“I cannot think about how they were killed by bloodthirsty soldiers, my daughter who never got so much as a spanking from me,” said Sheila Alano. Her daughter, Alyssa, a 19-year-old student leader from the University of the Philippines, was among 19 killed by the military on April 19 in Toboso, Negros Occidental province.
“My daughter is gone and there’s nothing I can do to bring her back. I hope we can carry on her dreams for the poor farmers of Negros,” said Alano, addressing thousands of mourning students.
The military claims that all of the casualties were combatants, guerrilla rebels of the New People’s Army (NPA). The Communist Party of the Philippines, leading an insurrection from the countryside for over half a century, acknowledged that 10 of the 19 were red fighters.
The remaining nine victims are student leader Alyssa Alano, local journalist RJ Ledesma, peasant advocates Errol Wendel and Maureen Santuyo, local farmer Roel Sabillo and two minors, and Filipino-American activists Lyle Prijoles and Kai Sorem.
Despite the authorities maintaining the Toboso incident was one of the biggest armed encounters in recent memory, victims’ families, rights groups, and independently gathered evidence suggest that what actually took place was a massacre of civilians.
