After almost seven months, the violence of the protest action in Manila has conveniently receded from public memory, were it not for an arrest in Guimba, Nueva Ecija. This first week of April, enforcing an arrest warrant for robbery and homicide, the police captured a supposed leader of a gang whom the police is also accusing of inciting unrest during the Sept. 21, 2025 Trillion Peso March protest.

The police still seemed to be working on the theory that the violent turn of events during the September 21 protest was hatched in a conspiracy. That it was not a spontaneous expression of rage by the youth so disgusted by massive theft and corruption committed by people in the government.

As the police continue to search for those whom they think were ultimately responsible for the violence in Manila on September 21, the Sandatahang Dahas of the UP Third World Studies Center conducted a detailed visual investigation to determine just how violent the police was in the same protest action.

Read full report here.

In February 2026, the Sandatahang Dahas monitor of the University of the Philippines Third World Studies Center recorded flare ups of an ingrained strain of violence among the country’s arms-bearing state agents that made them turn on each other.

Bullying—or its more vicious and institutional form, hazing—is behind the unusually high number of reported injuries in February. Of the 153 cases of reported injuries, 129 involved police recruits who were slapped, punched, and beaten with a stick in a “welcome rites” by 57 officers of the Regional Mobile Force Battalion 14-B of the Police Regional Office Bangsamoro Autonomous Region (PRO BAR) in Barangay Ubit, Lamitan City, Basilan on Feb. 5. Thirteen of those hazed were Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) combatants who were part of an integration program that allowed qualified members of the MILF and the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) to serve in the police force. 

Read full report here.

For the first time in its one year of monthly monitoring of state-related violence,  Sandatahang Dahas recorded body dumps of state agents.

In its January 2026 report, Sandatahang Dahas said two police officers were found dead in separate incidents in Bulacan.

On January 24, the body of PSMS Diane Marie Mollenido was found wrapped in cloth and plastic in a creek along the Pulilan-Baliuag Highway. She had a gunshot wound in the neck. Five days later, the body of her eight-year-old son was found in a calamansi farm in Tarlac. He had reportedly been strangled with plastic bags.

Read full report here.