SANDATAHANG DAHAS CITATIONS
A mass killing in the Philippines sparks rare scrutiny over counterinsurgency violence – but no wider reckoning
Patrick Peralta, The Conversation
One way of understanding this selective grief, I believe, is to see Toboso as part of a long history in the Philippines of normalizing violence against peasant movements for their purported militancy. In 2025, some 390 people were killed in state-related violence, according to researchers at the University of the Philippines. More than half were civilians.
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Philippines’ failed bid for UNSC seat reflects human rights record
Dominic Gutoman, Bulatlat
The UP Third World Studies Center recorded more than 1,250 drug-related extrajudicial killings as of May 31, 2026. In a separate report, the institution documented 390 individuals killed in state-related violence in 2025, with the police and the military accounting for 85 percent of the killings.
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The Misguidance of Chantal Anicoche
Patricio Abinales, Positively Filipino
The NPA has near-perfected the art of making improvised explosive devices (IED) and – listening to the YouTube video of the soldiers who discovered Ms. Anicoche – these are weapons the AFP and police appear to be most wary about. But the IED’s seem to have a limited effect. The number of the wounded had risen, but dead soldiers or police officers had been kept to a minimum. At the other end, AFP/police-NPA encounters often led to rebels being killed. This is at least the pattern one notices in the statistics provided by the Vera Files-UP Third World Studies Dahas Project.
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Wala nang grupong gerilya sa bansa?
Miguel Paolo P. Reyes, Vera Files
The Sandatahang Dahas monitor of the University of the Philippines Third World Studies Center notes that between January to July, 81 alleged members of the CPP-NPA were killed in reported encounters with the AFP in eighteen provinces. One encounter occurred in Masbate a day before the SONA, resulting in the death of eight suspected rebels. Within August, so far, at least two reported encounters—one in Occidental Mindoro (province no. 19) and one in Quezon (province no. 20)—resulted in NPA fatalities.
Read full report here.