authorities that under international humanitarian law, the willful killing of civilians is a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions. It called on the government to conduct independent investigations without military involvement, halt counterinsurgency operations that put civilians and human rights defenders at risk, and provide protection and assistance to displaced families.

The military has maintained its claim that all those killed were members of the New People’s Army (NPA), saying they were armed and that at least two dozen firearms were recovered from the scene. Armed Forces chief General Romeo Brawner Jr. has stood by that account, insisting the 19 killed in the April 19 operation were rebels, despite reports that some were civilians.

The Commission on Human Rights (CHR) has sounded the alarm over the displacement of more than a hundred families and said it was looking into the Toboso incident. It said that “in case of doubt, persons shall be presumed civilians.”

The APHR said the killings follow what it called “a pattern of state-enabled repression,” while criticizing the Philippines’ Anti-Terrorism Act of 2020, which allows warrantless arrests and detention without charge. It said the law “has been weaponized against journalists, activists, and community workers.”

The group also denounced the practice of red-tagging, or labeling critics as communist sympathizers, as a precursor to violence, adding that the Philippine military’s “blanket labeling of all 19 victims as NPA members fits this pattern.”

APHR board member Wong Chen, a member of parliament of Subang, Malaysia, said: “The AFP does not operate in a vacuum. These killings happen because the Philippine government allows them to. A government that kills civilians and calls them terrorists cannot lead a region toward democratic governance.” – Rappler.com