ON NEW YEAR’S Day, 2026, the AFP’s 203rd Bantay Kapayapaan Brigade headed by Brig. Gen. Melencio Ragudo, carried out what the advocacy group Kalikasan People’s Network called “indiscriminate bombings and strafing” in Sitio Mamara, Barangay Cabacao, Abra de Ilog town, Occidental Mindoro.
About 191 families from the indigenous group IrayaMangyan, composed of at least 782 individuals, had to flee their mountain communities and sought temporary shelter from the local government.
According to the AFP, they engaged New People’s Army fighters, despite the fact that the NPA declaredway back in December 2025 that its forces were observing a unilateral ceasefire. A suspected rebel was killed, and two soldiers were wounded.
“Why does the AFP seem to find it suspicious or wrong for young people to be going to far-flung communities to immerse themselves with the indigenous Filipinos, to observe and document their living conditions, and see how they can be helped by government or NGOs?”
TERRORIZED IPs
The Kalikasan People’s Network issued a statement saying that residents, particularly the Mangyan communities, were “terrorized” during the military operations.
The suspected rebel, later identified by the National Democratic Front (NDF) in Mindoro, as Jerlyn Rose Doydora was part of a group visiting indigenous peoples, farmers and NPA units to document local conditions and peace initiatives. In other words, she was there to find out what the government or NGOs may be able to do to help them somehow to raise theirfamilies’ standard of living as a community.
QUESTIONS
The incident raises questions in the minds of people of goodwill, such as: “Why is the AFP bombing and strafing communities in hinterlands where the indigenous people live? Isn’t the AFP aware that these people, who live in the fringes of towns and cities, are considered the original native Filipinos and have in fact been neglected for decades by government?
Given their current difficult living conditions, government officials should have been giving themspecial attention by providing them ample and appropriate programs of employment or livelihoods, education and health care.
What is alarming is that: is the AFP following its bloody formula during the Marcos Sr Martial Law regime of bombing and strafing barangays in Mindanao?
EXCESSIVE FORCE?
Why does the AFP have to resort to use excessive force, apparently to practice utilizing its arsenal of heavy artillery on Filipino communities?
Isn’t the AFP aware that its bombing and strafing can end up as a massacre of Filipinos? (Remember the Palimbang Massacre?) Why does the AFP seem to find it suspicious or wrong for young people to be going to far-flung communities to immerse themselves with the indigenous Filipinos, to observe and document their living conditions, and see how they can be helped by government or NGOs? Is the AFP simply following their armed role in the red-tagging and terror-tagging operations of the NTF-ELCAC, targeting rural communities?
The people really wonder, in retrospect, why the AFP, with its highly superior firepower, not to mention its thousands of highly trained ground troops, refuse during the Christmas season to respond to the NPA’s goodwill of declaring a ceasefire, as the usual practice in the past? Isn’t the AFP mandated to protect and serve the people, just like the PNP?
Are these bombing and strafing operations by the AFP on rural communities of indigenous Filipinos a direct command from President/Commander-in-Chief?