NTF-ELCAC Commends Troops, Calls for Reflection After Negros Clash

April 20, 2025

The National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) commends our troops for the successful combat operation against the armed remnants of the New People’s Army in Barangay Salamanca, Toboso, Negros Occidental. Their courage, discipline, and professionalism once again demonstrate the firm resolve of the government to protect our people and secure communities long plagued by violence.

In a series of encounters, a key armed unit operating in Northern Negros has been effectively decimated—a clear reminder that the long arm of the law will always catch up with those who persist in terrorism.

Likewise, a long-hunted fugitive and ranking leader of the NPA, Arnel Tapang—who carried a P1 million bounty on his head—was confirmed killed in the encounter with gallant troops of the 79th Infantry Battalion of the Philippine Army.

As a result, 19 suspected NPA members were killed in the clash, according to BGen Ted Dumosmog, Commander, 303rd Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division, Philippine Army.

But let us be equally clear—this is not a moment for celebration. It is a moment of reflection and reckoning.

Because behind the encounter are Filipino lives lost—lives that could have taken a different path, lives that were drawn into a struggle that offers nothing but destruction.

What we are seeing here is the tragic outcome of terror-grooming—a deliberate and systematic process of recruitment and indoctrination that preys on the youth and the vulnerable.

In Negros and elsewhere, this pattern has been persistent: individuals are isolated from their families, conditioned to reject dissent, and molded to believe that violence is their only purpose.

Many are treated as cannon fodders—used, deployed, and ultimately sacrificed by a leadership that remains distant from the battlefield. This is not a legitimate cause. This is manipulation, control and exploitation disguised as ideology.

Compounding this is the reality of spy-tagging killings that continue to haunt communities in Negros. Security reports indicate that since 2025, there have been at least 45 civilians killed by the NPA after being labeled as “informants” or “traitors,” averaging three to four killings per month.

These are not combatants. These are ordinary Filipino civilians—farmers, elderly residents, community members—silenced through fear and executions. This exposes the true nature of the armed movement: it does not only wage violence against the State, it wages violence against the people.

While our forces have successfully neutralized an armed threat, we must confront the painful truth that those who perished were Filipinos—misled, manipulated, and ultimately sacrificed by a collapsing terrorist movement that continues to feed on lies and deception.

To those who remain in the armed struggle, we say this: the path you are on leads nowhere but loss. The organization you serve will not protect you. It will use you, and when the time comes, abandon you. The long arm of the law will reach you—it always does.

But there is still a way out. Lay down your arms. Return to your families. Avail of the government’s reintegration and amnesty programs. Choose life. Choose peace. Because peace is not won by bullets —it is secured when we break the cycle of lies, end the violence, and reclaim every Filipino life from a cause that was never meant to serve them.

Undersecretary Ernesto C Torres Jr

Executive Director

National Secretariat, NTF-ELCAC